Email Marketing Segmentation: 4 Ways To Divide Your List
Unless you have a very small list or work in a very niche market, chances are your subscribers fall into different categories They may include everyone from people who never open your emails to those who actually click on links and make purchases. But to truly maximize the effectiveness of your email campaign, you'll need to segment your list and target each portion appropriately. Here are 4 types of list segments that you'll need to increase your conversion rate, and a few tips to get them to move on your call to action:
List 1: The responders
If you're using any sort of analytics software, you'll know who opened your email, clicked on a link and went back to your site to make a purchase or simply look around. Start by adding these people to a separate list. These are your responders. Since they open your emails and show obvious interest in your product, they should be treated like gold. Cater to their needs by sending them offers based on their product tastes. Give them sneak previews and exclusive discounts rewarding them for their loyalty. Ultimately you want to keep their interest up so they continue to buy from you or look for products to spend their money on. And ideally, this list is the one you want most of your subscribers to land on.
List 2: The new subscribers
The people who signed up for your newsletter within the last email cycle or so should make up their very own list. Why? Because unlike those on your responders list, you probably don't have enough data to know what your new subscribers are really looking for. Use special offers targeting new subscribers to grab interest. Make it obvious in your emails that you're offering these subscribers special discounts because they're new, and track their reaction to these offers accordingly. While not every subscriber will react to your special offers, some will give you enough data to eventually move them to your responder segment. Also, don't forget to set parameters over what you'll consider a “new” subscriber. The last thing you want is to send out appealing emails with exclusive new-subscriber discounts to people who have been on your list for a long-ish amount of time. At some point you'll need to add them to another list segment.
List 3: The openers
If they register as an open but fail to do anything beyond that like click on a link, add them to your list of openers. Remember: even those people who register as an open in your reports may not be opening your email at all but simply viewing it in their preview pane as they make their way down their list of emails. For that reason, they should be in their own category of people who actually see your email but don't do anything about it. The key to managing this list is to find a way to add them to your list of responders. Because there's so much potential here, you'll need to be creative in what you put in front of them. Try different things. Eventually some of these openers will see something intriguing and click on a link in your email, which gives you license to move them to your responders list. While some people may never move beyond this list, some will. Once that happens, it's easier for you to target them in future emails because at least you know what they're interested in.
List 4: The deadbeats
There are dozens of reasons why a person may never open an email from you, which we won't go into here. But these subscribers belong in their own category. Now, it might seem like you'll need to read their minds to figure out what they want. They've given you no info by not opening your emails at all. However, you can try different things to try to move them to another list,. To be blunt, you might need to throw lots of things at the wall and see what sticks. In fact, you can send the same emails you send to your openers to try to get these deadbeats to move to another list segment. There's no real need to come up with an elaborate, separate plan to get these subscribers to open your emails. Chances are that if these subscribers haven't open any of your emails for months and months. If for some reason they never open your emails for a long amount of time and it's just too much effort/expense to keep them on your list, you can always stop sending them emails after a set amount of time, but only after you send them an email asking them to re-confirm your subscription. If they fail to click re-confirm their interest in this email, it's safe to say you can drop them with no real consequence.
