Email Segmentation

Email segmentation is a mailing list division based on similarities to provide the recipients with the most valuable information and proposals at the most appropriate time.

SendPulse provides all the necessary tools to make your email list segmentation as seamless as possible.

Segmentation is a highly-performing set of tools, which turns the production of email marketing campaigns into a more specific and logical process. The main reasons to implement email segmentation are:

• to maintain database and mailing lists in particular healthy;
• to create a foundation for forming a humane and non-robotic style of communication;
• to be able to add personalized value to a considerable number of different people at once.

Let’s now look through the reasons why email segmentation is so important in email marketing strategy.

1. Prompts to learn more about the clients. To succeed with segmentation, you need to know the people you want to converse with. Segmenting mailing lists will help clarify the aims of email marketing campaigns. It is more convenient to address your goals towards relevant groups of people, rather than try to blanket all of them with a one-size-fits-all message.
2. Motivates to maintain a robust email database. To set up email segmentation, you need to put the contacts in order and get rid of those subscribers, who don’t show any signs of activity. Without segmentation, your database will become a mess, especially when you have thousands of contacts.
3. Improves efficiency. Segmented mailing lists make email marketing campaigns better targeted and compelling. Segmentation significantly increases open rates and click-through rates, in comparison to non-segmented campaigns.
4. Сonsolidates email reputation. Emails containing targeted and valuable information found more natural engagement from your audience. Recipients like having high-quality content in their inboxes. They trust and rely on those who provide them this content and look forward to receiving more.
5. Lays a foundation for good and effective communication. Email segmentation results in a pleasant experience for the clients. It is a fundamental practice that builds up less robotic and humane relationships with people.

Subscription forms with optional fields

The creation of the mailing list foregoes the segmentation. New subscribers are usually gathered from the website or blog. In case the site visitors want to get notifications from a particular company, they have to fill in the subscription form. SendPulse offers customizable subscription forms with optional fields, which allow collecting additional information about subscribers for later use in segmentation.

Auto-variables to segment new subscribers automatically

Let’s say you’ve segmented your mailing list into some groups. But what to do with all new subscribers? You can optimize the process of segmentation by use auto-variables powered by SendPulse. Auto-variables are inbuilt in the subscription forms, so when a subscriber fills in he is male and lives in the USA, this contact is automatically tied up to segments “Men” and “US Customers,” for instance (you can name them as you like).

Segmentation for an email campaign

SendPulse provides you with a handful of user-friendly tools for the segmentation of email lists. With them, an email segmentation becomes a lot less sophisticated process. It is possible to send different content to all segments. For example, having shared data on a variable “Gender,” men and women will be getting separate emails. Follow the instructions to increase open rates and click-through rates.

Segmentation based on behavior

There are some smarter ways to segment an email list. The tone of the emails may vary, drawing on the subscribers’ reaction to the previous emails. If several people opened emails but didn’t click, perhaps the email didn’t correspond to their expectations, or CTA was weak.

Pre-defined segmentation

This tool is intended to use statistic information to advantage. You can use different variables (age, gender, etc.) in your subscription forms. This tool will transfer these variables from subscription form to a mailing list into relevant segments (age, gender, etc.). To make a long story short, the new subscribers will be automatically segmented, with the usage of pre-defined segmentation.

1. Figure out the segmentation which fits you. After you gathered your audience, try to analyze it and decide what will be the best way to segment it. It depends on your business. For instance, if you sell healthy food, you’d drive segmentation for vegans, vegetarians, people with health problems, athletes, etc.
2. Create a survey or a quiz. If you didn’t know about segmentation from the very beginning, it’s still possible to learn more about your contacts. Tell your audience you created a quiz or a survey to improve the quality and personalization level of emails you send them. Many will be excited to help! On the other hand, it is a great chance to add more trust in the relationships with your contacts.
3. Divide according to lifecycle stages. The lifecycle stage depends on the place of the contacts in a funnel. There are three lifecycle stages: subscribers, leads, and customers. All of them deserve to receive different messages, according to what actions you expect them to take.
4. Define buyer persona segments. Just try to imagine your customers’ psychological portraits. You can divide your audience into groups based on their preferences, lifestyle, habits, and beliefs. When you defined 3-5 types, you can even ask your contacts which persona they bare the strongest resemblance to in a quiz.
5. Pay attention to geographical segments. With email segmentation by a geographical principle, you can send different emails to people from various countries. Also, this segmentation type enables you to submit your email at the right time, bearing in mind that customers may live in different time zones.
6. Use segments based on the amount spent. Beneficial email segmentation is built upon the amount of money your consumers spent on your brand. Divide the active part of your audience on VIPs, sales shoppers, and brand shoppers. Think about what kind of content is the most preferable for each customer and create relevant emails.
7. Mind the time since the last purchase. You can also divide your active contacts into frequent buyers and one-time customers. You need to stir up the interest of regular buyers and propose those who bought only once and encouraging discounts on the similar products they liked before.
8. Maintain a healthy database. Not all of your contacts are looking forward to communicating with you for some reason. So you need to clean your mailing list from passive subscribers. The database naturally decays in 22.5%, according to HubSpot Academy.

Email Segmentation Examples

There are some classical variables, according to which companies usually segment their mailing lists — age, gender, and country. Check out how to segment a mailing list based on categories of Gender and Country in three steps:

Create a variable

Open the mailing list, which you need to segment.

Create segments

Create as many segments as you need to divide the mailing list into. For instance, there are two segments in the category "gender."

Launch a campaign

When you know the nature of your audience, you can launch a campaign and personalize emails relying on a required variable.

Last Updated: 22.03.2023