15+ ways to segment your email subscribers

Are you trying to work out how to segment your email subscribers? You’ve heard marketers talk about the importance of segmenting your email list and sending targeted emails, but you aren’t really sure about how you should be segmenting your mailing list. Well, you are in the right place. Keep on reading to find out 15+ ways to segment your email subscribers.

 

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What is email segmentation?

Email segmentation is where you separate your subscribers so that rather than sending emails out to yoru whole mailing list you can send an email out to a sub-section or segment or your mailing list.

 

Why is email segmentation important? 

Email segmentation allows you to send more targeted emails. And the more targeted your emails are the happier your subscribers will be and the better your conversion will be

 

15+ WAYS TO SEGMENT YOUR EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS

 

1. Purchase history 

This is something that e-commerce businesses usually do well, but service-based businesses not so much. If someone on your email list buys something that purchase information should be attached to the subscriber.

 

Having the full purchase history will allow you to segment in multiple ways such as by a specific product or service, lifetime value and frequency of purchases.

 

2. Current clients 

Knowing who your current clients are is key. If you are sending an email telling people to buy a service then you won’t want to send that email to people who are already paying for that service. Having current clients properly tagged means they can be excluded from those emails.

 

3. Demographics

Another common way to segment your email subscribers is by demographics. This could be age, gender, education, job etc. With demographics there is a lot of information you could ask for, but think in advance what information is going to be useful when creating future emails. For example, if you are a money coach that only works with women they knowing the gender of your subscribers is helpful. However, if you are an accountant who works with men, woman and non-binary people will knowing someones gender really make a difference?

 

4. Geographical location

Knowing where your subscribers is based can help for a number of reasons. You could tailor content depending on where in the world people are – for example you might talk about dollars when emailing people in the USA, but pounds when emailing people int the UK. It can also be very useful if you decide to do anything in-person. If you’ve got location information you can send emails to people within X miles or in that country.

 

WANT TO GET AN EMAIL STRATEGY CREATED SPECIFICALLY FOR YOUR BUSINESS? There is a lot to consider to make the most of email marketing. It needs to work with the other aspects of your marketing and you want to get your ensure you are making the most of your broadcast/newsletter emails, triggered emails and targeted emails.   As an award-winning content marketer, who does all of my own marketing, and a Chartered Marketer with over a decade of professional marketing experience, I’m make email marketing strategies that take into consideration the business goals and other marketing channels – and ensure you get a strategy that results in sales. And the best bit is it doesn’t have to take forever.  In fact, I run content strategy days so you can get your email marketing strategy created in just one day. To find out more about my Strategy Days click here. Not sure what open is best for you? Book a free, non-obligation, introduction call here.

 

5. Quiz Results

If you have a quiz for a lead magnet that categorises people at the end then not only can you use that information to send an automated email sequence as soon as they’ve finished the quiz, but you can use those categories to segment future emails.

 

6. Lead Magnet 

If you’ve got lead magnets, or freebies, set up for your business then you can make sure that you tag subscribes based on the lead magnets they download. In the first instance this will allow you to send an automated email sequence following the download of the lead magnet. However, you can also use that segment in the future.

 

7. Website behaviour

Depending on your tech set up you might be able to segment your email subscribers based on actions they take on your website. For example, you could tag people who have visited a certain page and put them into a segment you can send further emails to at a later date.

 

KARTRA – THE EMAIL MARKETING TOOL I USE, SWEAR BY AND RECOMMEND! I use Kartra for my email marketing and absolutely love it. The tagging function makes it super easy to set up segments and because it is a one-stop-shop I’m able to easily gather data around sales, website behaviour, calls booked , lead magnets downloaded , webinars attended and so much more! And because it is a one-stop-shop it makes it super easy to scale your online business. I’ve written more about how Kartra can help you scale your online business here.  And you can try Kartra for free for 14-days by clicking here.

 

8. Email Inactivity 

A bigger email list isn’t the ultimate goal in business. You want a big, and engaged, email list. To help keep your email list healthy you can segment your email list based on activity. For those who haven’t been engaged in a while you could then send a re-engagement email campaign

You can find out more about creating a re-engagement email marketing campaign here.

9. Birthday

Want to send your email subscribers something nice for their birthday? If so, you’ll need to know when it is. This is a segmentation strategy that is often used by restaurants, but it can be used in many industries.

10. Interests

If your business covers a lot of topics then it might be worth finding out your subscribers interests and then sending emails based on that. This can often be done stating clearly on your sign up form ‘what would you like to hear about?’.

11. Email activity – clicks 

If you are directing people to click from your emails to visit sales pages, check out long-form content or fill in an application form then tagging those actions will help you create great segments.

12. Email engagement – click-through rate 

Whereas in the last example you are specifically tracking what link they clicked now you are looking at their engagement on a more general basis. If someone is often clicking the link in your emails then you can bet that they are finding your content valuable or are very interested in working with you.

 

13.  Abandoned Cart

Technically this is a website behaviour but given it’s ability to generate extra income for your business I felt it deserved it’s own category. People get distracted. They go to find their debit or credit card, someone calls them, their mind remembers something they were meant to do – and whatever they had in basket to buy from your business is a distant memory.

That’s where the abandoned cart email comes in. Send that person an email reminding them of what was in their cart and ask if they’d still like to buy it.

 

14. Didn’t buy

Not everyone who visits a sales page is going to buy, but by creating a segment of subscribers who visit a sales page, but don’t buy you’ll help the long-term success of your business. You can follow up and find out why someone didn’t buy. This type of market research could help inform what you need to include in your marketing in the future, how you can change yoru current offerings or even create a new offer entirely.

 

15. Buyer Satisfaction Level

Are you currently asking clients or customers “On a scale of 0-10, how likely is it that you’d recommend is to a friend or colleague?”. Knowing who was very happy with your business and would be happy to recommend is great to know if you have, or decide in the future, to set up a referral or affiliate scheme.

16. Industry

This one is predominantly for B2B businesses. If you work with a wide range of businesses then segmenting via industry can be helpful. It gives you the option to do industry-specific email campaigns in the future, but can also allow you to make a small change by having a dynamic content block where the testimonials included is from someone in the same industry.

17. Premium buyers

In business there is a buyer for every price point and there will also be some people who choose the premium or VIP option. By tracking who has bought those premium options in the past you can track those people with your new premium options

18. VIPs

Every business will have a different criteria for a VIP. It could be someone with great email engagement, someone who buys a lot, someone who refers a lot or someone who buys the VIP options. The point is who are the people that you want to treat special and have you got a segment setup so you can easily do that?

 

That’s it. You now know 15+ ways to segment your emails subscribers.

 

There is so much more to email marketing than setting a newsletter to your whole mailing list. By creating an email segmentation plan and doing the necessary set up in your email service provider you can ensure you are building email segments that will allow you to send targeted emails that keep your subscribers happy and generate more sales for your business.

 

In the comments, I’d love to know what segmentation ideas you liked and are going to use in your business.

 

WANT TO GROW A THRIVING FINANCIAL SERVICES BUSINESS?  As the owner of a financial services business, there is a lot you need to consider and juggle in order to build a thriving business. I have no doubt that from a financial perspective you are confident about running a profitable business, but business is more than just the financials. You need to be offering the right services, at the right price and have the right marketing and sales process. I’m a Chartered Marketer that specialises in supporting financial services businesses to market and build businesses they love, that supports their long-term financial wealth, and that change the lives of their clients and the world as a whole. If you are looking for one-to-one personalised strategy, training and accountability then my 1:1 business and marketing mentoring programme click here And to discuss your precise needs book a free, no-obligation, introduction call to discuss your business here.