The Value of Segmenting Email Lists

Segmentation—it’s a four-syllable word. Often when we start talking about segmentation to new prospects, they look at us like we’re throwing out four-letter words, likely to do with all the misconceptions out there regarding segmenting for email campaigns. Our goal for this article in our SMART email blog series is to help add clarity and understanding to highlight its value. While this is just a brief dive into segmentation in email campaigns, we’ve provided an in-depth whitepaper on this subject and more, available for download at the bottom of this article.

One of the reasons why email marketing segmentation can make a client cringe is based on the fact that every time you segment, there is the potential for added costs based on new content required. And while this is true, separating emails based on your audience’s past interactions, job titles, purchase history and other important variables is extremely important. Why? It increases message effectiveness. Over-segmentation, on the other hand, certainly becomes costly, so it’s important to make sure that your audience segmentation has enough variation to require content changes.

Let’s look at what type of segmentation makes the most sense:

Purchase history: Nothing is worse than receiving an email promoting a product or service with a lower price than the amount you just spent. Paying attention to where the customer is in their purchase cycle is critical.
Interaction level: Did the last two emails sent to the audience resonate with them? Were the subject lines compelling enough for the audience to open the email? Was the CTA effective, and did the audience click through to the designated landing page? Was there action on the landing page, and did the lead shift into a different customer category as a result? All of these indicators may require a variance in content and, therefore, segmentation.
Persona indicators: How does the recipient view the product or service offered by the email? A direct user may require different content than a peripheral one. Depending on how much information you can pull from your CRM tool about your audience, there are many data points that can inform you on what kind of content will be most relevant.

It’s just as important to discuss what ISN’T segmentation. Sometimes, people use different terminology, and so there are aspects that some would consider segmenting that we don’t.

For instance, changing a single line of text based on a standard variable is not considered segmentation. That’s dynamic content. If the only difference between group A and group B is job title, and the only content that needs to change is the sentence or two that appears next to the recipient’s name, for example, no segmentation is needed. Instead, a variable equation just needs to be added into your CRM tool that says, “If this, write X. If that, write Y.” Such a variable equation doesn’t require completely new content—just a small content substitution. And although it’s more work than a “one email fits all” approach, doing so is nowhere near as complex as truly segmenting content. That’s because when we talk about segmenting for audience variances, we mean more than crafting different content. Changes to send times and even the frequency of emails, whether reducing or speeding up time delays between email blasts, are both ways to segment email marketing.

The way we segment content and audiences is based on CRM lists. These lists aren’t permanent by any means, and based on the ways recipients interact with content as well as other changes within the CRM, contacts may shift from one list to another automatically. Our segments are therefore as fluid as the customer, a primary differentiator between how we and others view segmentation.

Interested in taking a deeper dive into segmentation, and learning about how it can improve your email campaigns? Fill out the form below and download our whitepaper, Email Marketing is A LOT of Work, or schedule a call with us today.

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As we continue our email marketing blog series, special attention must be paid to creating concise content.

Read the two passages below. Let’s see which you prefer:

As I sit in my office chair, pondering the intricacies of the task at hand, I briefly take a moment to watch the way the dust motes move through the late afternoon sunshine peeking through the blinds behind my monitor. The patterns of movement these particles make seem almost purposeful in their randomness, as if each speck of dust has its own tasks to accomplish. As I watch the aerial aerobics the flecks participate in, I realize it’s been five minutes in which no keystrokes are registered, and I must forcefully tune out the dancing molecules from my peripheral vision and focus on the work at hand.

OR

I need to stop dilly-dallying and start writing this blog on using succinct language.

All joking aside, did the meaning of what was said change between the two styles? No. And even if you personally prefer the descriptive, detailed paragraph to the shortened statement, you likely understand the point we’re trying to make about concise language. While details and descriptions help provide the reader with deeper understanding, sometimes brevity is necessary for clarity.

Take email subject lines, for instance. Subject lines are the billboards of email marketing. They require concise language with the power to affect change. With hundreds of emails flooding the average worker’s inbox daily, your subject is the first line of offense in grabbing the viewer’s attention.

Think about your own email use. First, you likely look at the name of the sender of the emails in your inbox. Then, you probably automatically sort these emails into two categories—the must-reads (the ones from your co-workers, spouse or customers/prospects) and the might-reads (those emails that entice you based solely on the subject line, but that don’t fall into your ‘must-read’ category, AKA just about everything else in your inbox).

If you’re employing email marketing, rarely will you have the advantage of being a sender that falls into the ‘must-read’ category of your audience.

Instead, understand that when writing an email subject line, you’re creating clickbait—and we don’t mean that in the pejorative sense. Catching the attention of different recipients takes different types of bait, from comedy, misdirection, buzzword soup, rhetorical questions; the list goes on. Therefore, be ready to send the same email content to the same person with different subject lines to determine which type of bait works best for each individual, as well as to the market. What works one day may not work the next, so it’s important to keep changing it up.

And remember, email previews tend to show less than 50 characters, with many only displaying 25-45 characters (like iOS and Android email platforms).

In short: No matter what type of subject line you’re using, it needs to be short.

While we kept it brief for the sake of this blog, there’s more you should know about subject lines and other email marketing best practices. Fill out the form below and download our whitepaper, Email Marketing is A LOT of Work, to find out what you’ve been missing.

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