Email list segmentation could mean the difference between opened emails, conversions, and sales versus unopened emails, ignored CTAs, and unsubscribes.
Savvy eCommerce brand owners know the importance of email list segmentation. Without segmenting your list, your email marketing efforts would be like delivering white free-size shirts to everyone in your customer list … when in fact … your list consists of small, medium, large, or even extra small, extra large, XXL, XXXL (get the drift?) body-build types. And we’re not talking about shirt colors yet. Who you do and don’t send certain emails to matters to pull off an effective email marketing campaign and strategy.
With handy tools like Klaviyo, collecting data for segmentation and actually segmenting your list has never been easier. But beware. As easy as it may sound, it’s also easy to make email list segmentation mistakes. Here are 5 email list segmentation slip-ups to skip.
6 Email List Segmentation No-no’s to Avoid
1- No segmentation at all
If you’ve not started segmenting your list because:
You don’t know how . . . please let me know. Maybe I’ll create a tutorial showing how.
You don’t know why . . . please re-read my simple t-shirt analogy in the intro. If this doesn’t suffice, I’ll explain some more…
Splitting your main list into segments allows you to send more personalized, relevant emails to your subscribers. This makes your messaging resonate with them, which is more likely to lead to higher conversions.
To illustrate, if upon sign-up to a pet store, a subscriber revealed she only has a dog for a pet, what relevance does it make if the pet store sends her emails about cat food or cat grooming tips? Your subscriber will most likely not open the email, engage and buy. This will pull down open rate, and other conversion rates.
So imagine this happening not just to one subscriber, but a whole list? Picture those ecommerce brands that don’t segment their huge list because they have this preconceived notion that it’s complicated, time-consuming, and unimportant. Without segmentation, they send the same email to the entire list. The people in that list, of course, have different interests, consumer behavior, preferences, and customer journey phases. What do you think will happen to their open rates, click-through rates, engagement and conversion? Would it surprise you if people start unsubscribing?
If you’ve not started segmenting your list, don’t worry, I won’t judge. Let’s not focus on the fact that you’ve been missing out on the opportunity to connect with your subscribers, add value, and start building a relationship with them. Rather, let’s focus on the fact that the opportunity is still there while your list isn’t that old nor stale. Just segment your list right, you’ll see your conversion rates rise, and we’ve not even talked about customer retention yet. This will be for another post.
2- Under-segmentation
This is the younger sister of #1. No segmentation at all. Aimlessly sending campaign emails to a broad batch of subscribers is almost just like not segmenting at all. This will have a negative impact not just on deliverability, but on conversion rates as well. It’s better to be caught committing the next email list segmentation blunder, than committing under-segmentation.
Watch out for subscribers who have been ignoring your emails and are showing lesser probability of engaging. Don’t add them to your regular campaigns. Instead, revive their interest by conducting a targeted re-engagement flow. If they engage and pass the segmentation requirements for campaign inclusion, then that’s the time you add them.
It’s a good thing Klaviyo provides email deliverability scores you can use to monitor email performance.
3- Over-segmentation
Segmentation isn’t really complicated. But if you over-segment your list, that’s when things can turn into the Hampton Court Palace Maze. It becomes hard to manage and can weaken your message and impact.
Sometimes, in their eagerness to maintain good deliverability and campaign performance to avoid the spam folder, some ecommerce brands segment subscribers further into much smaller segments.
Are you the type of e-commerce entrepreneur who tends to segment subscribers further into much smaller segments? I get where you’re coming from. It means you appreciate the role of list segmentation. You want to maintain good deliverability and campaign performance, and avoid the spam folder. I’ve talked about the importance of segmenting to enhance deliverability in another post. Sometimes, however, we may unwittingly overdo it to the point that we may be missing out on people in the list who may probably engage with specific email campaigns.
To illustrate, let’s say, you typically send campaign emails to subscribers who have engaged in the last 90 days. So when you’re rallying for a major sale, thanks to over-segmentation, you don’t email the campaign to subscribers who have purchased before. Or you don’t email the campaign to subscribers who subscribed 6 months ago but haven’t made a purchase yet.
In times like this, give a thought to these segments when conducting these types of campaigns. Not doing so will leave you with thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of subscribers (depending on your email list size) who have never received a campaign email from you. As long as a subscriber’s profile hasn’t shown that they are very unlikely to engage, you should think about including them in the campaign.
This won’t hurt your deliverability. As long as you maintain good sending practices, you can send to a broader group of subscribers.
4- Disregarding key exclusion groups
When considering recipients for your email campaigns, I’m sure you know you need to exclude subscribers who haven’t engaged recently. Aside from this unengaged segment, don’t forget to exclude certain key segments from most campaign emails.
To name a few:
Subscribers who have soft bounced in the last 30 days, even if they can still receive emails. That’s because if a subscriber recently soft bounced, the probability that they will engage is tremendously low. And we don’t like soft bounces because they can negatively impact deliverability.
- Subscribers who have soft bounced at least 3 times from the start. Klaviyo suppresses this type of subscribers only after 7 soft bounces. That’s why you need to exclude them yourself.
- Subscribers who have recently placed an order. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. You’ve just bought a particular product. And while waiting for it to be delivered, you receive a marketing email promoting the same product. Wouldn’t you be annoyed?
- Subscribers who have certain preferences. The same pet store example I mentioned before. If the subscriber specified they only have a pet cat, why send emails about pet dogs?
- Subscribers who have an active customer service complaint. If you have a customer service platform integrated with Klaviyo, you need to create a segment for people in your list who have active support tickets. This comes in handy when you exclude them from receiving sales emails until their issues have been worked out. Because . . . yeah, you know it. Nothing could be more infuriating than being sold to when you’re still unhappy about a recent transaction.
5- Not personalizing email content
List segmented? Yeah! Emails personalized accordingly? Nah.
What’s the point of segmenting your list, when you’re not personalizing your messaging accordingly? The goal of segmentation is to maximize email relevance. Always keep in mind to customize your email content to the particular needs, preferences, behavior, customer journey phase of your audience. By using their name, purchase history, location, birthday, browsing behavior and other relevant data, you can create email content that will resonate with them. As a result, they’ll tend to engage more and be compelled to respond to your call to action than to generic emails.
6- Not collecting/not using collected customer information
Have you been asking your subscribers questions via sign-up forms, quizzes and post-purchase surveys? Good job. It’s a great way to understand them better and know how to approach them. Next question: What have you done with the info? If you’ve used it to segment your list and personalize emails, awesome! You may skip this part.
But if you’ve been asking and asking, but not doing anything with the data gathered, you’re missing out. One way to use this information is for exclusions. But don’t just stop there. You can also use these data to customize your email content, so they’ll get the messaging they resonate with and be exposed to the products that appeal to them the most. This is very much related to #5.
For example if you have a quiz to understand the body type of your subscribers, highlight pieces of apparel that look great on big women when a subscriber said they’re extra large.
When looking under your email marketing hood to spot leaks, one section to look at is definitely your list segmentation. Check it out first prior to tweaking the design, send times or cadence of your emails. If you’ve committed any of the 6 email list segmentation mistakes mentioned, you now know what to do.
If you need help setting your list segmentation right, initiating list segmentation, or any help with Klaviyo email marketing, feel free to contact me.