Is Driving More Conversions on Your Mind? Adopt Email List Segmentation Now
October 18, 2021
Every business owner is aware that no two customers will ever be the same. Hence, they’re continuously looking for ways to make their communications as relevant to their audience as possible.
As hundreds and thousands of brand emails continue to be fired at inboxes on a daily basis, businesses must aim at delivering a personal experience to avoid ending up in spam folders during this holiday season. The holiday season is typically cherished by brands across the globe for the opportunity it presents for skyrocketing their revenue. However, if you are unable to catch the attention of your audience in the first place, you’ll never be able to achieve this objective.
This is where segmenting your email lists comes into the picture.
According to research, segmented campaigns can increase email revenue by 760%. Email list segmentation allows businesses to divide their subscribers into different lists based on varying parameters such as:
- Interests
- Location
- Purchase history
- Position in the sales funnel
Subsequently, you can engage your customers with highly personalized and relevant emails, paving the path for increased engagement and conversions in the process.
This article will walk you through the various ways in which you can use email segmentation to boost your conversion rate, and subsequently, make the most of the upcoming holiday season!
Get Your Email List Segmentation Basics Right
When a new user finds something appealing about your services or products, they subscribe to your newsletter and communications.
Segmentation helps restate that very reason for your customers, and it does so by considering the challenges that they might have encountered during the subscription process like inadequate product information, unclear instructions for completing payments, and vague information on modifying existing subscriptions.
Overall, it renders your email campaigns with a unique value proposition and helps build unwavering and long-lasting customer relationships.
So, what do you need to get started with segmentation at a basic level?
User data
User data forms the core of email list segmentation. It may take many shapes such as:
- Location
- Gender
- Occupation
- Interests and preferences
- Past purchases
- Browsing history
- Level of engagement
- Their position in the sales funnel
You don’t need to have all of these data points in your arsenal at the same time to chalk out your segmentation strategies; any one or two would do. Don’t worry if you have scarce user data to begin with; you can always gather information and develop customer profiles as you go.
Professional sending platform
If you’re unable to figure out hassle-free ways of collecting customer contact information, a professional email marketing solution is sure to come to your rescue by integrating subscription forms with your business’s online platform. Once the necessary contact information is at your disposal, you can create different segments and target each with a unique brand of communication. However, make sure that ESPs (Email Service Provider)
integrations and features are compatible with your business before finalizing it.
Segmentation thresholds
You need to define how customers are segmented based on their actions or other criteria. To qualify into a specific segment, a customer must meet the criteria that define it. For example, let’s imagine you own an online bookstore. Suppose you have created a segment called “interested in history.” What does a visitor need to do to be classified under this segment? Do they need to make a purchase from the history section, or is browsing through the books under this section enough to qualify them? These are important calls that must be made before you sit down to make segmentation strategies.
Identify the Most Effective Segments
A rule of thumb while starting with email list segmentation is to always strive to keep things simple.
While the benefits of complex segmentation are tempting, the margin of errors they allow is extremely low. Hence, if you are new to segmentation, it is advisable that you revolve your strategies around the segments that have proven to be historically effective.
Listed below are a few of these segments for your reference.
Geographic location
This parameter works best for businesses that have outlets spread across different cities or countries. Segmenting customers based on their geographic location allows companies to send the store-related updates of a specific location only to the residents of that particular area. For example, if you have two stores in London and Hong Kong, ideally, you wouldn’t want your Hong Kong customers to receive London-related updates and vice versa. Additionally, geographic location-based segmentation allows you to create different segments for different time zones within a country, other regions of a particular city, and the like.
Purchase history
No customer wants to receive product recommendations that aren’t relevant to them. So, how do you avoid this? By segmenting your buyers based on their purchase history. If a section of your audience visits your electronics product page more than the others, then send them deals and offers relating to electronic gadgets. Likewise, if a particular segment has a furniture-rich purchase history, then sending them furniture-related product recommendations are bound to result in more conversions.
Cart Abandonments
Abandoned carts are inevitable. While they can’t be totally done away with (unfortunately), there are measures in place that can help you minimize their occurrences and drive more sales out of them. Few steps work as effectively as email list segmentation. Creating a separate segment for users who have abandoned their carts allows you to target each one of them with personalized messaging, increasing the likelihood of converting abandoned carts into sales prospects.
Use Different Customized Messages for Different Segments
The reason why we divide audiences into different segments is to cater to their varying interests and preferences. Should you fail to have different customized messages in store for different segments, you’ll be defeating the purpose of segmentation.
Are you wondering how to best use your content to captivate the attention of your subscribers?
Use Subject lines
Subject lines offer users a sneak peek into your emails, which speaks volumes about its importance. The more relevant your subject lines are, the greater its chances will be of registering improved open and click-through rates. Use humor, spring a surprise, provoke curiosity, use emojis—there are multiple options when it comes to sprucing up your subject lines. It all eventually boils down to using a tonality and temperament which suits your brand the best.
Use Power Words
What are power words? Simply put, they are words that inspire action. Trust, discover, understand, improve, free, bonus, learn, exclusive—you get the drift. Power words appeal directly to your subscriber’s emotions and incentivize them to take action. As a result, brands usually prefer using power words for their CTAs.
Wrapping It Up
Email list segmentation has now become a go-to tool for email marketers, and rightfully so. It not only allows them to increase their ROI but also helps them to retain a greater number of customers.
If there ever was a sure-fire way of cutting through the noise of constant daily emails, then email segmentation is it. Moreover, with the holiday season just around the corner, it’s essential that you practice email list hyper-segmentation to increase email engagement and sales during this period.
To help you get a headstart on this matter, we collaborated with our friends at Email on Acid to give rise to this neat infographic. These insights are sure to give your holiday email marketing efforts a leg up, enabling you to stand miles above your competitors.
Source: Email List Hyper-Segmentation
