Mass mailing or bulk mailing causes one of the major setbacks in the mind of the viewers who are not correlated or the intended target to the subject of your mail. They will feel that they’re a part of the crowd and less valued thus immediately reporting you as spam and jumping off your mailing list. To get the shot of success and better ROI through email marketing, mails should be addressed on more personal level and have to be engaging enough to generate interest in customers to make a purchase. This setback can be straightened by segmenting your mailing list. This will help you differentiate customers who best match your campaign criteria and thus sending them a more tailored version of your campaign to each segment in your mailing list.
Information of the existing customer is easy having access to and hence you can segment them very effortlessly but to get the information from new customers or potential customers involves sturdy task. Sending out email surveys is an effective way of gathering sufficient information needed for segmentation. You can tag this along with the subscribers form by keeping it short and relevant, thus avoiding barrier created by otherwise long and detailed fill up form.
Mailing list Segmentation Tips
To make it easy for you, given below are some areas where you can work to get your segmented email list.
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Customer type
Differentiating between existing, new and potential customers can give you a broad idea of which type of campaign exposure you want them to give. Accordingly you can send them exclusive emails containing your offers and special discounts for each of them as you don’t want your existing customers receiving the same discounts and offers they have received when once they were prospective customers. This will help you convert potential customers into new and new customers into loyal and loyal customers into brand advocates.
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Response rate
Clicks, opens, views. click-rate, open-rate and other similar stats help you get information of who are your regular viewers and the periodical ones based on this information you can also increase or decrease frequency of mailing.
Recent subscribers can be 3-4 months or from your last email till time. They should be given special attention, effective details and discounts to attract them.
Inactive subscribers who have not opened your mails over a long period of time need to be sent with a permission of asking renewal of subscription if the response is not dropped within a week or two you need to remove them from your list and channelize your sources towards more impending customers. This will help you increase your ROI as you can cut down the cost of mailing list services and mail only to those who want to hear from you.
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Demographics
If you are sending specials on “fashion for forties” to a 23 year old lady she will immediately have her mind take off from your direction and mark your mail as spam for feeling of avoidance will grow in her. Need for the segmentation based on various demographics such as gender, age, zip code, occupation and monthly income gives you opportunity to have more personal approach towards your customers.
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Purchasing behavior
Most frequently visited store or the categories of product and the range of expenditure on them can give you an idea of the purchasing behavior of your customers thus segmenting them based on this can give you a group of people with common interests helping you to make emails for them more exclusive. Let’s say for example sending them with the information of “40% discount on new range of apparels for 6-12 months old babies in your London store” to the new mothers of average annual salary residing in London.
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Interests
For converting potential customers into new customers it is very important that you hit them with the offers of their interests. Sending them with all the offers you have on board is not going to help your sale. Instead mailing those from the options of their interest will surely generate ROI. Suppose a customer has a history of buying tennis racket from your company then sending him with the details and discounts available in tennis balls or sports clothings related to it will generate more engagement.
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Major clients
Customer spending $5,000 surely deserves more attention than one spending $100. This special segment needs to be praised with various offers such as free shipping or special gift on their next purchase as sense of appraisal. It will help you build brand loyalty.
So start taking a few tedious hours of your time to start segmenting before your mail campaign, to generate a proper segmented email list which will surely help you get the increase in your ROI and success.
Also Read: The Need for a Targeted Email List
