Personalized Marketing with Email List Segmentation
Most marketing experts will tell you to build an email list. But what they don’t tell you is that your email list will not be as effective without proper segmentation.
What is Email List Segmentation?
Email list segmentation involves breaking your subscribers into smaller groups based on specific criteria so that you can send them more personalized and relevant emails.
Rather than blasting every email to your entire email list, segmentation lets you send certain emails only to those subscribers you think will be the most interested in that content, resulting in higher conversions.
Why Segment Your List?
Segmenting your list is proven to increase your email open rates, boost your click-through rates, and decrease your unsubscribe rates. That’s why smart marketers use segmentation to drastically improve the effectiveness of their email campaigns.
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Once you’ve “tagged” your subscribers into different segments, you’ll be able to send really powerful autoresponders—a series of emails that get sent out automatically based on certain conditions—that you can use to nurture your leads and make sales.
Segments make it so much easier to know what subject lines and messages to write that will entice the users to open and engage with your email campaigns.
There are many different ways to segment your list. Here are a few ways to get you started:
New subscribers: send new subscribers a welcome email or a welcome series.
Preferences: subscribers who want to hear about blog posts vs. those who only want sale notifications.
Interests: subscribers who like classical music vs. those who like pop.
Location: notify subscribers who live in a particular area.
Open rate: reward your more engaged subscribers with a special offer just for them.
Inactivity: remind subscribers who haven’t engaged for a while of the next step you want them to take.
Lead magnet: send targeted emails based on the topic of the lead magnet that they opted in for.
Shopping Cart Abandonment: remind subscribers who put items in their cart that they haven’t checked out yet.
There are many more ideas upon which you can base the segmentation of your list.
Improving Your Email Open Rates
This section is super important because even with all of the hard work you’ve done to get your email list and segment it, you won’t benefit from any of it unless your emails actually get opened.
There are several factors which play a role in whether or not your emails get opened. Let’s explore each of them.
1. Avoid Spam Filters
Probably the most obvious problem is when your email gets sent to the subscriber’s spam folder.
Here are some best practices to keep your emails from falling into spam folders:
- Send your email campaign from a good IP address. That is an IP address that hasn’t been used by someone else who has sent spam in the past.
- Send emails through verified domains.
- Keep your email template code clean.
- Use merge tags to personalize the “To:” field of your email campaign.
- Show subscribers how to whitelist your emails, and ask them to add you to their address book.
- Avoid excessive use of “salesy” language (these are spam trigger words like “buy”, “clearance”, “discount”, or “cash”).
- Don’t “bait-and-switch” by using deceptive subject lines.
- Includeyour location.
- Includean easy way for subscribers to opt-out of your emails.
2. Remove Inactive Subscribers to Keep Your List Fresh
It’s important to email your subscribers on a consistent basis, so your list doesn’t go stale. Even then, over time, email subscribers still go stale.
Some people may have changed email accounts, or maybe they just aren’t interested in your brand anymore.
So to keep your list fresh and filled with engaged subscribers, it’s a good idea to periodically remove inactive subscribers. An inactive subscriber could be anyone who has not engaged with any email in the past 6 months or more. We personally update our list every 3 months to ensure they are clean.
But before you get rid of them, try sending one more email campaign to try to re-engage your inactive subscribers. For example, you can send a last-ditch-effort email to your inactive subscribers that says, “Do I bore you?” and asks if they still want to stay subscribed. Some people will respond, but all others get purged.
Another way to keep your list fresh is by checking in with your subscribers every once in a while to ask if they would like to update their information and their preferences. This way, they are reminded that they can take control of how they want to engage with you.
3. Perfect Your Timing
Timing can have a huge effect on whether or not your subscribers open and click your emails, so think carefully about what time and day you send your emails out.
You won’t be able to figure out the perfect time immediately but perform some A/B tests to identify which time frames seem to do best and explore those in future campaigns.
But you may be wondering, has anyone else already done some tests that you can benefit from?
Well, Mailchimp’s data says that, in general, the best time of the week to send emails is on weekdays versus weekends. But, no single day won hands down.
Day of Week Send Time
They also found that, in general, the optimal time of day to send emails is at 10 AM in the recipients’ own time zone.
Time of Day to Send Emails
However, when they looked deeper, they discovered that the type of content being sent had a significant effect on the peak time, as well as the location, age, and occupation of the recipient.
The bottom line on email send time is this: imagine a day in the life of your particular audience. What are they doing in the morning, afternoon, and evening? What does their workday look like? How late do they stay up at night? How early do they rise in the morning?
All of these questions will help you decide on the best time to send your emails.
4. Make Your Subject Line Stand Out
When it comes to email open and click rates, your subject lines are everything. Your job is to make your subject lines stand out.
Here are some tips for crafting creative subject lines:
Entice curiosity, but don’t be too clever. You want to make them curious enough to open and click, but without being so cryptic that the subscriber hasn’t a clue as to what you’re talking about.
Include numbers. There is something about numbers that draw the eye.
Use a friendly and conversational tone.
Speak in the language and style that your subscribers use themselves, especially when talking with their friends.
5. Write to Just One Person
When you draft your subject line and message content, it’s natural to think of the thousands of people who are about to receive it.
However, it’s far more effective to write as if speaking to an individual person, with a personal subject line and a personalized message.
To write this way, you’ll have to really know your buyer persona. You need to understand their problems, their desires, their values, their likes, and their dislikes.
If you are having trouble with this, send out an email survey asking for a quick five-minute chat.
6. Write Like a Friend
When writing your emails, put your corporate hat to the side and write like a friend. This is the only way to really appeal to your subscribers and get them to open and click your emails.
For example, a corporate phrase like, “We’re offering savings to our customers!” comes off as distant and stuffy.
A more friendly alternative could be something like, “you’ve gotta check out this deal…”
That makes the email seem a whole lot more personal and makes it less likely that your recipients will simply delete your message and move on.
Remember: in this age of information, everyone is looking for a reason to ignore your emails. They aren’t looking for a reason to read them. But if you appeal to them on a personal level, you’ll stand a better chance of getting that email opened.
7. Write Amazing Content, Every Time
You may be thinking that when a subscriber opens your email, you’ve essentially won the battle. However, the actual content of your email also plays an important role in your open rate.
Here’s why: if your subscribers are happy with your content, they are more likely to open your emails in the future. They may even begin to eagerly anticipate your emails. Conversely, if a subscriber is displeased with what they got in your email, they probably aren’t going to open your emails again, and they may even unsubscribe.
So how do you make sure your subscribers are happy with your email content? Simple: make it awesome.
Related post: Get The Active Email Database Of High Networth Individuals In Nigeria With Free Bulk Email Sending Tool
9. Optimize for Mobile
Mobile email accounts for 67% of all email opens, depending on your target audience, product, and email type. You simply can’t afford to ignore your mobile users, you have to appeal to them.
Make sure your email is responsive with easily loadable media. Also consider the fact that mobile screens are smaller, so long subject lines may get cut off on mobile devices.
Here are some more tips for appealing to mobile users:
Keep the formatting simple (single-column), under 600px wide.
Use a larger font. Small fonts are difficult to read on mobile.
Don’t assume images are being displayed (Android turns images off by default). Make sure it looks good without them.
Use smaller images to reduce load time.
Use a large call-to-action button. Larger buttons are easier to tap with a thumb.
Don’t place two links next to, or on top of one another. That way, the user won’t tap the wrong one by accident.
All of these tips can help any campaign get better open rates, but don’t get discouraged if you don’t see a turnaround right away.
Email marketing is an art and science, so give yourself some wiggle room to experiment and find what tactics work best for your business and your subscribers.
If you need more help with increasing your email open rates,
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