There are tons of marketing methods nowadays, ranging from direct mail marketing to social media marketing and beyond. Regardless of how many new and innovative methods there are to market your business, email marketing has still proven to be the most effective of them all.
That is, if you know how to make the most of your email marketing campaigns.
If you’re not using email list segmentation, you’re probably wasting time, effort, and possibly even money. Plus, you’re missing out on opportunities to give your consumers exactly what they’re looking for.
Read on to learn more about email list segmentation and become a master of smart marketing today.
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What Is Email List Segmentation?
As you grow your business, you (hopefully) grow your email list. There are tons of ways to encourage customers to give your their email address, whether that’s by offering special deals via email or promising the latest news to email subscribers, first.
The great thing about your email list is that everyone on it has some connection to your business, already. They’ve likely already purchased your products or services, or at the very least, they’ve considered doing so.
However, the similarities between every single one of your email subscribers stop there. After that, you’ve got tons of different people with different backgrounds, different interests, and therefore different needs.
Email list segmentation is the best way to account for those differences. It is the process of breaking up your email list by a set of specific demographics. This gives you a better idea of who you’re talking to and what they want to hear.
Why Is Email List Segmentation Important?
Okay, so let’s take a closer look at that “what they want to hear” part. Why is it so useful to you to practice email list segmentation?
Your customers want different things from you. They need different things from you. When you’re sending them emails, you want to make sure that you’re showing them, as individuals, that you understand their needs and can meet them.
Let’s look at an example. Say your company offers both office supplies and school supplies. Now let’s say that you’re putting together a back-to-school marketing campaign and you want parents and teachers to take advantage of those deals.
Your customers who come to you for office supplies but don’t have children don’t need to hear about your school supply sale. In fact, they’re likely to see the mention of school supplies and send your email straight to the trash–or worse, to spam.
Not only does reaching the right demographic with the right message increase your sales conversions but it also protects your future campaigns. When you’re sending people emails they don’t care about, you’re running the risk that they’ll unsubscribe or mark all of your emails as “junk.” Then, you’re not reaching them at all.
What Do You Need to Start Segmenting Your Email List?
What tools do you need to become a smart email marketer? We’re glad you asked.
First and foremost, you need data from your email subscribers. You may have collected some of that on your own by asking subscribers to share things like gender, age range, and mailing address. You can also enlist the help of email marketing apps that will collect further data to build out your subscriber profiles.
Then, you need to use a mailing service that works well with email list segmentation. Services like MailChimp do the trick if you don’t want to take on a ton of manual data entry on your own.
Next, you need to decide how to start segmenting your email list, which we’ll discuss in further detail below.
As a bonus tip, we recommend working with companies that can help you master the nuanced art of marketing. For example, you may not know email etiquette PR people are expected to use, but someone else does. Segmenting your email list is the first half of the battle; the rest comes down to quality content.
How Can You Start Breaking Down Your Email List By Demographics?
So, time for the biggest question of the hour: how do you break down your email list? What demographic lines should you use?
How you break down your email list will come down to the specific needs your business can fulfill. To help you get a better understanding of how this can work, let’s look at some demographics businesses often consider:
- The basics: age range, gender, religion, race, income, and ethnicity
- Parental status
- Marital status
- Living status: renter, homeowner, or owner of multiple properties (which often aligns with income)
- Geographical location (particularly useful for businesses with multiple locations or high revenue from online sales)
If your business caters to more unique or niche interests, you can even break down your email list based on these interests. For example, if you sell sports apparel, there are a few ways that you could segment your email list. You might break it down by sport of interest (ie baseball or football) or team of interest.
Many companies segment their email list in multiple ways, placing some subscribers on multiple lists. After all, people are complicated and their needs and interests vary!
Become a Smart Marketer Today With Email List Segmentation
Email marketing campaigns still produce some of the best conversion rates of all marketing campaigns. However, if you’re not practicing email list segmentation, you’re not going to hit those high numbers. Start segmenting your email list and become a smart marketer today.
Looking for more ways to boost your marketing skills and broaden your reach? Take a look at our marketing content for guides, advice, and industry trends that are useful for all businesses, no matter your niche or size.