As a company, using email marketing is a great way to get and stay in touch with your customers and target audience. However, if you want noteworthy results and for your efforts to have a real impact then you must follow some best practices, including using email segmentation.
Here we’ll dive deeper into what email segmentation is, why it’s important, and some tips for success. Targeting the optimal audience will pay off in the long run as it can help you boost brand awareness and gain leads as well as increase sales.
What is Email Segmentation?
Email segmentation involves breaking down your audience into smaller segments based on particular criteria. It’s an opportunity to make sure your email messages are relevant to the recipient and provide a more personalised experience for your subscribers. For instance, you can segment these emails and groups out by location, interests, or purchase history, to name a few. All of this is in opposition to sending out one mass or generalised email message to a large group of people at one time. These days, it’s in your best interest to avoid sending out the same content to one big list. If you fail to put in the work to segment your messages and decide to send out generic emails, you risk them being put in the trash bin or flagged as spam.
What are the 4 Types of Email Segmentation?
Below are the four types of email segmentation to be aware of and consider for your business and email marketing campaigns.
- Demographic Segmentation: This is when you divide your audience out by certain demographics such as age, income, or family status. For instance, if your products are intended and made for seniors then you wouldn’t want to send your messages to teens and young adults.
- Behavioural Segmentation: Another option is to focus on consumer behaviour, but this can be complex. It’s an opportunity to build stronger customer relationships as you give them the information they can use to improve the customer purchase journey and overall buying experience with you. For example, you can make relevant product recommendations or use it to do some cross-selling.
- Geographic Segmentation: Geography is the most obvious way to target your emails and apply email segmentation. You may have certain information or messaging for those who are local versus those who are distant.
- Psychographic Segmentation: You can also boost email engagement based on psychographic data. There are some options to use that can help you have more successful outcomes with your emails such as beliefs, values, attitudes, and opinions, for example.
Why is Email Segmentation Important?
You want your efforts to be worth it and pay off in the end if you’re going to follow through with email segmentation. Therefore, it makes sense to want to know more about why it’s such an important task to take the time to do.
Most importantly, email segmentation can help you achieve a higher conversion rate or ROI. You’ll not only gain higher click and open rates but also they’re also more likely to help you convert as soon as they hit your client’s inbox. Sending the right email message at the right time to the right person can also help you get an increase in email revenue.
Not only will your emails be delivered to your customer’s inboxes but they have a much better chance of being read instead of going into the trash or being deleted. This also means your emails will be less likely to be moved to spam, which equates to better email deliverability. It’s an opportunity to improve and strengthen customer relationships too. Your target audience and customers will begin to trust you more and think about your brand when the content is relevant and meaningful.
It’s important since there are likely going to be negative consequences and effects for your business if you don’t spend time targeting the optimal audience. You could unintentionally frustrate people who get the wrong messages or too many messages. There’s a time and place to send out a mass email or broadcast email, but keep in mind that it’s not always the right solution. What’s fast and too easy may get you into trouble and harm your company’s reputation with your customers in the long run. Why risk it when you can use email segmentation to ensure the right people are getting the right message?
How Do You Use Email Segmentation?
Email segmentation isn’t a task you want to or can complete manually. Instead, you’ll need the right tools to help you segment your lists out correctly. There are some techniques you can use to assist you in segmenting your customer data for emails. For one, you can ask your subscribers for their preferences and choose what topics or information they’re interested in. You can also use email segmentation to send out messages based on a recipient’s location and notify them of upcoming events or sales in the area, for example. Be sure to focus on your relationship with each customer and pay close attention to purchasing behaviour.
As far as how to use email segmentation for your business, there are multiple ways and options. You can use email segmentation to engage new subscribers with onboarding and welcome messages, get inactive customers interested again, or as a way to show your loyal customers how much you appreciate them. It’s wise to also lean into those subscribers that have high open rates.
Email Segmentation Best Practices
Always be proactive about collecting customer data, insights, and preferences and maintaining updated records of information. Select the right tool for preparing your emails and targeting the optimal audience, such as getting started with Instiller. Next, make sure you feed the right email contacts into your email list. As far as the email goes, keep it short and simple, and to the point. Keep your data in sync, record and remember user preferences, and, most importantly, track your results. You don’t want to keep sending messages to those who have chosen to unsubscribe or who have made it clear they aren’t interested at this time.
Real Examples of Email Segmentation
It’s always good to review some examples of email segmentation to get a better idea of who’s doing it right and well and tips for success. For instance, Baublebar kept an eye on purchase history and sent a VIP campaign message with limited access to those who are loyal and spend money with them regularly. Another company win was VRBO when they used location segmentation along with seasonal and weather themes to connect with those wanting to have a fun vacation participating in winter hobbies like skiing.
Finally, Asana connected with their subscribers who said they loved attending webinars and sent out a segmented email advertising their virtual workshops. These are just a few examples but the sky’s the limit and you should have some fun getting creative with your marketing and finding ways to target each segment or email list.
How to Set Up Email Segmentation with Instiller
With Instiller, we make it easy to set up email segmentation and get started sending out your targeted messages. Use our list segmentation feature to begin increasing response rates today. If you don’t segment, you risk your readers bypassing your email, deleting it, or sending it to spam. The best part is that you can manage your email marketing campaign data within a highly secure and protected environment.
We have detailed instructions on our website as to how you can quickly and successfully use list and email segmentation with Instiller. It’s something that any business owner or marketer can do if they take the time to learn best practices and create targeted content. You should expect positive results that help you grow your business and boost brand awareness. You’ll also save yourself time and headaches doing it this way and when using our service, and also ensure you don’t tarnish your reputation by sending out mass emails with old data.
Email segmentation takeaways
Email segmentation is an excellent opportunity and way to ensure your readers read your email and are pleased with your business overall. Targeting the optimal audience does take time and careful attention to detail but your efforts will provide you with the results you desire and, over time, an increase in leads, sales, and customer satisfaction. People want messages sent to them that are highly relevant, timely and informative. Using email segmentation best practices and the different types of breaking apart your audiences, you can achieve this goal.
We hope you’ll consider using Instiller for your email segmentation and email marketing needs. Our expert and knowledgeable team are always standing by and ready for your call and questions. We’d be happy to walk you through the next steps and get you set up with a free trial. You can see a list of our satisfied clients and agencies on our website and gather more information about our services and pricing.
Get in touch today to learn more. We look forward to hearing from you and working with your agency soon!