Segmenting Your Marketing E-mails

This is the final entry in our four part blog series about e-mail marketing. The other entries can be found here, here, and here.

40 percent of the time an e-mail is sent to a subscriber, it gets marked as spam is due to irrelevancy. Don’t let your e-mails meet this fate. Targeting your e-mails to segmented audiences can help you generate higher click-through rates and keep your messages relevant. Here are several ways that you can segment your target audience:

Geography

Many small businesses have a strong connection to a local area or region. When your company has geographic limitations, segment e-mails relevant to people within the area. For non-locals, e-mails regarding invitations to special events would be irrelevant and will most likely get sent to the spam box.

Recipient

When it comes to e-mails, it is as important “who it’s being sent to” as “what’s being sent.” For instance, you would speak differently to a seller than a buyer. For different roles come different interests and targets.

Interest

Using analytics, check out content that your audience members have viewed on your page (i.e. items they have downloaded.) Then use this to create more targeted e-mail for each audience.

Behavior

A visitor who browses five or more of your pages has different needs than a first timer. Your targeted e-mail, set up by marketing analytics, should be reflective of that.

Brand advocacy

Create a “brand advocates” section for your e-mail list. This list should contain frequent purchasers, loyal social media followers, and customers who have recommended your company. Give back to your fan base by sending specialized e-mails, feedback requests, and rewards.

Through analytics and market research, you can segment e-mails that are consistent with your business strategy and your customers’ purchasing behavior while avoiding the dreaded spam box.