5 Ideas for Segmenting Your Email List and Improving CTRs

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5 Ideas for Segmenting Your Email List and Improving CTRs

With all the emails that flood into inboxes, a generic email can easily get lost. Think about the emails you pass over in your inbox. They weren’t written specifically for you; they were written for a mass audience. But then think about the emails that do catch your eye. You want to open these emails and click-through to an offer because it matters to you. It may not matter to everyone, but that email spoke directly to you and won your business because of it.

Those generic, mass emails sent to an entire email list don’t always have the highest click-through rates (CTRs). On the other hand, one study showed that email campaigns with segmented lists see 64.78% higher CTRs than brands that don’t segment their email lists. Segmented lists also help decrease the number of people who unsubscribe by 8.98%.

Segmenting Email Lists

What does segmenting email lists look like? It’s a way to target certain people or demographics in your vast audience pool and give them a message that’s more tailored to their needs and wants. In other words, it’s a process of dividing your email list. Once your list is divided, you can begin to send personalized messages that matter to each group rather than just generic messages to a broader audience.

If you have a goal to increase CTRs and to have a more successful email campaign, it’s time to segment your email lists. Try out these email segmentation ideas to begin:

• General Demographics

A good place to start segmenting email lists is with common demographics such as age, location, and gender. When it comes to age, people at different stages of life will respond differently to certain messages. Subscribers in their mid-30s will have different questions and concerns than subscribers in their late 50s. Segment your list between several different age groups to write more relevant messages for what they are going through at this time.

Location matters, too, especially if you’re a local service-based business. Reach out to customers in a city you want to target. Or let customers know about a nearby attraction or event you may be hosting.

For retailers, segmenting lists based on gender is also hugely important. What women want and what men want when they shop is often vastly different. Tailor your emails to their tastes, and you should see greater CTRs.

• Buying Process

A customer who has already bought from you doesn’t need the same promotional emails as a potential lead. Wherever each member of your audience is at in the buying process, from leads to new customers to loyal returning customers, make your emails speak to them.

Send a welcome email when they first buy or subscribe. Or give special discounts to loyal customers on their birthdays to show how you appreciate them. Just make sure that you keep track of where each subscriber is at in the sales funnel, placing them in different groups as they progress.

• Behavior-Based

It’s also good to send particular recommendations via email depending on how subscribers previously acted on your website. For instance, one customer may have spent a long time on a certain product page, added it to their cart, but then abandoned the cart at checkout. Sending them an email about their abandoned cart or recommending similar items to the one they showed interest in may be what they need to convert.

You may also want to segment emails based on how customers engaged with past emails. For customers whose open rates are decreasing, you could send an email inviting them back. Or reward customers who open up each of your emails with new offers and deals.

• Frequency Preferences

One reason that customers unsubscribe from emails is due to the high frequency being sent. But some of your customers may prefer being in the know and getting updates and offers often.

Ask customers what they prefer to see from your emails and how often they would like to get them. If they only want to get special offers once a month, create a list for these customers! Or if they’re happy receiving weekly updates, another group can be created for such customers.

• Device Used

Emails read on mobile devices should be formatted differently than emails read mainly on desktops. Because of smaller screen sizes on mobile devices, don’t crowd emails with lots of small, hard-to-read text. Check that you have responsive emails that will adjust automatically to fit a smaller screen.

Or create separate emails altogether. Segment your email list based on what devices your customers normally read your emails with. This way, you can create different emails designed specifically for either desktop or mobile users.

More Segmentation, More Relevance, More Conversions

What makes email segmentation so powerful is how relevant it makes your messages. A local mother who’s just started shopping with you will respond differently than a business owner who lives further away but has been in business with you for some time. No customer is the same as another. Segment your email lists to make a more relevant message and that’s when you’ll start seeing more conversions and click-throughs.

These ideas for how to segment your email list are just a place to start. Be creative and find other ways that you can use to make your emails more relevant to subscribers. Get help from Skoshe to fine-tune your email and other digital marketing strategies for the results you want.

What ideas for email segmentation will you start using?