Email Segmentation Strategies
T
he product or service that one customer can’t live without is one that
another has no use for. The key selling point for one prospect is a weak
point for another. Simply put, people care about what’s relevant to them, and
don’t want to weed through what’s not. So why send irrelevant content? Send
only information that matters to recipients, and watch your response rates rise.
The key is to determine what content is relevant, and then divide your list into
groups of people interested in the same information. Don’t know what that is?
Ask them. We’ll discuss ideas on how to easily collect this information from
your subscribers at the end of this chapter.
Divide and Conquer
Once you know what content your subscribers find relevant to them, divide
your list into segments that make sense to your company or business model.
You are probably already used to segmentation in your traditional marketing
efforts, but many organizations overlook segmentation in their email initiatives.
Customize to Maximize
When you’ve segmented your list according to what works for your business
model, maximize action and conversion by sending customized messages to
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your different audiences. Customize the message content, customize the offer,
the subject line, the time of day you send, etc.—all in a way that is directly
relevant to the audience you’re sending to.
Using dynamic content to send targeted information—
Dynamic content
can make sending targeted content to recipients easy. Dynamic content allows
you to create a single email message that delivers multiple versions based on
recipients’ demographic profiles or other data. The possibilities are limited
only by the data you have for your subscribers and the content you have that is
relevant to that data. Messages can be customized to replace groups of text or
images based on variables such as:
• a recipient’s personal data (state, status, etc.)
• past purchase history
• past email activity
• website activity
• any other data you have about your email recipients
The possibilities for customizing messages with dynamic content tools are
almost endless. For example, an electronics retailer could use dynamic content
to deliver an email newsletter with an opening paragraph about computers
on sale or a paragraph about new MP3 players. The actual paragraph that
was delivered would depend on the recipient. Here are some more real-world
examples of how marketers are using this powerful technology:
• Customizing updates by state, province or other geographical
characteristics
• Substituting entire paragraphs of text or graphics based on
demographic data
• Creating cross-sell offers based on previous purchases
• Alerting customers of consumable products (items or components
that need to be replaced on a regular schedule) or recurring services
(which need to be performed at specific intervals, such as oil changes
and tune-ups)
Taking personalization past first name—
Personalization is a simple execution
that inserts data elements or content held in your database into an email
message. At its most basic, personalization inserts a salutation such as “Dear
First Name.” We encourage you to think beyond first names. Personalization
allows you to insert any text for which you have a data field. Here are some
other examples for using personalization:
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Email Segmentation Strategies
• User-specific information, such as customer number
• Contact information for a salesperson in the recipient’s region
• Location information for the store closest to the recipient
In its most sophisticated uses, personalization can even enable you to customize
images based on personal data.
Measure and Modify
This should be nothing new since you’re already tracking your email campaigns
for response and conversion rates. Certainly your overall response rate should
rise when you send relevant messages to carefully selected audiences. If a
particular segment isn’t responding as well as the others, review and make
adjustments to improve response. If you don’t see a significant overall increase
in response rates when you send to segmented lists, continue to explore possible
hypotheses, test them and only when all else fails, save resources by sending
only one email.
Easily Elicit the Information You Need
At signup—
Collect information and ask your subscribers what is most useful
to them while they’re signing up to receive emails from you. This can be
handled several ways.
1. Make the info required in order to sign up. This is advisable only
if the information is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, you risk
losing signups.
2. Include the additional fields but make them optional. However, be
careful not to add too many fields to the page or the mere length of the
form may scare people away.
3. After they’ve signed up, ask them to provide additional information on a
separate page to avoid losing signups.
Re-register—
If you’ve been publishing for a while, periodically ask subscribers
to re-register. Advise them that you want to make sure their info is up to date.
This is also a good way to make sure your list is fresh.
Survey—
Send an email and ask subscribers to complete a short survey. To
increase response, offer a premium or fun prize.
Email Segmentation Strategies
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