It’s no big secret. I love email marketing. In today’s blog I want to pay it forward with a few strategies I used over the past 30 days to increase one of my clients revenue by 94%, using email alone! But first a little bit about email marketing and why you should love it as much as I do.
Email marketing is the highest converting marketing strategy to date. It can give a business up to 4300% return of investment. A lot of people ask me how this is possible, and I tell them this: “on simple terms, this can be achieved when 1) you have awesome relatable content, 2) you know the best time to send this content, 3) you’re sending your content to the right people with the right offer.”
And it makes sense right? No one will convert if your content is crap, you have poor email design and you’re not sending the right information to the right people. If you’re sending your awesome content while your readers are asleep or busy; and if you’re sending a ladies bag promotion to your male subscribers, you’re probably going to bomb out. Simples.
You can achieve the first two goals by studying the data you get from Google Analytics or your subscriber data. As for the third, I’d like to introduce you to segmentation.
“Market segmentation is a marketing strategy which involves dividing a broad target market into subsets of consumers, businesses, or countries who have, or are perceived to have, common needs, interests, and priorities, and then designing and implementing strategies to target them.” You’ve probably read a lot of stuff from experts saying create your client Avatar right? Well this is that, on steroids and driven by data.
Why do you have to segment your list? Here are some statistics:
39% of marketers who segmented their email lists experienced higher open rates
28% experienced lower unsubscribe rates
24% experienced better deliverability and greater revenue.
Fact: Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. Enough with the spray and pay already!
So what are the right ways to divide / segment your list? What categories or characteristics should you create? Today, we’re going to share with you 10 best ways to segment your list to get higher conversion rates.
1. Geography. Create a gender segment so you can send campaigns that are location specific. For example, send a last minute offer to your Melbourne readers inviting them to attend your seminar that will happen in less than 24 hours.
Subject suggestion: Melbournites Only! {Insert awesome event or sales title here}
2. Age. Age segments allows you to change the tone and words of your email campaigns so they are more relatable and real. YOLO? Your 50-something customers might not understand you. They’ll be thinking “Yolo… Is that some kind of new chocolate bar?”
Language is one thing, you’re hardly going to send a crop top to a 50 year old now are you? Don’t get me wrong, each to their own. But the likelyness of conversion would be limited.
3. Gender. Gender segments allows you to send campaigns containing specific products that they can use, instead of sending a full catalogue full of products that don’t match their gender preference.
A client recently sent me an email saying “I hate it when you’re right” I had him segment his list by gender on his latest campaign and what do ya know… 25% increase on open rates and 15% increase on clicks… 10% increase on conversions from email.
4. Past purchases. This type of segment allows you to send campaigns based on the products they have purchased in the past. Red shoes, red bags, red top? They’re obviously inclined to other red products so a campaign on a new “Simply Red” will likely work.
Purchase behaviour doesn’t just have to be about the items they bought but also the DOLLAR value of their transactions or the propensity to refill the product. If you’re a Fly Buyers member check out the last time you bought a Dishwashing product for example & just before you need to re buy the product you’ll be prompted with a special. For Dollar value segmentation, if you know a portion of your shoppers usually spend $50 or under there would be little point in sending them a campaign with specials over $100. This is a very powerful tool when used right.
5. Buying frequency. It’s important to reward your frequent buyers and send a campaign to those who have only bought from you once. This will increase customer loyalty and referrals.
6. Content Interest. Are your customers enjoying your posts relating to a certain product or category? Create a content interest segment and make sure that your email subscribers will enjoy and share the posts you sent them. If you use SumoMe to collect email addresses you should be able to do this REALLY easily! Kogan is trialling some content interest trigger email campaigns. Go onto their site, sign up and see what happens (Please don’t take it out on me on their email volume! It’s just to show you what happens! Their frequency is their own decision!)
7. Change in Buying Behavior. Do you have active website visitors or email subscribers who have been loyal to your brand but suddenly lost interest? Or maybe you have visitors who now visits your site every day instead of once a month? It’s time to get in touch with them by sending them a prompt to purchase or a prompt to re engage!
8. Stage in Sales Cycle. Set up a different campaign for those who are still on the early stage of your sales cycle and those in the middle and in the end. These people have different needs and a generic campaign may only ruin their journey to being customers. A welcome series is the easiest and best way to do this.
9. Cart Abandonment. Cart Abandonment continues to rise. According to Baymard, 68.7% abandoned their cart, or only roughly 1 in every 4 customers actually finish the purchase. To gain these customers back, an email reminding them of their cart or an offer might just get their attention. I generally advise not to offer discounts unless you’re totally desperate in maybe the 3rd or 4th reminder email. You don’t want to cut yourself off at your knees and create a discount behaviour for your brand. Unless of course you’re a discount brand…
10. Power Users. If there are people who abandoned their cart, there are also brand loyalists or as I want to call them, power users. These customers love your brand and always chooses you instead of your competitors. Show them your love by creating a power user segmented campaign. Special Deals, Rewards for Social Sharing… There are many ways to define your “power users” or brand loyalist. These guys are your cheapest forms of advertising. Treat them right!
When done right, email marketing can perform best. Create the segments above and start creating campaigns that your customers will really love, instead of sending a generic one. Remember, “one size fits all” is a lie.