Hands up if you remember the era when getting an email in your inbox was both rare and exciting.
Do you still get a similar buzz when you check your emails nowadays? Probably not. There’s a simple reason for that. On average, each of us gets around 121 emails each day. We all have collective email exhaustion.
Imagine what that means for your company when you run your next email promotion. Do you know how to stand out from the inbox crowd and entice your subscriber to open your lovingly-crafted email?
The solution is to use email segmentation. In this guide, we’ll share the best segmentation tips to help you make your next email campaign a record-breaking success.
Run a Survey
Instead of guessing what your audience needs, why not ask them? A simple one or two-question survey to your entire email list will help you split your audience by preferences.
Use your autoresponder to create an email with three separate links. Then, trace the link your audience selects to segment them.
For example, you could offer three content choices and ask the subscriber to pick the most appealing option.
That will help you segment your audience into three groups and provide more tailored, high-value content to each segment.
Alternatively, you could ask them why they signed up for your list. Again, offer three choices. Knowing their motivations will help you segment and target your content and promotions.
Perhaps they signed up because they are a customer. Or maybe they signed up because they love your blog and want to read more of your content.
Find Out the Demographic Profile
Capturing your audience’s basic demographics can help you build up a detailed profile of your subscribers.
For most businesses, their audience will fall into more than one demographic group, so it’s a reliable way to try and segment your customer leads.
There are two ways to get this information. You can capture data on demographics when someone signs up to your email list, or you can capture it later in the form of a survey.
The benefit of capturing it at the start is that you’ll be able to segment your audience immediately and provide a more customized experience.
But entering demographic information during the signup process can put some people off. You may find your signup conversion rate drops slightly.
Whatever way you choose, try and find common patterns with your audience to create a meaningful segmentation.
Ideally, you don’t want to segment your audience into more than five groups. Look for age, education, income, and interests as your main ways to cut and categorize your audience.
Segment by Lead Magnet
Perhaps you want to avoid adding more mandatory fields to your email signup process.
If so, there’s another way to segment your audience by demographic or interests that’s less intrusive. However, it does require more work at the start.
Create segmentation by offering different lead magnets and landing pages to cater to the various sections of your audience.
For example, perhaps you are a fashion retailer and cater to women across a wide age range, as well as offering maternity clothes.
You could create different lead magnets based on age (“style ideas for women over 60”) or perhaps target by the type of interests (“sleep tips for the third trimester”).
The plus point of segmenting by lead magnets is that you’ll achieve a more targeted and specific marketing campaign. You can find out more about targeted email campaigns by clicking on this link.
It’s likely to produce higher conversion rates. That’s true both during the signup process and the level of engagement (open and click rates) you get during the email marketing campaign.
As an illustration, a golfer is arguably more likely to sign up to an email list that promises content relevant to her interests (golfing tips) rather than generic sports content. The latter is readily available elsewhere.
Naturally, this does mean you’ll have to put together multiple lead magnets and their relevant landing pages as part of your marketing efforts. But if you have the time to do that, the rewards are worth it.
Segment by Location
Do you have customers across multiple continents? Then segmenting by location is an innovative marketing strategy to provide your global audience with a more personalized experience.
Some autoresponders will track the geolocation automatically. They may even include geolocation data as part of their analytics suite.
Receiving an email that’s tailored to your country (or city) and translated into your native language is the hallmark of a sophisticated and successful growing business.
Segmenting by location also gives you the opportunity to time your emails to fit with a particular timezone. That means you can boost your open rates by choosing the optimum time.
Many autoresponders offer time-zone-specific email sending as part of their standard functionality.
Location segmentation is also essential if you have traditional brick-and-mortar stores. You can design your email campaigns to get people into your physical business that’s near to them.
Location segmentation also helps you link promotions to national holidays. You can maximize Thanksgiving promotions to your US audience without sending unnecessary emails to customers from other countries.
Segment by Buyer Intent
Lastly, think about using audience segmentation to tap into buyer intent.
Buyer intent is a well-established marketing principle. It essentially refers to the different stages buyers might be at on their purchasing journey.
Some may be unaware they have a problem. In contrast, others know their situation and solution and are ready to weigh up final options before purchasing.
Knowing a buyer’s intent will help you tailor your promotional content to each customer.
You’ll move them further along the sales funnel instead of trying (unsuccessfully) to convert the coldest lead into a buyer from the outset.
There are several simple ways of figuring out a buyer’s intent. We’ve mentioned some already, including tailoring your lead magnet and conducting a survey.
Another way you can establish where someone is on their purchasing journey is to monitor their responses to your emails and personalize future emails accordingly.
Here’s an example.
You could send out a special offer by email to your audience. Those who click, browse the sales page, but don’t buy, are likely to be warm leads.
Follow these leads up with further emails to help convert them (for example, an email containing a few customer testimonials). You’ll help boost your sales.
Those that don’t click on the link are more likely to be cold buyers. You could focus your efforts on sending free valuable content to help build your relationship and boost brand awareness with that audience.
Use Email Segmentation to Boost Your Next Campaign
Personalization is the way forward for any company that wants to connect better with its audience.
By using email segmentation as part of your online digital marketing strategy, you can start seeing better conversions from your promotions and more brand awareness.
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