Today's key to subscriber engagement is personalized and relevant email content. Behavioral segmentation is one of the best ways of reaching your target audience and sending exactly what they want.
Email list segmentation by email opens allows you to discover who hasn't opened your recent campaign and who has stopped reading your newsletters already for some time, so you can resend unopened campaigns or prepare compelling re-engagement campaigns for inactive users.
Segmentation by email clicks allows you to track how active and interested your subscribers are in your email campaigns. If the activity is low, you can proceed with call-to-action improvements and more personalized email content.
So, to considerably improve your email marketing results, stop treating everyone on your email list the same. Segmented email campaigns produce approximately a 30% higher open rate and a 50% click through rate than undifferentiated messages, according to a Monetate survey.
Most companies consider trigger-based segmentation as something complex and time-consuming; in fact, every marketer can easily perform simple segmentation by campaign results. Apart from manual work, a lot of ESPs offer segmentation features.
Here are nine easy-to-use ideas on how to perform segmentation by activity.
1. Resend your newsletter with another subject line to those who haven't opened the previous one within a few days. Try elements that always work in a subject line: numbers, questions, superlatives, "how tos" and "you" and "yours" for more personalized email newsletters.
2. Resend your email campaign with a new call to action to those who opened but haven't clicked. Use several call to action links instead of just one (all pointing to the same landing page). Guide your customers to the landing page not only via a call to action button but also via images and hyperlinks in the text.
3. Prepare another email campaign with a completely different offer to those who haven't clicked on the previous one. Be specific in your call to action, emphasize benefits, and make it personal. For example, you might replace "get your offer" with "take me to my offer," so that the person can identify himself or herself with your offer.
4. Offer a switch from promotional to informative and educational newsletters to those who always open but never click. Use behavioral segmentation to select those who open your emails but don't click. Brand-building via informative and educational newsletters may become one of the main goals in your business communication.
5. Research which links recipients have clicked on and send them additional information or a special offer about the issue they are especially interested in. If you have several offers in your email campaign, benefit from the click-based segmentation and track who has clicked on which link. In addition, if the clicks haven't resulted in conversions, send them appropriate campaigns about the exact topic.
6. Dare to send newsletters more frequently or some extra offers to the most active clickers. The more active subscribers are on clicking, the more loyal they are to your brand, so you can offer them the option to switch from a monthly newsletter to a weekly one, for example.
7. Change not only the subject field but also the sender name to a more personal one. Instead of a company name, choose a real person from your company who appears in the sender name for a more personal approach.
8. Send a text message to those who haven't opened your email if the campaign requires some urgent action. Integrate SMS marketing into your email marketing strategy. Use a common platform for both email and mobile marketing to send a series of correlated messages to one common database.
9. Prepare a compelling re-engagement campaign to those who haven't opened your emails for some months. Take a look back at your previous email campaigns and use behavioral segmentation to select those who haven't opened your emails for some months. Create an exclusively compelling re-engagement campaign to reignite the interest of inactive subscribers. If you still don't meet with success, maybe it's time to say goodbye so that you don't negatively affect your email deliverability.
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Today, in an age where customers are burdened with the amount of information and offers, behavioral email marketing is one of the most effective methods of increasing customer interest and loyalty.
I strongly recommend you to spend some time and segment your database by activity to be able to create relevant, targeted, and personalized emails that will increase your email marketing ROI.
