15 Email Tips to Rule the (Marketing) World

If you're new to email marketing, you may be unfamiliar with the need for segmenting your email list. According to the UK DMA, "Segmented and targeted emails generate 58 percent of all [email marketing] revenue." (Opens as a PDF) Targeted campaigns save a lot of resources and generate better response from a target audience. There are quite a few ways of segmenting your email list and this also includes the good, old segmentation processes based on gender, age and buying preferences. To get you started on a more effective email campaign, these additional segmentation processes will help you carve out a more targeted emailing list. Every customer database needs to be organized and segmented to make email marketing campaigns successful. Email Marketing Segment: Location If you're a local store with an online presence or a hotel chain or a transport business, you may want to take extra interest in creating location-based mailing lists. Why would you waste your resources in sending in-store offers to people outside of your service zone? To optimize your resource utilization, keep your email list geographically segmented, or you may end up trying to sell an air conditioner to an Eskimo. You should also keep location in mind while designing holiday emails. While some regions of the country are more likely to celebrate Christmas, others are more likely to celebrate Hanukkah. Email Marketing Segment: Gender What is the point of marketing shaving kits to women only? There are some products, like lingerie, grooming kits and cosmetics that need to be targeted to audiences based on gender. If you have a wide range of multiple products, asking your database administrator to segment your email database based on gender is probably a good idea. This gives your mailers more focus, and helps you promote your services more objectively. Email Marketing Segment: Industry If you are a B2B website, then you should segregate your target addresses based on their industry type. Your email list possibly contains a milieu of different job functions, including developers, consultants, marketers, officers, customer service agents and accountants. Each one will have different interest and that calls for segmentation based on industry and job responsibility. Increasing specificity of your target audience on the database itself will help your campaign achieve a better ROI. Email Marketing Segment: Buying Interest Segmenting your customer database on the basis of purchase interest is a lot easier when a part of your list has purchased from you before. You can identify your selling opportunities by offering promotional offers and additional services to them via mail. For example, if your buyer has shown an interest in buying baby cribs and baby products, there is less of a chance that he/she will also be interested in college supplies at the moment. It will be smarter to offer related maternity products to this person! A buyer’s recent purchase history is a great way to figure out what he/she may be looking for in the near future. Email Marketing Segment: Buying Habits You can also segment your list based on the frequency of purchases. If you can make use of reward points and other purchase incentives, you can increase the shopping frequency of your buyers. You can introduce loyalty programs for your frequent buyers via emails to attract more potential buyers. Email Marketing Segment: Content Management If you have maintained an exclusive blog, you may have noticed how some people are interested in particular topics only. While some are interested in Spring-Summer trends in clothes, others may be interested in kitchen hacks to save time. This is one segmentation that can boost your sales and marketing ROI. Categorize your email list by the individual interest of your registered members. It becomes easier if you follow a format like StumbleUpon, where your target audience can fill out a form based on vested interest during registration. Email Marketing Segment: Interest Level It is important to understand that just because a buyer has showed interest in a product once does not mean he actually likes it. For example, if you are holding a webinar, you can make list of all attendees who dropped out in the first 10 minutes and the ones who stayed beyond 30 minutes. You can engage the latter in middle of the funnel offers that will egg them along the sales funnel. The ones who dropped out by 10 minutes can receive surveys and top of the funnel offers to gauge the reasons for their lack of interest. Email Marketing Segment: Change in Buying Behavior This is a very good indicator of your customers’ levels of varying interest in your company, website and products. There may be offers and leads that decrease the purchasing frequency, and there are few that always bring about good conversion levels. Therefore, you need to segment your buyers’ contacts as per their responses and behavior cycles on your mailing list, as well. Email Marketing Segment: Email Type An email address can speak oodles about your customer. If most of your clients have corporate email addresses, you may want to invest in good email design. These B2B clients prefer customized emails with a touch of professionalism. So go for responsive, detailed email designs that bear the signature of your business. Email Marketing Segment: Satisfaction Index Net Promoter Score is a very popular way of determining how popular you are with your customers. You can segment your email list based on how happy your customer is with your niche services. Someone with a high NPS score represents a greater opportunity of gathering reviews, referrals and upsells. Their mailers need to be completely different from those on the top of the funnel with lower satisfaction scores. Email Marketing Segment: Customers Without Reviews There are a few customers who have high NPS scores, but they shy away from giving reviews. You need to create a list that has all of the contacts of those who have not yet reviewed your business. If they follow you on Twitter, Facebook and Yelp, that is amazing! You just need to set up an online email campaign that will urge them to go ahead and express their love for you publicly! Email Marketing Segment: In-store Visitors vs. Web-store Visitors If you have a brick-and-mortar showroom that caters to exclusive customers without an online presence, then you need to give them an incentive to check them out online. Gather their email address where you can send offers and promotions for exclusive online deals. You can do the same for your online patrons. Send amazing store-based offers to your online shoppers that will get them off of that couch and into your store! Email Marketing Segment: Shopping Cart Issues (Abandoned) E-commerce sites send out email reminders to those who have left their shopping carts before checking out. According to Bamyard Institute, 61 percent of shoppers abandon shopping carts due to extra costs, like shipping. The average noted shopping cart abandonment rate was around 69.23 percent in 2017. Therefore, if you run an e-commerce website, you must have an “abandoned shopping cart email campaign” ready. Email Marketing Segment: Event Entry Do you organize book signings, social events, music fests and conferences? Then you will absolutely need this email list segment. You can always reach out to potential customers who have shown an interest in your products. You can segment your email list based on event type, location, buying capacity, theme and interest for a more successful email campaign. Email campaigns that are targeted to specific audiences based on interest and buying capacity have a much higher ROI than random email marketing campaigns. Tailor Call-to-Action Buttons by Segment You can download these templates with clickable call to action buttons before customizing them and mailing them out to your target audience. These call to action buttons need to be different for different buyers. While some will be interested in registering with your website for promotional offers, others may be returning customers who would like a buy-one-get-one offer on clearance items. You can always tell what will work based on your CTR. Including terms like “Call Now,” “act now,” “buy here,” “limited period offer” and “discount” etc. have a catalytic effect on the recipients. Conclusion Email marketing is very effective if you can target your emails properly. The design, content and the language have to be given equal importance. If any one of the components is off-balance, you will have trouble earning respectable ROI on your email marketing campaign. It is understandable that what works for a 15-year old high school kid will not work for a 30-year old working woman. Therefore, your email list has to be segmented according to individual preference, buying habits and multiple other factors that directly determine the success level of your email campaigns.

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15 Email Tips to Rule the (Marketing) World

Sujain Thomas

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Sujain Thomas