One of the biggest pros of email as a marketing tool is that you are able to create personalized content and experiences for your different audiences. Automated marketing platforms like Klaviyo allow you to create segments based on the characteristics and behavior of your subscribers and tailor your marketing strategy for them. If you are an eCommerce store owner, you will want to know how you can take the most advantage of the data your email platform and eCommerce store are pulling. Keep reading this Email Marketing Segmentation 101 Guide and get ideas and examples of basic and advanced Klaviyo segments from experienced email marketers.

1. What is email marketing segmentation? Why is segmentation important?

Segmentation is the division of a company’s email list into smaller, more targeted, and different groups of subscribers based on set criteria. These criteria can be demographic, psychographic, behavioral, or geographic.

We talked to Susanna Papette, Head of Account Managers here at Hustler Marketing, about the benefits of segmentation in email marketing, and these are some of the most relevant ones:

• By creating segments and tailoring content for each, you send more relevant content to your audience.
• That relevancy helps avoid Spam Complaints and decreases Unsubscribe Rates.
• You can learn more info about the profiles your list includes, and you can get great insights to help you improve your overall marketing strategy.
• When done right, segmentation drives conversions and increases your email marketing ROI.

 

2. How to start creating segments for your email marketing strategy?

Segmentation is very beneficial if done right, but over-segmenting can also be time-consuming and may not be worth it. So when you’re creating a segment, remember that segments need to be created with intent. Think about the content you are able to create and ask yourself:

• Who is this content relevant for?
• Who would want to hear about this?
• And who should definitely not hear about this?

For example, let’s say you are an apparel brand with customers from all over the world and you are launching a new swimwear collection. Maybe it’s best if you send your launch email just to the subscribers that are living in places with warm weather or that have actually been browsing your swimwear and exclude people who live in places with predominantly cold weather. Another important criteria to think of segmentation is culture. Would you want to send an email campaign targeting Bikinis to an Arab country?

3. Basic email marketing segmentation

You can basically segment potential customers into groups based on: demographic, psychographic, geographical, and behavioral characteristics. Let’s take a look at each type and an example of an email campaign that was sent out to each specific group.

Demographic segments

Here you can exclude or include people based on characteristics such as age or gender. In this example, this apparel store sent out this email campaign with a 20% OFF just for their female audience.

Psychographic segments

Interests, likings, and dislikings are the criteria for this type of segmentation. Here you can see this email was sent out to people that had shown interest in that specific product.

Geographical segmentation

Are you opening a new store? Giving out free shipping for certain cities/countries? Then you seriously need a segment based on the location of your subscribers. People in Ecuador won’t find relevant the new availability of your product in India, so maybe it’s best to exclude them from that campaign and avoid high spam or unsubscribe rates. That’s why this cosmetics store sent out this email campaign for people in or close to India only.

Behavioral segmentation

With this type of segmentation, you can separate people based on actions they have taken or haven’t. For example, if someone added a certain product to their cart but didn’t buy it, then you may need to remind them about it and get that conversion!

 

How to build behavioral segments in Klaviyo

Let’s take a look at how to build some basic behavioral segments: buyers, non-buyers, openers, clickers, engaged on the website, and engaged on email.

Buyers

Non-Buyers

Openers

Clickers

Engaged on the website

Engaged on email

4. Advanced email marketing segmentation

Advanced segmentation is basically taking what we already know about each different type of segmentation and putting it all together to achieve more targeted and specific segments. That is to say, instead of having just a location-based segment, you could have a geographical + behavioral-based segment.

Marko Kojadinovic, an experienced Account Manager Lead at Hustler Marketing shared with us some of the advanced segments we commonly use here at Hustler Marketing. Let’s dive deep into each of them:

1. High Rollers

These are the people that are loyal to your brand. They have tried your products more than once and spent a considerable amount of money at your eCommerce store. These are the people you want to hit consistently to keep them engaged and placing repeat orders.

2. Brand Enthusiasts

These subscribers like your brand and have placed more than order overall time, but they are not big spenders. So they may appreciate a coupon once in a while to convert. (Who doesn’t?).

3. Waiting for wows

These are people that are constantly engaging with your emails and have been browsing your online store but haven’t placed an order just yet. These are people who are waiting for you to wow them. Maybe with a new product launch or an interesting sale.

Find out more about these segments in this amazing article Klaviyo published in its blog.

5. How to win-back old customers and re-engage old leads through email campaigns?

Did you know that on average, it is five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain existing customers and encourage repeat orders? It’s true. So it’s always a good idea to hit old customers and old leads with interesting emails that can grab their attention back to your brand and products. Let’s see how you can build a win-back and re-engagement segment and when to add them to campaigns.

5.) a. Win-back segment

A win-back segment will include profiles that:

• Have subscribed to your list
• Have placed at least one order in the past
• But haven’t purchased in a considerable amount of time.

This timeframe will depend on the product you are offering. If you sell coffee or supplements, your customers will probably need a refill each month. In that case, you could consider them as win-back opportunities after 90 days or more of no purchases. But if you sell personalized jewelry, people may buy from you twice or thrice a year. So the number could go up to 180 days or more with no purchases.

5.) b. Re-Engagement Segment

A re-engagement segment will include profiles that:

• Have subscribed to your list
• Have been receiving emails from you
• But haven’t engaged with your emails after a certain timeframe or after receiving a certain number of emails.

Knowing the exact amount of time after which you can consider a lead or a customer unengaged can be hard. So just as a reference, you can generally consider a customer inactive after six months of them not engaging with your brand, but it’s different for everyone. It all depends on the product you sell, seasonality, the number of emails you send per month, and, of course, your audience.

5.c. Email Marketing Segmentation: When to send campaigns to your win-back and re-engagement segments?

As we can see, these are segments that include people that have already shown interest in your brand, so you don’t want to miss an opportunity to grab their attention again. Let’s talk about ways in which you can do so through email campaigns.

Basic approach

If you have great deliverability you can have a general and more basic approach. That is to say, you could add your win-back and re-engagement segments to a huge sale you are planning on sending out to your regular engaged segments.

However, because you’re sending to unengaged subscribers, you’ll want to be careful here. If you over-send, you risk hurting your sender’s reputation, especially if recipients unsubscribe or mark your message as spam.

Targeted approach

If you want to avoid deliverability issues, you can take a safer and more specific approach. You could create win-back and re-engagement segments based on product preferences, seasonal shoppers, custom profile properties, interests, etc. Check out these examples:

Let’s say you sell shampoos and you are launching a new shampoo for the Curly Hair collection. You can create:

• A win-back segment that includes people that have purchased from that collection in the past.
• A re-engagement segment with people that have browsed multiple products from that collection.

Or maybe you own a baby apparel brand and you have seasonal shoppers, you always see an increase in people that purchase during the holidays. In the next Christmas season, try to win back people who bought clothing from you last year between November and December, maybe they will be interested this year too. You can even show in your email how well the new arrivals match with the previous year’s best sellers.

These will be smaller segments than the general win-back or re-engagement segments, but the message will be more relevant for the recipients of your email. There are many properties and behaviors on which you can base your win-back and re-engagement segments. So, the next time you are scheduling a campaign for your regular segments, think if maybe this content is something your old customers/leads may want to hear about.

Check this and more information in our last webinar for eCommerce store owners and marketers about Email Marketing Segmentation 101. Now that you got the hang of it and you are ready to take the next step on your email marketing strategy, book a free call with us!