Friday, 8 February 2013

The Power of Segmentation

Posted by Unknown at 3:39 pm Labels: , , , , , , , ,
Segmenting your mailing lists cannot be overlooked as it has the ability to massively improve your email marketing campaigns. By using segmentation, you will be able to make sure the emails you are sending are being sent to your ideal target audience. 

If you are sending one generic email to the bulk of your subscribers then some, will no doubt feel that the emails they are receiving are no longer of use to them, which could result in them unsubscribing. Wouldn’t it be better to know what your subscribers are really interested in and what they want to get from your emails? Wouldn’t it be great if the emails that you are sending are of those that your subscribers look forward to read?

Subscriber knowledge is a great thing to have, especially for your campaigns as it will allow you to get a better insight into what your subscribers are interested in. That way you can target your emails directly to the segments/groups of your mailing list that are interested in the same thing. If your subscribers are receiving emails that are relevant to them then you have a greater chance of them taking action on the email, which may be; opening, forwarding the email or clicking on a link.

The question that I’m sure you are wondering is how can you get this information from your subscribers?

Tips on how to gather this information:
  • Amend Subscription Form - Let’s start at the beginning, why not present some extra mailing lists on your subscription form which will allow people to subscribe to a particular type of newsletters. Your account comes with 20 free mailing lists so why not use them? You could also create new fields to be displayed on your subscription via the dataset, which would allow new subscribers to give more detailed information to you. The tricky part of adding more textboxes onto your subscription form is that it can affect the users from actually subscribing as they may feel that the time taken to subscribe is not worth it.
  • Autoresponders - Another similar way to get additional information is to have a simple subscription form which will allow the user to add their forename, surname and email address. Once they have subscribed you could then have a subscribe trigger set up which would automatically send a newsletter to the user welcoming them to your campaign. With the welcome newsletter you could have a form to allow them to give you more detailed information; of course you must give them a reason to fill in more details such as an offer or a chance to win a prize.
  • Use Forms - Why not include your current subscribers and ask them to fill in more details via a newsletter with a form in it. Of course as suggested above, the newsletter will need to include an incentive for the user to fill in more details such as the chance to win a prize.
You may be thinking this is a lot of trouble to go through to find out more information about your subscribers. You can even start small by distinguishing your subscribers between male and female or their age. You could then target your newsletters specifically to an age group, by varying the terminology used for the appropriate audience or the different offers/products you send them.
 
Tips on how to use the information gathered:
  • Segment Your List - Segmentation will allow you to use the information gathered from your subscribers to create queries or add limits to each segment to match a specific profile. Such as only include men who are between the ages of 18-25 living in Northumberland. This way your target audience is no longer general it will be limited to a specific section of people within your mailing lists. You can then send targeted emails with specific offers or deals to that segmented list.
  • Personalise your newsletters - You can add personalisation to the emails you are sending to your subscribers. Immediately when the user starts to read the newsletter it will help to get them engaged as you can refer to their first name or location. Not only can you personalise the email but you can also add personalisation into the subject line that you are sending out. The first thing your recipient will see of your email will be the subject line so by adding their name into it you will grab their attention.
  • Make good use of your Reports & Statistics - It is also important to keep track of the reports and statistics regarding your sends, as these will explain what your users are doing when they receive your newsletters. If you find that your open rate is dropping then it may be time to try something new such as using a different layout or subject line to send to those people that are no longer opening your emails. You can test new layouts or subject lines using the A/B testing within your account. Alternatively you can also create a new mailing list of the subscribers that are not taking any action with your newsletters. Those people have not unsubscribed, so now is your chance to keep them away from the unsubscribe button.
Remember that keeping your subscribers interested is hard to do but by using the data collected data from them will make it a lot easier.
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