More useful ways to segment your list
Segmentation in email marketing allows great possibilities to create different groups and lists of users, even more a measure that evolve and incorporate new subscribers, the objective is to reach the largest number of them trying to satisfy their interests or specific needs.The goal of targeting is to provide relevant content to your recipients. To do this, you will have to spend time designing specific campaigns that take into account their personality, tastes and interests. Keep in mind that although some of these segments may work perfectly on their own, many of them will have better results if they are crossed with other lists.
1) Geography
Knowing where your contacts live can be very powerful information. This will ensure that you are not infringing on someone else's territory, or advertising to a region where your organization does not yet offer any type of service.
2) Age
Anyone of any age can have access to the Internet today. Which means that you can send an email to a college student, a retiree, or even a young child. Segmenting by age is very useful to eliminate those people who are not among your target audience, or to adjust the type of message you want to convey.
3) Gender
Just as you communicate differently with a retiree than with a college student, you can also adjust your words and offers based on the gender of your recipients. If you have a wide product offering, you can segment your list in this way and reinforce it with other demographic and psychographic details as well.
4) Person
Speaking of demographics and psychographics, you should create buyer personas (types of customers) that include information of this nature, as well as more detailed explanations of why your products and services are of high value to them. Because each buyer persona has different needs, each one will require different content to get the best click-through and conversion rates.
5) Type of organization
Are your clients franchises? Non-profit organizations? Ecommerce? SMEs? They all have different needs, and as such, the contents of your emails should be different.
6) Industry
If you are selling your products or services to other businesses, they may belong to different industries. Knowing the industry of your potential clients will allow you to add another level of personalization to your email marketing campaigns.
7) Role within the company
As a B2B merchant, your email list could contain a list of people who perform different tasks within each company: office staff, salespeople, consultants, customer service, etc. Considering the breadth of job roles a given organization can have, wouldn't it make sense to segment your list accordingly?
8) Level of Education
You could segment your contact list based on their level of education. In this way, you can adapt your content to their level of understanding on certain topics.
9) Seniority level
Just like there are different job roles, there are also different levels of seniority. You can have two contacts who work in the same marketing department but do not have the same rank within the company. They will likely have different years of experience, salary level, decision-making power, and a host of differences that make targeting critical to creating an effective email marketing campaign.
10) Past purchases
If a segment of your list has already made a purchase in your online business, use that information to send them information about products related or complementary to their previous purchase.
11) Purchase frequency
Segment your email list based on how often someone makes a purchase. Not only can you try to increase this frequency but you can also reward frequent shoppers with an invitation to your loyalty program.
12) Buying Cycle
Do some clients come to your online business on a weekly, monthly, yearly or quarterly basis? Or maybe they only target your online store at a certain time of year? Segment your list based on your customers' buying cycle so that you can be there right when they need you.
13) Content Topic
Some of your contacts may be much more interested in certain content topics than others. You can also segment your lists by the interest they have shown in previous campaigns.
14) Content format
Certain content formats may be more attractive than others for certain segments of your database. Some prefer articles, others e-books or seminars. If you know how certain segments of your email list prefer to consume your content, you can make your campaigns have a greater effect.
15) Change in the level of engagement
Have you noticed an increase or decrease in the amount of time your recipients spend on your content? This is an indication of their interest in your business, and should be used to direct potential customers through the sales funnel.
16) Change in buying behavior
Like a change in the level of engagement, a change in the behavior of the purchase can indicate that a customer is more or less interested in your company. If the frequency of purchase decreases, you will need to design a campaign to make those customers "fall in love" again.
17) Stage in the sales cycle
The stage of the sales funnel a customer is in will also determine a segment of your database. In this post we talk about the different types of users and how you can direct them through the sales funnel to make a purchase
3 Steps to improve your customers' shopping experience
18) Customers referring other customers
Consider creating a segment on your email list with customers who repeatedly refer other customers to your business. These are the main advocates of your brand, and they should receive emails with information about loyalty programs, discounts for referring a friend, and even samples of new products that you want to receive feedback on.
19) Clients who have not done a review
It is important to get positive comments about your business. So why not create a segment on your list that targets customers who haven't left their feedback yet?
20) Physical store customers vs. ecommerce
If you have both a physical store and an online store, you can create a segment on your list based on where your customers prefer to shop. You can send invitations to events to customers of your physical store, and send offers to your other customers that can only be redeemed online.
21) Abandonment of the shopping cart
Bamyard Institute found that, on average, 68% of carts are abandoned before the purchase is finalized. So if you have an online store it is very interesting that you segment your contacts based on this type of behavior in order to convert them into customers.
22) Form abandonment
Don't have an ecommerce? Even so, you can suffer a high percentage of abandonments in your forms. If someone starts filling out any of your forms and doesn't finish filling it out, it's a good idea to try to reawaken their interest through a personalized email.
23) Attendance at an event
Does your company regularly attend book signings, conferences, workshops, talks, etc? Then you cannot miss the opportunity to continue connecting with customers who have attended those events. Segment your email list based on the different types of events you attend. So you can send new invitations to your contacts or share relevant content with them.
24) Clicks on calls to action
A click on a call to action means that your content has helped you generate new leads. You can find out which types of messages perform best based on the ones that generate the most clicks on your CTAs. Are your users interested in limited or preferred offers or free shipping or discounts? Use this data to create campaigns that help you generate more sales.
All these segmentation options have a common objective, adapt your messages based on the type of target customer you want to reach. In this way, your email marketing campaigns will be much more effective and your effort will have been worth it.