How to Effectively Segment Your Mail List

Email marketing feels almost like a old-fashioned type of digital marketing. Your email marketing efforts may be put on the back burner due to the rapid growth of social media and general content market. This urge should be resisted! Email marketing is essential to your efforts and requires attention and time to maximize its output.

Email marketing is still relevant. However, before you send a single email, it's important to understand how segmentation works. 77% of email marketing ROI was generated from targeted,, and triggered campaigns. It's easier than ever to see your metrics with Constant Contact and other sites.

MailChimp also reports that email opens and unique openings of segmented campaigns were 14.31% higher than those from non-segmented campaign. Segmented campaigns also had more clicks than non-segmented campaigns. Segmented emails have 9.37% less unsubscribers.

Many businesses already use segmentation in their marketing communications. However, it is usually based only on demographic information. It's true that the more personal you can make messages, the greater your chances of conversion and engagement.

Here's Max von Collenburg's quick overview of email segmentation:

Quick Takeaways

• 
  Email marketing still works in today's digital space
  
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  Segmenting an email list can help you get more leads and converts
  
• 
  Effective segmentation can help you maximize your overall content marketing strategy
  

These are some ways to segment your contacts and get the most from your email marketing campaigns.

Segmentation based on Demographics

Source: Marketing charts

To segment your contacts, the simplest way is to use demographic data, such as age, location, industry, job level, and occupation. Demographics can reveal a lot about a prospect's needs and wants. The more information you have during a prospect’s signup, you will have more options for segmentation. You should only ask for the minimum amount of information that your sales team requires to qualify the lead. Any more could overwhelm your audience and possibly cause them to leave.

These are some of the most common ways to segment by age group:

• Geography While location-based apps and retail companies are highly effective at sending out email offers based upon location, global businesses and B2B organizations can also benefit from this information. Businesses can modify their messaging to appeal to different spellings in the UK and US, for example.

• Age: Do you target Millennials? Segmenting by age can help you communicate the right message to the right people. You can make lifelong customers by understanding that your customers' needs may change in the future.

• Occupation/Industry Your product should appeal to a broad range of people. It's important to keep in mind that different backgrounds may be involved. While both a marketer and a developer might appreciate your automation tool they will need to learn how to use it, and how to integrate it into their current systems.

• Job Title A CEO of a company will have different priorities from someone working in a technical position, even though they are both in the same company. While technical workers may want to learn more about how a product is used, upper management might be more concerned with the bottom line.

Segmentation based on Behavior

Segmentation is a good starting point because they provide insight into the 'who' as well as the 'what' of your audience. Behavioral segmentation on the other hand, digs deeper and answers the 'why’ and 'how to provide insights into buyer intent.

Here are some ways that marketers can segment emails based on customer behavior.

• Last Website Activity Keep track of your browsing habits to determine your interests. How long they stayed on each page, which icons they clicked, and what videos they watched. These metrics can be used to start a conversation.

• Past Purchases: It is a great way to personalize communications by using purchase history. Offer discounts on products that may be complementary to their last purchase. Recommend upgrades when there are new product lines. There are many options.

• Total amount spent: When your products are priced at a variety of prices, segmentation can work well. Email targeted emails with products priced within the customer’s product browsing or purchase history.

• Buying frequency: Do your customers buy weekly, monthly or annually? Do they purchase the same products regularly? Segment your customers based on their buying habits and past purchases and send them a message when they are in need.

Segmentation based on Customer Lifecycle Stage

Source Hubspot

The Lifecycle stage refers to identifying the stage in which your contacts are at. You should have different interactions with contacts depending on their stage of the sales cycle. After all, users who are paying customers won't be able to receive a 7-day free trial offer via email.

These are some ways to segment your email contacts by customer lifecycle stage.

• Prospect: prospects are people who have been contacted by you and have agreed to receive occasional messages from you. These people have only signed up for the company newsletter. The goal is to inform and pique their curiosity about your product and service.

• Lead: leads are not just subscribers. They are people who show interest in your product. Maybe they have filled out a form to get an ebook or a whitepaper that you published. It's a good idea to target leads by using content similar to what they have already viewed. This is to encourage brand engagement wherever possible.

• Marketing Qualified Leader: These are people who are interested in and engaged with the topic but have not yet become fully-fledged sales prospects. These leads are indicative that the marketing team should pursue them with content that encourages conversions.

• Sales Qualified Lead These are leads that your sales team might consider worthy of direct or personal follow-ups. These leads are the most important to monitor as they can be directly influenced by a purchase decision. Your sales team now has to close these leads like a boss.

• Customer: Customers can be self-explanatory. However, even though they have reached the ultimate goal of becoming brand advocates, it is still important to delight them.

• Advocate: advocates are people who love your brand and products so much that they will refer customers to you without asking. They can help you get leads or bring new business. Do not take their work for granted. Reward them with exclusive offers, discounts, and freebies.

Conclusion

These are just a few examples of many ways to segment your contacts. This strategy doesn't just work for companies with sophisticated automation software . It can be used by anyone who is interested in customer relationship management.

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