The days of sending out one-size-fits-all emails have come and gone.
It’s no longer good enough to send your entire e-list the same offers, because you want your emails to be as relevant as possible for each person. That’s why email list segmentation is the key to successful email marketing.
In general, the more your list grows the less your recipients will be engaged.
Different attitudes within your list begin to develop, and parts of your audience find different elements of your communication strategy more interesting than others. When this happen, it’s time to use those attitudes to create your email segments.
Want to know more about it? Our guide answers your questions and explains why it's important to segment your email lists.
List segmentation is the process of breaking up your email list into smaller, more targeted segments. This practice can help you to offer your customers a more personalized experience.
In general, email segments are groups of email subscribers defined by a set of conditions, like location or how recently they’ve clicked on an email.
There are many ways to segment an email list and different conditions that can be used in order to do that. The best approach for your business will depend on your specific goals.
A segmented mailing list is crucial because your audience isn’t uniform. Each member's interests and preferences differ, so you'll want to reach out to them with content that matches their profile.Segmenting your audience enables you to target different groups with email content that is relevant to their needs, which in turn helps you keep your strategy focused.
According to Klaviyo, using email segmentation can increase overall revenue from email marketing up to 820% for some brands.On the lower end, brands still see a 60% increase in revenue from email marketing when they segment their email lists.
Segmenting your list can help you send more relevant messages, build a better sender reputation, and increase the engagement of your recipients.
It can make your marketing efforts more effective by helping you:
The key to segmentation is data. The more you know about your customers, the more effective segments you can create.Data can be collected in different ways: using tracking and metrics from Klaviyo or even asking subscribers directly via your signup form or surveys.
Once you’ve found the data you need, the set of conditions you choose to segment will depend on your specific company, products, and audience.
In general, there are four types of segmentation:
Since demographic, psychographic and geographic factors are based on concrete information, they are a common place to start when segmenting.
Example of those factors include:
While some information can be tracked or predicted directly on Klaviyo (location, gender, language), to have access to the other factors you need to manually collect the data by asking directly to the customers. To do so, you can use subscription forms or add specific blocks to your emails.
For example if you want to segment our audience by age, you could ask your customers to enter their date of birth directly in the subscription form. Klaviyo would then register the information and update the specific property in the customer’s profile.
Segmentation based on what contacts do (or don't do) is often the most efficient one.
The most common activities we want to track are:
If you want to send emails that people value, you can create segments based on how frequently subscribers open and click your emails. Highly engaged audiences are more likely to want regular communication, while less engaged audiences likely need a very high value message like a sale to inspire action.
Some common engagement-based email segments are:
You should use your engaged segment(s) as your audience base for general newsletter and communications. Depending on the initial situation and the results you are getting, it may be optimal to start considering the last 30 or 60 days. The more your results are good (in terms of open rate, CTR, unsubscribes), the more you can expand the time period.
The unengaged segment is also critical to improving your email results. Excluding unengaged subscribers will help you have better results because of the impact on the unsubscribe rate.In fact, people who haven’t shown interest in your content lately are most likely to end up on the unsubscribe list.
Purchase history gives you an idea of what a customer likes and provides insight into their buying habits. By identifying their patterns, you can understand their needs and create targeted campaigns with customized content.
Common segments based on contacts’ purchase history are:
Segmentation is the best way to provide highly personalized and relevant content that will resonate with the vast majority of the subscribers on your list.
It doesn’t have to be overly complicated and time-consuming. If the thought of creating customized content for every type of user, demographic, or engagement level feels a bit overwhelming, take a step back and identify easy-to-implement ways to tweak content or images rather than starting at ground zero for each segment.
Small adjustments can have a big impact.
Written by: Flavia Malvatani
