Email Marketing Segmentation – An Evolutionary Approach
Why do marketers love segmentation? Because it tells us which groups are more likely to respond to what types of messages – and optimized response equals successful campaign.
So what should you be thinking about before you dip your toes in? For instance, you may have some basic customer segments defined and you’re trying to apply this approach to all aspects of the marketing and sales funnel. Before you do that, step back and ask yourself “what exactly am I trying to accomplish”? If you’re aiming for email opens and clicks, the segmentation approach should be heavily skewed to those attributes that optimize response within the channel:
- How engaged is the customer with this particular channel
- What types of messages have they responded to in the past
- What types of messages have they responded to recently
- How receptive are they to different types of offers
- How often do they want to hear from you
- What time of day are they most responsive
But what if you were trying to accomplish something very different? Let's take leads prioritization and management as an example. Your objective here is to apply segmentation driven filters that flag high value leads, informing sales teams on who they should be calling first.
In this scenario you might focus on sales momentum, current book of business, type of messages engaged with recently, channel preference for conversion. You stay true to the same overall approach but have the flexibility to leverage the sub-set that works best for you.
If you have limited insight on your customers, your best bet is to start simple, challenge assumptions and update your approach as you test and learn. Consider initial segments a stake in the ground and commit to re-calibrating periodically. Just as we live in a dynamic business environment with shifting market shares, channel preferences and customer churn, your segmentation is an evolution.
Email Marketing Guru Bill Nussey (also the CEO of Silverpop) said it the best - “Ultimately, your segments should be fluid. As you gather more actionable insights about customers and prospects, you can group and re-group segments to continually provide targeted, relevant communications.”
Hi Vik, that’s a great question. As the CEO of a promising new start-up you have a timely opportunity to build a ground-up infrastructure that can quickly mine interactions and deliver actionable customer insights. Here are some thoughts. Firstly, if you’re using MS Outlook for marketing emails I would switch asap to an email marketing platform. Outlook doesn’t track email engagement and does not provide some of the basic functionality you need to start a segmentation program. There are lots of options ranging from enterprise apps (ExactTarget, Silverpop) to offerings more suitable for start-ups and small businesses (Constant Contact, MailChimp). Once you’re on one of these platforms you can create multiple groupings such as customer, prospect, size of customer, subscription type etc. and then start tracking their email engagement over time. You can also categorize emails by message type and start building a history on who is more receptive to which type of message. Many of these platforms have the engagement metric/tagging as a baseline capability along with dashboards and reporting functionality. Hope that’s helpful.
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10yThought-provoking post! One question I had about email opens and clicks is - we're emailing a list of prospects that we don't have history with. As there is no data, what's the best software/approach to record the history? Or any other suggestions.