List segmentation is easier said than one. To me the primary purpose of list segmentation is to get a feeling for and some statistics on what different parts of your list are responsive to.
At the same time you’ll now start to modify your strategy based on what you learn from your email statistics.
List Segmentation Strategies.
1. Customers vs Prospects. Here is one of the basic segmentation strategies. Instead of sending a newsletter to ALL, you send a newsletter to your customers letting them in on the good stuff and you send offers and promotions to help your prospects become customers. Two segments–two different strategies.
2. Recent Customers vs Previous Older Customers. If you have a large ecommerce list and you have the ability to track when was the point of last order, you can segment this way.
You could concentrate customer service messages on recent customers to cement the relationship and you could send ‘we want you back’ type of messages to older customers who haven’t bought from you lately. Two segments–two different messages.
3. Opens vs Non-opens. You send a message to your entire list. You get a 9% open rate. The next message you send part to those people who opened the previous message and a different message to those people who did not open the previous message. Now you have a 44% open rate and a 2% open rate.
This little tidbit of information will help you pursue a different strategy for these two groups going forward. Two segments–two different strategies.
You can segment by products bought, size of client, time since last purchase, geographic location and on and on.
The marketing point is that you will be getting better and better results as you send the right message to the right group.
