Segment emails to boost conversions

1. Create demographic focused segments from your master list.

This will help you create and execute tailored content relevant to each demographic. Basic demographic segments include: Location Age Income Gender Company type (b2b) Seniority (b2b). For example, create a women’s segment and only send women’s products or messaging to this segment. Your email marketing platform will provide guidance on how to create segments.

2. Use behavioral data to create segments based on actions taken by users.

Basic behavioral segments you could create are: Email openers Clickers of an email for a product/service but did not purchase Past purchasers Users who downloaded content or requested additional information. For example, you can target people who’ve clicked an email promoting a specific product but not purchased to send them a discount to try and get them to convert. The behavioral segments you create will be dependent on what data you’ve collected. However, if you’ve been using email marketing in the past you should at minimum be able to create segments of specific openers, clickers, and purchasers.

3. Create segments based on users' level of engagement by creating 3 separate engagement lists: Highly engaged, Medium engaged, and Unengaged.

Highly engaged: Purchased in the last 2 months and have opened/clicked an email in the last 2 weeks. Medium engaged: Clicked an email in the past two weeks but not purchased. Unengaged segment: Opened or clicked an email within the past 6 months but not within the last month. Each of these segments requires a different approach: The engaged segment is the most likely to convert and the most interested in your products. This means you can send them more promotional emails and engaged them in cross-selling and upselling. Your medium engaged segment can be emailed at the same frequency as your Most engaged segment, but you may need to add an extra incentive to get them to convert. Your unengaged segment is populated with users who are likely to unsubscribe from your marketing. This segment should not be emailed often and only send them your best offers to try and re-engage them. If you are having deliverability issues or poor open rates, consider suppressing your unengaged segment and only emailing them a few times a year with offers.

4. Download or pull a list of clickers or buyers for each of your best-performing emails and collect data to develop a buyer persona.

Look for common traits amongst these users to develop or improve your buyer persona by answering the questions: Are the users mainly male/female? Are they predominantly located in a certain location? What age are they? What offers or benefits are they engaging with (discounts, product type, etc)? Is there a common sign-up source for these users? Facebook campaigns, organic traffic, Google Ads? You may end up having several buyer personas.  For example: males aged under 25 who from Europe engaged most with offer A and females over 25 from the US who engaged more with offer B. Note the most common location users are from, as this will affect your sending times, language, and region-specific holiday promotions.

5. Use the buyer persona information to create specific segments, with unique offers tailored to each.

For example, if your buyer persona is a CTO of a Fortune 500 company in America, you might send that segment an offer for your customer relationship software and focus your message on the technological advantages of your software. But if you were targeting a CFO buyer persona with the same product, you might focus more on the cost-saving benefits, as these two buyer personas have different pain points and responsibilities. Not only can you vary the nature of a special offer, but you can also change the marketing approach to sell the same product to different segments.