Have you ever started putting together an email campaign, but stopped because you realized that it wouldn’t be relevant to everyone on your list? Maybe you are having a local event and your subscribers on the other side or the country or world wouldn’t be interested. Maybe you want to send a reminder about a promotion to convert new customers, but don’t want it to land in a current customer’s inbox. It may be time to consider email list segmentation.
Segmentation is the act of dividing your email list into different groups based on characteristics such as demographics or interests. Segmentation allows you to send more relevant and personalized content to each segment which in turn increases responses. The good news is that most email service providers allow you to segment your list, so not additional software or tools are necessary.
There are many benefits to using list segmentation including:
Decrease your unsubscribes. Many people unsubscribe because they don’t feel like the information you are sending is relevant to them. By creating segments, the relevancy increases for each subscriber segment.
Increase open rates. With segments, you can tailor the subject line making it more attractive to the email subscriber to open because, again, it is personalized for their interest.
Increase click-through rates. The more relevant the content, the more likely the reader is to open and interact with the email including click on the links in your message. Segmentation has been shown to increase the click-through rates for email marketers.
Increase conversions. Using segments, you should have a more targeted and motivated reader. This makes the conversion to purchase or act much higher than sending the same offer to everyone on a general list.
Getting started in segmentation can feel overwhelming because there are so many options for slicing and dicing your list. The key is to start small and expand from there. You may want to start as simple as breaking your list into customer and non-customer. Just think of all the different types of emails and promotions you can create based on this simple segmentation.
Now is the time to consider how segmentation can help your get more out of your email list.