Before sending communications, it is necessary to have an overview of the contacts in possession, and especially the information about them.
In fact, not everyone will have to receive the same communications, but it is important to be able to segment and thus divide the audience into categories to allow them to receive only the communications they are really interested in.
The first steps
Before segmenting the audience, it is essential to organize the data in our possession, considering its quality, quantity, and the type of information we have about it. Additionally, it is necessary to verify the activity status of the contacts, making sure they are current and correct, before proceeding with the next step.
Once the information has been analyzed, you can move on to the actual segmentation strategy, based on identifying the profiles of the customers you want to target and evaluating the best strategy to adopt, profiling potential customers.
Dividing the contact list is important to achieve satisfactory results: each contact has specific interests and may not be interested in all types of communication that we share.
That is why having an initial overview of contacts before starting communications is effective, and it is essential to divide the audience according to their needs.
Segmentation allows dividing contacts based on various factors such as purchase behavior, interests, geographical area, and many others.
The types of segmentation
The macro categories of segmentation can be summarized as follows:
- Demographic: segmentation based on demographic data such as age, gender, education level, occupation, and revenue (for B2B);
- Geographic: segmentation that considers the recipient’s location based on, for example, city, region, nation, language, market, and climate;
- Psychographic: segmentation based on a qualitative method that allows describing consumers based on values, personality, interests, lifestyles, and habits;
- Behavioral: segmentation that occurs by observing consumers based on, for example, purchase frequency, level of engagement, and loyalty.
Segmentations can be infinite, and each can contain many others. It is important to keep in mind that all subdivisions can be crossed to have a more precise target.
Therefore, once the segmentations have been obtained, lists can be created to bring together people who have common characteristics. These homogeneous groups will receive the same communication, created ad hoc for them or targeted to their interests.
In terms of profiling and segmentation, SMoooS offers different opportunities: for example, it allows you to upload lists and profiling fields that can segment the lists and create unlimited virtual lists to target specific content. The virtual list allows filtering the real list not only based on profiling fields, but also on the recipient’s behavior.
Moreover, it is also possible to recall the content of the profiling fields, thanks to dynamic fields, to personalize the created content.
Segmentation strategies
It is useful, therefore, to identify strategies that can help the company increase conversions and achieve excellent results.
Segmenting the audience based on their previous choices favors greater interaction, precisely because users would open and read the communications because they are genuinely interested.
Understanding the user’s behavior can be an interesting solution: in fact, understanding how people interact with communications can be an idea for the strategy, as well as evaluating how long a user has not purchased a product. These actions allow profiling of a user, as well as studying how many and which lists to build based on the most frequent behaviors. Purchases, in fact, are evidence of interest in the products or services offered by our company. Based on these choices, they can be divided into lists such as:
- Users with high total spending: these people could receive emails with dedicated offers and discounts, compared to people who do not frequently open communications. This favors loyalty and high engagement;
- Users who have just made a purchase: these people could receive emails that encourage them to purchase a product related to the one they just bought. The last purchase could also be a pretext for sending requests for feedback to improve the quality of the product and service offered, but also to acquire additional data from users, such as phone numbers and other preferences.
Observing and monitoring the identified targets, analyzing the customer journey, and the relationship with the business are, therefore, fundamental aspects in the construction of an email marketing strategy. Segmenting the audience, therefore, helps to have better performance and achieve satisfactory results, emphasizing once again the importance of email marketing.
