Let’s cut to the chase. The reason why you’re failing at email marketing is that you’re neglecting these two very important things:
- Personalization
- Segmentation
..which are, by the way, two different things that just can’t go without the other.
The fact is, we live in an era where personalization is at great heights.
Every day, you see personalized search results; ads that are targeted to your personal preferences; blog content that answers your frequently asked questions, and; all sorts of recommended videos for you, your spouse, your kid, and your dog.
So, it does seem a bit strange when every now and then we still receive a generic email that looks like it was carelessly sent to a hundred thousand other recipients or an email newsletter that is not even personalized with our names. Yes?
Thus, it leaves us feeling perplexed and wondering, why do companies still fail at using proper segmentation and personalization in their email marketing strategies?
Let’s be clear. Personalization goes beyond including the recipient’s name in the subject line and email body.
We’re talking about creating customized content for carefully segmented lists. Marketers who segment their campaigns see up to a 760% increase in revenue.
In a nutshell, it’s better to send small, segmented email campaigns than blasting generic emails to large, untargeted contacts.
And just to prove that you will never run out of ways to personalize your content, here are some email list segmentation ideas you can apply in your email marketing strategy today.
But first, there are two types of data you can use to segment your list:
- Explicit data. These are information that are intentionally shared between a contact and a company. Think of that information that a user fills out on a landing page or a Contact Us form. Even if that info is gathered from somewhere like LinkedIn or Twitter, this is a type of data that a person has willingly shared with the community at large.
- Implicit data. These are information based on digital behavior such as browsing activity or transactional history. There’s much you can learn about users by tracking which emails they opened, what pages they viewed, which links clicked, what products they checked out, etc.
Take note that these segmentations can work by themselves or when combined with one or two other segments/triggers. Let’s dive into it!
Based on demographic data
Demographic data is an example of explicit data. When you have access to demographic data, use it to narrow down your list to the most basic level.
- Gender. Creating gender-specific campaigns lets you adjust your message accordingly. This is also great for consumer brands with wide product offerings across genders.
- Age. If your market covers a wide age range, segmenting by age group can help you communicate with them better.
- Marital Status. This one’s for companies that have different offerings or messaging for singles and married couples.
- Geography. Location-based brick-and-mortar businesses will benefit a lot from location-specific campaigns. You wouldn’t want to send out in-store promos or offers to out-of-towners, would you?
- Timezone. If your company is catering to a global market, it’s ideal that you consider your recipients’ time zones when sending campaigns. I.e., you might not want to send emails to EST and CST at the same time.
Based on profession or roles
Segmenting your campaigns based on professional or social roles is great when creating content that answers your prospects’ specific questions, addresses their needs, and helps them do their jobs better.
- Family or social roles. Hitting it close to home is always a good strategy. Create segments for mothers, fathers, grandparents, sons, and daughters, friends— it’s always a good idea to connect with your market on a human and relational level.
- Education level. Knowing how many degrees your contacts hold or their level of understanding about the subjects you write about lets you speak to them at the right level.
- Job function. If you’re a B2B company, you need to dig into your contacts’ job functions and responsibilities. Through this, you can communicate and address their specific requirements in a more intentional way.
- Seniority. Always remember that how you communicate with CEOs, executives, managers, and stakeholders is different from how you would interact with rank-and-file or support groups. Consider a list segmentation based on seniority.
- Salary. There are a lot of insights you can derive from salary brackets too, so if you do have access to this type of data, use it to your advantage.
Based on company profile
Every business is different. Some people on your contact list may come from various industries or might be the decision-makers in their respective companies. It’s best to align your message and offers based on their business.
- Industry. Your product or services might cover a wide range of industries: healthcare, finance, digital marketing, travel and hospitality, food and beverage, etc. Honing into specific sectors and creating niche-specific content will make your strategy and messaging more targeted.
- Organization type. In the same way, you might have offerings for various business types—B2B, B2C, SAAS, Non-Profit, etc.
- Marketing budget.B2B and SAAS organizations will find it useful to know what your prospect’s marketing budget is. Having this information will allow you to segment your list and qualify your leads.
Based on purchase activity
Product-based and ecommerce websites have access to countless implicit data—insights that can be derived from purchase activity and consumer behavior. Needless to say, automated and transactional emails work best when sent with proper segmentation and triggers. Here are some ideas:
- Past purchases. Has it been a while since the last purchase? Consider creating a promo to encourage them to purchase again. Did they purchase anything last week? Send them an email one week later to ask for a review.
- Purchase interests. Customers usually lean towards a specific set of interests. Use these insights to customize promos and campaigns.
- Buying frequency. Create a VIP list of your best, most engaged, most active customers; reward them for their loyalty, keep delighting them, and make them come back for more.
- Amount of purchase. Do specific customers spend more or less than others? Segmenting them in this manner allows you to create more targeted promos, up-sells, or discounts.
- Abandoned cart. Study shows that the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.57%. Make sure you have an automated abandon cart campaign set up based on this behavior.
Based on content consumption
Whatever business type or niche, creating informative content is a proven effective way to generate leads. Furthermore, knowing how your leads consume content will not only help you understand your prospects better but will also help you create more valuable content for them.
- Downloads. Creating list segmentations based on the customers’ eBook downloads will show you, in general, the topics or services your customers are particularly interested in.
- Frequently viewed pages. Viewing patterns may give you ideas on what specific service they’re looking for or are interested to learn more about.
- Topics of interest. If your website has a blog, create list segmentations based on articles or categories your leads frequently view. With this, you get to send them content that they’re actually interested in and that they’re most likely to read.
- Content format. Which contacts like reading your eBooks? Which ones seem to prefer the blog? Does anyone prefer video format? When you have a variety of content formats, it’s ideal that you segment your list and only send them the content they prefer.
- Content engagement. It’s one thing to know how your leads consume content, and another thing to know how they engage. Create segments for recipients who are actually interacting with your content–those who are signing up for your webinars, downloading eBooks, forwarding them, etc.
The best free email marketing services
Best free email marketing service for growing email marketing programs
Mailchimp
One of the most popular email marketing apps thanks to its friendly branding, Mailchimp is a great place to start your email marketing program if you’re planning to scale it quickly. The app includes a landing page builder, customer journey mapping, list segmentation, retargeting ads, and even A/B testing—all in its free plan.
An approachable editor that includes helpful tips and best practices along the way makes Mailchimp an accessible option for both new and experienced email marketers. For example, when setting up a subject line, a sidebar reminds you about recommended character length, emoji use in subject lines, and more.
Once you’re ready to move beyond what the free plan offers, Mailchimp makes scaling accessible with three different paid tiers. Plus, Mailchimp can handle email programs of any size: if you can afford to let it grow with you, you’ll never have to switch to another app.
Best free email marketing software for segmentation
HubSpot
HubSpot has everything you need under one roof. The email marketing features are well-rounded and offer a lot for free: up to 2,000 emails per month, over 100 lists, and reporting. When you’re ready to scale, you can add additional HubSpot tools for CRM, full marketing automation, customer service, sales, and more.
The email tool throws you into the editor as soon as signup is finished, so you can get moving quickly. For those new to HubSpot or email marketing more broadly, the next stop is the user guide, detailing everything you need to know to build beautiful, effective campaigns in HubSpot.
Included in your 105 lists are 100 static and 5 “active” lists, which include super quick options to segment, say, hard-bouncers or recipients who open but don’t click.
Best free email marketing software for advanced email marketers
MailerLite
MailerLite doesn’t offer pre-made templates for its free newsletter service, but the dynamic, pre-designed content blocks more than make up for the lack of templates. With blocks for highlighting multiple articles, videos, RSS lists, products, apps, events, and more, MailerLite helps experienced email marketers make quick work of building new campaigns and custom templates.
Your emails can include more than just text and images, too. There’s a countdown timer that dynamically shows the time remaining until you launch a product or before a sale is over. You can add product details, embed a video, pull in your most recent blog posts with a dynamically updating RSS block, and more. It’s a great way to send interactive emails instead of just digital letters.
Beyond email content, MailerLite also includes robust automation and audience segmentation features in the free plan. An intuitive builder makes quick work of mapping out automation workflows. You can create both persistent and one-time segments and view aggregate statistics by segment, too.
Best free email marketing tool for eCommerce businesses
Omnisend
Omnisend is the best free email marketing tool I found for eCommerce businesses. The free plan is fairly limited on subscribers and monthly sends, but it includes access to nearly every feature the platform offers—all of which are thoroughly built for eCommerce. Once you connect your online store to Omnisend, the (email marketing) world is your oyster.
The app offers a number of behavioral segmentation dimensions based on store activity and shopping behavior, as well as pre-defined customer segments like high-potential buyers, visitors to a particular product, and more.
Navigate to the automation section to browse a number of pre-built automation workflows organized by type (e.g., welcome series, cart abandonment) or goal (e.g., convert subscribers, cross-sell, build loyalty).
When you’re ready to design emails, head to the drag-and-drop editor, where you can start from a number of eCommerce-focused templates or quickly build your own templates with quick-add blocks for product listing, discounts, product recommendations, and more. Omnisend also supports SMS and push campaigns, in addition to email, with A/B testing features for all of the above.
Best email marketing tool for free email automation
Sendinblue
The more you use your email marketing tool, the more you’ll need to rely on automation. It’s hard to come across truly free marketing automation software, but Sendinblue offers a variety of templated automation flows, based on your goals. You can choose your workflow to improve engagement, increase traffic, grow revenue, or build relationships.
Even with this kind of advanced automation, you can get from account setup to actually editing emails in just a few clicks. Once you’re there, you can build your emails with dozens of pre-made templates and a drag-and-drop editor. Then, either send them as email newsletters or use Sendinblue’s automation workflows to send them on a schedule.
You can’t send as many emails at once as you can from other free email marketing tools, but you can manage more contacts and split them into focused lists. Sendinblue also lets you buy pre-paid credits to send more than your daily email limit.
Best free email marketing software with an affordable upgrade
Zoho Campaigns
Zoho Campaigns’ free plan isn’t as hyper-generous as it once was, but it’s still a great starting point you can scale from. You get 2,000 contacts, 6,000 sends per month, and 5 users. The free plan also offers robust audience segmentation and features for social and SMS campaigns.
The drag-and-drop editor works how you expect and includes support for dynamic content blocks. You can even personalize dynamic blocks based on your customer segments.
When it comes to automation, you’ll choose from autoresponders (one-email triggered sequences) or fully automated workflows. Both are available to build and map out on the free plan and include several workflow templates to help you build out automations faster. When you create a workflow, you can choose from templates for welcome and onboarding, nurture series, re-engagement, customer retention, eCommerce, and conditional workflows.
