Email Segmentation: How to Find the Right Recipients for Every Email

It happens all too often that emails, carefully crafted as they may be, are not read by the recipients, let alone arrive at all. Wouldn't it be ideal if you could filter out exactly the people from among all addresses for the appropriate email campaign who, for example, live in urban areas, cycle to work and are looking for travel routes through Asia online?

By segmenting the emails, you will get the simplest option to significantly improve the performance of your B2B and D2C campaigns in E-Mail Marketing . We'll tell you exactly how you can best approach it and what exactly is involved in email segmentation in today's post.

What is email segmentation?

Segmenting your own mailing list means dividing the entire list into different groups, called segments, in order to reach certain target groups. An email segment consists of one or more filters, such as the contact activity (e.g. "last opened before XY days") or the contact properties (age, place of residence, date of joining, etc.). These filters can also be combined with each other in order to specifically isolate a certain group of people for a campaign.

This will provide you with the ability to send targeted information to all subscribers via Newsletter Marketing. However, segmentation should not be confused with the personalization of an email. The latter involves dynamic adjustments within the email, while email segmentation is much more of a preselection of the contact list and has nothing to do with the content of the email.

Why is segmentation important in email marketing, and what is the goal behind it?

Once you've established specific characteristics, you can find particular recipients in your mailing list and send emails directly to them. This way, content is played out exactly to the people who are interested in it and thus benefits from better engagement.

The better you can segment your emails, the more you reduce the likelihood that your campaigns will appeal to people who are not interested in the content you are sharing. Through targeted segmentation, it is possible to send customer-specific offers and, in return, benefit from a higher open rate and higher click rates, as well as increased sales.

How does email segmentation work and how is it done?

The principle is: there is a suitable recipient for every email. They just need to be found. In order to be able to segment your email list, personal information about the recipients is therefore required. Here, a distinction is made between 4 different types of customer data:

• Demographic characteristics such as name, age, gender, place of residence, marital status, etc.
• Socio-economic features such as profession, income, education, etc.
• Psychographic features such as desires, lifestyle, values, etc.
• Purchase or user behavior

The most commonly used characteristics, which are used for segmentation in CRM, are the demographic characteristics and user behavior. The more often customers buy, the more information is usually available about them. In addition, you can obtain personal data using the following methods:

Automatically via the shop system

Companies with online shops usually have a shop system. This allows them to legally obtain data such as name, age, place of residence, products and purchase history of the customers.

Via form for newsletter registration

If there are no historical shop data, special forms can be used to request further data. This is possible already during the newsletter registration on the shop page. But also afterwards data can be determined, such as in competitions or surveys.

Using email statistics

The email statistics in the software used provide further personal data. For example, it can be determined whether the email address is still current, whether the recipients are still interested (open rate) and whether the content of the emails is still relevant for the customers (click rate).

However, always comply with the data protection laws when you collect customer data. Violation of these laws can result in expensive fines.

Examples of successful email segmentation

In general, it can be said that the subscribers can be sorted according to their previous activity, their properties, interests and requirements by email segmentation. The more precise the categorization into categories, the more targeted marketing measures can be played out to satisfy the wishes of the customers. The following criteria can help you to segment your marketing:

Filter by demographic characteristics:

• Age: Different products and offers from your shop may appeal to different age groups. Certain outfit variants for men, for example, appeal more to a younger target group of up to 30 years. Conversely, women over 40 may be more interested in a new, more expensive scent than women in their mid-20s.
• Gender-specific characteristics: Speaking of perfume... especially in the field of cosmetics, it may make sense to segment by gender, if the company differentiates between masculine and feminine products.
• Geographic characteristics/ place of residence: By segmenting in email marketing, products can be specifically tailored to the region of the customers and even to certain seasons. Umbrellas and rain jackets may be needed more often in the north, a dirndl is especially suitable in the Bavaria region. Promoting a pop-up store in Leipzig is of more interest to people who live in Saxony than to people from Stuttgart.

Filter by socio-economic characteristics

• Occupation: People who work in an office are more likely to specifically look for office clothes than people who have work clothes provided in their job.

Filter by psychographic characteristics

• Interests: If certain interests and preferences are already asked for in the registration form, you can more specifically adapt information to the needs of the customers.
• Motivation: Different status of customers like member or VIP customers as opposed to "normal" subscribers can lead to exclusive offers or presales. This is then another motivation to definitely become a member in your shop.
• Views: Based on product ratings, you can play out content and products that match the interests of your subscribers.

Filter by purchase and user behavior

• Interaction: Depending on how often your subscribers click the newsletters, you can play them more frequently, if they show more interest than other customers.
• Time of registration: New customers or already active customers can be bundled here to send special newsletter actions to the respective groups, such as discounts for new customers.
• Purchased product: Segmenting by a certain product can be helpful in sending cross-selling mails. Specific products can be offered that match the product already purchased and therefore should definitely be bought by the customers.
• Number of purchases: Customers who have been subscribers for a long time but have never made a purchase can possibly be convinced to make a purchase through discounts.

3 tips for your successful email segmentation

Now that you have learned about possible segments for dividing your customers, here are some tips on how to successfully implement email segmentation for your next campaign in email marketing:

Pay attention to the division of the segments so that they are not too similar. The combination of different characteristics may seem endless. However, the trick is not to create too many segments. If you segment too much, it can quickly happen that the ROI in the end is very low, but the effort you invested is extremely high. It's best to plan exactly which target group you want to reach before you create an email campaign. This way, you always keep an overview.

The most important segmentation criterion is the purchasing behavior of the subscribers. Therefore, this segment should always have top priority. Not every apparent characteristic of your customers is a sure segment for a targeted email campaign.

Example: A father buys clothes for his teenage daughter in an online shop, as she is not yet authorized to do so herself. If he now falls into the group of men according to the email segmentation, he would therefore only receive newsletters that do not contain products relevant to him, since he does not wear the clothes himself. Through his purchasing behavior, however, it is clear where his priorities lie. You should therefore prioritize the factor of buying behavior more than other segments.

Manage all target groups in a central list, from which you can use the segment function to create target groups. Too many lists quickly become confusing, which easily leads to chaos. Since the segments are dynamic, they can be adjusted in real time. By removing or adding different conditions, the individual segments of your email list can be quickly and easily adjusted and updated.

Suitable tools for implementation

All important E-Mail Marketing Tools have already been summarized for you in a comparison. Now we would like to go into further detail on suitable tools for implementation in the context of email segmentation.

We as E-Mail Marketing Agency work with the tool Klaviyoin the e-commerce sector very gladly. The tool bundles directly all data streams via direct and custom integrations. Using the in-house segment builder from Klaviyo, different segments can then be formed based on a variety of parameters:

Source: Klaviyo

The following conditions can be linked together as follows:

• AND: Condition A and Condition B must be fulfilled
• OR: Either Condition A or Condition B must be met

Different categories of filters that are particularly relevant:

• User behaviour: These are often combined with the shop system, e.g. someone has ordered product A or someone has opened email B.
• User tags: In Klaviyo these are called properties. Each user can receive different properties through the newsletter subscription or through the ordering process, e.g. date of birth, address, interests etc.
• AI-based parameters: Klaviyo, for example, also evaluates when someone is likely to order again or whether someone is more likely to be male or female.

Conclusion

Email segmentation in marketing is an absolute game changer for your company. You're given numerous options to better narrow down the target groups of your campaigns and to only send newsletter contents that are really relevant to your subscribers. This significantly increases the opening rate as well as the click rate and in the long run leads to greater success of your email marketing, as you can address certain groups of people more specifically and thus win them over for you. Not only the company but also the customers, who are not overwhelmed by a flood of emails, benefit from this. Instead, they receive contents that really interest them. Consequently, these emails with the relevant contents are read and in the best case the advertised products are bought.

However, the individual segments for the appropriate mails have to be worked out industry-specifically. Here there is no absolute right or wrong, it always depends on your company and the products you sell. Consider for each campaign exactly who you want to address and work out the appropriate segments. In addition, email segmentation allows you to gain further insights about your customers. In summary, segmentation is an absolute must-have for any company that wants to sell online. We wish you a lot of fun and success in implementing.