Segmenting your email list is one of the best ways to improve open rates. In fact, a study from MarketingSherpa suggests that segmenting your email list, rather than sending the exact same messaging to every single person on it, can improve email open rates by 40%. This can have a huge impact on the return on investment you see from your email marketing.
How can you segment a list to enjoy these kinds of improvements? That's based entirely on what you know about the people on it.
How do list members know you?
If you've recently started a business, consider segmenting your list based on how people are connected to that business. They may know you personally. They may know you under a different business name from the past. In both instances the members of your list are directly linked to you, but may not recognize your new business's name.
Imagine kicking off your business and sending an email to all your friends announcing it. Only a few of those friends will already know the new name (that's why you're announcing it). If they're unfamiliar with the sender's name, they'll be far less likely to read your message, and may even inadvertently mark it as spam.
Plus it's very important that every member of your mailing list has opted-in to be part it, and friends who have given you their address in the past have only opted-in to hear from you personally, not from your business.
Try it now: With Weebly Promote, it's easy to segment based on how people know you. You can make custom groups: Friends and Acquaintances, Customers from Business #1, Customers from Business #2. Then you simply create a single campaign and and add each group to the campaign.
Use the Sender Profile feature to change the "From" label for each group so that it's relevant to each list. That means using your name for some audiences and using the company's name for others.
How responsive have they been to previous messages?
Most people will not open every single email you send out. After a few months of looking at the data from your emails, you'll have a pretty good idea of who is taking action with your emails and who isn't. A bad strategy at that point is to just keep hammering away, hoping some of the non-openers and non-clickers will eventually respond.
A better strategy is to break your contacts into groups and try a new, more targeted approach with them: different content, different subject lines, different strategy. Anything other than just letting emails go to waste with messages that aren't connecting with your audience.
Use the email performance stats for your campaigns to make note of who is opening and clicking each of your messages. If someone has been on your list for a few months and has never opened an email, or maybe only opened one, then create a separate list for these folks and send them different emails. Building an email content calendar can help you create quality content for different segments.
Try it now: Weebly Promote lets you see the response rates to every single email you send out. Who opened the message? Who clicked a link within it? Use this information to help you segment your audience based on how they've responded to your previous messages.
How long have they been on your list?
If someone has been on your mailing list for two years and you haven't mailed them in a year (or even in several months), then you'll want to re-establish that connection. If you suddenly start sending emails without an introduction to what you're doing, then you're not going to get a strong response.
If someone has been on your list for more than a few months and you haven't written to them over that period, then create a separate list of these older subscribers and re-introduce yourself. Remind them of how they became part of your list. Use an engaging subject line to tell them what you'll be sending, why it's great, and how often you'll be sending it.
Try it now: Show your creativity when filling out the "subject line" field. Is it engaging? Will it reel in subscribers who might have overlooked your previous messages?
What are their interests?
The more you know about someone, the better you can target your email messaging to them. However, the more you ask of someone when they sign-up for your list, the less likely they are to complete the process. How do you reconcile making it easy for someone to become part of your list while gathering as much info as possible? If you have an online store, make note of all the purchases made by your customers. Is a customer purchasing one type of product more than the other? Then put those types of customers in their own list and other customers in a different list.
You can still send the same emails to both lists, but you may change your subject lines to better match the interests of each list or rearrange the content in an email to make sure what's best for each individual group is at the top. Or when someone signs up, send them a survey asking about their interests. If they respond, sort them appropriately.
It also doesn't hurt to make note of exactly which emails individual people on your list have opened and clicked, looking for trends in what each person has found interesting. Then break subscribers into different lists and focus on sending these new segments the kind of content they've found most intriguing.
This list represents only some of what you can do to boost response. Even if you're only able to take action on one of these steps, you'll see higher response rates than if you didn't segment at all!
How do list members know you?
If you've recently started a business, consider segmenting your list based on how people are connected to that business. They may know you personally. They may know you under a different business name from the past. In both instances the members of your list are directly linked to you, but may not recognize your new business's name.
Imagine kicking off your business and sending an email to all your friends announcing it. Only a few of those friends will already know the new name (that's why you're announcing it). If they're unfamiliar with the sender's name, they'll be far less likely to read your message, and may even inadvertently mark it as spam.
Plus it's very important that every member of your mailing list has opted-in to be part it, and friends who have given you their address in the past have only opted-in to hear from you personally, not from your business.
Try it now: With Weebly Promote, it's easy to segment based on how people know you. You can make custom groups: Friends and Acquaintances, Customers from Business #1, Customers from Business #2. Then you simply create a single campaign and and add each group to the campaign.
Use the Sender Profile feature to change the "From" label for each group so that it's relevant to each list. That means using your name for some audiences and using the company's name for others.
How responsive have they been to previous messages?
Most people will not open every single email you send out. After a few months of looking at the data from your emails, you'll have a pretty good idea of who is taking action with your emails and who isn't. A bad strategy at that point is to just keep hammering away, hoping some of the non-openers and non-clickers will eventually respond.
A better strategy is to break your contacts into groups and try a new, more targeted approach with them: different content, different subject lines, different strategy. Anything other than just letting emails go to waste with messages that aren't connecting with your audience.
Use the email performance stats for your campaigns to make note of who is opening and clicking each of your messages. If someone has been on your list for a few months and has never opened an email, or maybe only opened one, then create a separate list for these folks and send them different emails. Building an email content calendar can help you create quality content for different segments.
Try it now: Weebly Promote lets you see the response rates to every single email you send out. Who opened the message? Who clicked a link within it? Use this information to help you segment your audience based on how they've responded to your previous messages.
How long have they been on your list?
If someone has been on your mailing list for two years and you haven't mailed them in a year (or even in several months), then you'll want to re-establish that connection. If you suddenly start sending emails without an introduction to what you're doing, then you're not going to get a strong response.
If someone has been on your list for more than a few months and you haven't written to them over that period, then create a separate list of these older subscribers and re-introduce yourself. Remind them of how they became part of your list. Use an engaging subject line to tell them what you'll be sending, why it's great, and how often you'll be sending it.
Try it now: Show your creativity when filling out the "subject line" field. Is it engaging? Will it reel in subscribers who might have overlooked your previous messages?
What are their interests?
The more you know about someone, the better you can target your email messaging to them. However, the more you ask of someone when they sign-up for your list, the less likely they are to complete the process. How do you reconcile making it easy for someone to become part of your list while gathering as much info as possible? If you have an online store, make note of all the purchases made by your customers. Is a customer purchasing one type of product more than the other? Then put those types of customers in their own list and other customers in a different list.
You can still send the same emails to both lists, but you may change your subject lines to better match the interests of each list or rearrange the content in an email to make sure what's best for each individual group is at the top. Or when someone signs up, send them a survey asking about their interests. If they respond, sort them appropriately.
It also doesn't hurt to make note of exactly which emails individual people on your list have opened and clicked, looking for trends in what each person has found interesting. Then break subscribers into different lists and focus on sending these new segments the kind of content they've found most intriguing.
This list represents only some of what you can do to boost response. Even if you're only able to take action on one of these steps, you'll see higher response rates than if you didn't segment at all!
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