Segmenting your customer e-mail database

In our last email marketing blog we explained the importance of building your own contacts list. Now in this second blog of the series we describe why it’s also important to segment your database…

First Determine Your Customer Segments

A customer segment can be described as a group of contacts with similar interests in your products or services. Your e-mail system should allow you to create the segment, based on criteria you set, i.e. a particular contacts interest that will have been included when adding the contact to the list.

Contact list segmentation is an easy and effective way to ensure that each eshot is targeted at the most receptive audiences. If your objective is to engage your recipients in actually doing something on receipt of the eshot, then it’s vital that you design your messages so it speaks to each segment.
If you’re not sure where to begin segmenting your database, think of the types of campaigns you will be running as this will help you determine your customer segments.

6 Ways to Segment Your List

1. Demographics: These could include age, gender, location, occupation, marital status and number of children.

2. Interest-based preferences: You might know certain subscribers have different interests that could help you identify what type of offers or information related to your product or service would be more likely to engage them. If you don’t know, then you could conduct some sort of market research via a survey.

3. Prospects that have become clients: When a subscriber contact becomes a customer, it’s time to move them to a different list where they will receive eshots that are designed for customers.

4. Product lines purchased: If your company has a vast product line, it might be a good idea to address your subscribers based on the product they’ve purchased in the past. For example, a consumer that purchases a gift for a 6 year old may be contacted the next year with offers from the 7 year old gift range.

5. VIP customers: Your VIP customers should be remembered, acknowledged and given special attention. Send them exclusive offers and information the rest of your database may not receive.

6. Average sale price: Take a look at the past purchases of each subscriber. Those who have spent less than a certain amount should receive different information and be spoken to differently than higher spending customers.

As an example, let’s say your business is a car repair centre. You will have contacts in your database of car owners who had used you for an MOT test in the past. You would record the date of the certificate in the database and you could send out e-mails reminding them the following year just prior to the renewal date. You may also be launching a new service whereby you would pick up the vehicle from the owners home, but only for those within a certain postcodes. You could send out an e-mail to your contacts that live in these post codes, explaining this new service. In these examples, data of MOT and postcode are your customer segments.

Allow your email subscribers to update their own subscriber profile.

Overtime your subscribers contact details will become outdated (people get older, change e-mail addresses and gain new interests) so it is necessary that you allow your subscribers to update their profile information every year. You can facilitate this by sending out an email asking your readers to update the information you have for them, which will demonstrate that you respect their time by only wanting to send them relevant information.

In our next article in the series we will give you some tips on how to increase your e-mail marketing conversions.

Got a question about anything you’ve read in this article? Why not give us a call on 0161 941 4615 or send an email to info@theagencycreative.co.uk.