When it comes to marketing your products or services you have hundreds of different options and methods available at your disposal. Email marketing has long been one of the mainstay methods used by marketers over the years because of its high ROI, ease-of-use and low costs to get started. But, are you really getting as much from your email list as possible?
Segmenting your list into different profiles is an effective way to target your subscribers and send them messages, products or special offers that are more likely to get a response.
What is Segmentation?
Segmentation is where the marketer will purposefully divide up their email list into sub-lists to better target their audience and provide them with useful information.
A marketer may be presented with one list that has been captured from a variety of sources (website, co-registration, offline etc.), has subscribed to different types of emails the company provides, different interests, locations, ages or engagement recency for example. Segmentation allows you to create different pools for each different type of customer interest, behavioural or demographic information that you hold in your database in order to provide targeted, relevant engaging mailings to different sections of your audience.
It is important to segment your database to allow for this targeted communication as this is what email marketing is now all about; the ability to communicate with customers on a mass scale but in a personal one to one capacity. By using segmentation to divide your database, other email marketing techniques can be used to provide these communications such as dynamic content and triggered emails to speak directly to different niches for different purposes with different topics.
Benefits of Segmented Email Marketing
There are numerous benefits related to segmenting your email list into different niches and categories. The first and most important benefit is that your emails will be more targeted, and thus more likely to be effective. Breaking apart your email list along niche and category lines is a better way to target your subscribers and inform them about information they want to hear, and promote the products they’re truly interested in purchasing.
Another benefit is that it will improve your reputation as a solid and honest email marketer. Nobody wants to subscribe to an email list when they know the originator will only send out spam or junk email, or nothing but promotional emails. Segmenting your email list into different niches and categories will enable you to provide honest and helpful information to your subscribers, versus spamming your entire list with products and services they probably have no interest in.
Finally, you will get better results when you segment your email list, and this has been proven time and time again. According to the Lyris Annual Email Optimizer Report, segmenting your email list can garner 39% higher open rates, 28% lower unsubscribe rate and 24% of marketers experienced better deliverability and a greater ROI from their efforts.
Don’t forget: Providing engaging, relevant emails to you subscribers is also a big factor in gaining high deliverability and inbox placement, as well as ROI.
Want to know more about how Shine a Light Media can help you plan and execute a segmentation strategy for your business?
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