If the customer has subscribed to your newsletter, it does not mean that it will exactly match their interests. You must bear in mind that the needs of consumers can be completely different.
Often, they need just some of the products offered, and if you do not listen to these needs, your newsletter will be sent to spam. Even the perfect email will be deleted if it doesn’t contain any information that the recipient is interested in.
Segmentation is a strategy that involves dividing the target audience into subsets of consumers who have common needs and priorities, and then designing and implementing strategies to target them.
Basic information that is used to segment the audience is collected during the subscription process. Segmentation criteria are made based on these data.
It is recommended to segment subscribers according to the following criteria:
Gender
This information can be useful when you send:
- Congratulations on holidays (Mother’s Day, Father’s Day etc.);
- Offers for certain categories of goods/services (cosmetics/tires).
Country
This information can be useful when you send:
- Changes in the content of emails depending on the place of residence of the customer (for example, offer swimwear to the residents of the south, heaters to the residents of the north);
- Improve the efficiency of your mailings (views/clicks) by mentioning geographic information in the subject line and message body (for example, "Only today - a 30% discount on jeans in Moscow").
Registration/Subscription date
This information can be useful when you send:
- Gifts or discounts for clients who have been registered for more than a month;
- Transactional letters to customers who registered in the service but didn’t buy anything.
How to segment?
Parameters for segmentation are variables in your address book and additional criteria in the service. All data have to be divided in the address book in different columns.
Parameters are set on the first stage of creating a campaign after you choose the address book.
Step 1. Choose the address book and then mark “Send to a part of the list”.
Step 2. Specify segmentation criteria by clicking "Add a list segmentation criteria".
In the first drop-down list, select one of the parameters.
In the second drop-down list, choose the criteria for segmentation.
In the third empty field, write the criterion.
For example, if you only need to send an email to those customers who live in London, do as follows:
Choose "Variable City → equals → London" and save the segment giving the name to it (the name of the filter).
It will look like this:
This variant of segmentation is applicable not only to variables, but also to the email address and its domain and local part.
For example, you need to select customers’ email addresses of which are registered in the mail service @ gmail.com.
Choose "Email: domain part → contains → @gmail.com".
Saving a segment
Having saved a segment, you can use it in your future mailings.
You do not have to set the criteria of the segmentation from scratch every time; simply select the "Use the saved segment".
In addition, you have the opportunity to split the list of clients in the address book into groups in advance and use the saved segments while email sending.