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Email List Segmentation 101: A Crash Course

on January 31, 2018

There’s a lot out there about email list segmentation, and it’s easy to get lost going down the email marketing rabbit hole. So we’ve created a simple “crash course” to give you a rundown of what you need to know about email segmentation (and what it can do for your business).

email list segmentation basics

What is Email List Segmentation? It’s the process of splitting up your email list into segments in order to personalize the email content you send. You can use segmentation to send custom content according to:

  • Demographic data
  • Buying Behavior
  • Professional Background
  • Location
  • How familiar they are with your brand

This makes sense if you think about it. If you subscribe to email updates from a shoe store in your neighborhood, you wouldn’t want to get updates about sales at a location an hour away. Or, if you’ve been buying shoes there for years, you wouldn’t want to get a bunch of Welcome emails. Email list segmenting keeps those kinds of annoyances from happening and makes it worth it to follow a brand via email.

As you can imagine, this means that your segments can be as big or small as you want. Just keep in mind that the more tailored your marketing is, the more effective it will be

Okay– so, email list segmentation is important. But how do you get the data to do it? The simplest answer is to use the data connected to your customers’ email addresses. If you have an email sending or marketing tool (or CRM software), this process will be much easier.

What can Email List Segmentation do?

Of course, the thing we love most about email list segmentation is how well it works. 

  • Get more people to open more of your emails (sometimes as much as a 40% increase).
  • Make sure more people click through to your website (Source: Hubspot)—that’s 583% better than the 2.4% standard around the email marketing industry.
  • Keep “Unsubscribes” lower
  • Put your emails in a customer’s inbox (instead of their spam folder)
  • Turn more clicks into customers (One brand saw 7000% growth in this area— nope, that’s not a misprint!)

Email segmentation is a relatively easy, cost-effective way to optimize your email marketing strategy, and make sure it doesn’t annoy your customers. Does segmenting have you stuck? Don’t stress: we can help!

Not sure where to start?

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