When you’re working with email as one of your marketing campaign techniques, you need to have a clean, up-to-date, hot list. But once you have that list, what do you do with it? How do you make sure that the various campaigns are reaching their target audience? It all comes down to segmentation. Here are our top five tips on how to segment email lists.
1 - Create an info-rich list
Depending on how you build your email list, there could be a wealth of information available to you. Some email list building techniques give you more information than others, so it depends on how you’re doing it. The more information you have, the better you can segment the list according to whichever demographic you want to target.
2 - Ask questions
Want to know what your email list subscribers want to read about? Ask them. Send out a short survey, ask for feedback, and get people to tell you what they are interested in. You can build all the personas you want, but every person is unique and they may surprise you. Just ask, and if the survey doesn’t take too much time or energy, people will respond.
3 - Demographics
No, not every woman in her early forties is interested in craft gin, but plenty are. Get to know which demographics would be most likely to use your products or services, and segment your list accordingly. This is one of the most basic techniques, and if you aren’t using it, you’re not going to make sales.
4 - Location, location, location
Where you are from is just as important as who you are. If you’re trying to sell winter warmers in November, it helps to remember that your southern hemisphere customers are getting into the swing of summer at that very moment. It doesn’t matter how cute your crocheted hats are, those customers are not interested. In this case, segmenting your list by geography can give you the chance to sell those same products right throughout the year, just to different groups at different times.
5 - Spending behavior
There’s a vast amount of information to be gathered based on your customers’ spending behavior. Everything from things they add to their wish list to how often they buy, what types of products and services they buy, how often they abandon their carts, even what day of the week, time of the month, or month of the year they’re more likely to buy. When you know how and when they are spending, it’s far easier to send them content that entices them to buy from you.
What other email segmentation methods have worked for you? Let me know in the comments.
Need help building and segmenting your email lists? Get in touch.