Welcome to Vol.32 of Email Advice in Your Inbox!

Back like we never left 😎

Today's Volume takes a deeper look at email audience segmentation and how to simplify the process of segmenting your audience.

There are so many ways to do this, but if you aren't segmenting your audience in some way, you're stemming your email strategy's potential.


Find out more, along with the regular email resources, tools and knowledge you're here for.

 

Here's what you'll learn this week
 

• Why we segment for email
   

• This week's top email resources
   

• Email expert practical tip of the week
   

• Smart email senders we're learning from
   

• The fun stuff: What are you eating for breakfast?
  
   

Off on another email adventure 🚀

Email segmentation is an ongoing conundrum for many email senders. The reality is that it doesn't have to be that difficult.

To begin, let's run it back to the definition of segmentation:

Email marketing list segmentation is essentially the process of dividing an email list into smaller, targeted groups based on specific characteristics or behaviours.

The trick to "dividing" is often hidden in the reasons why we segment an audience in the first place.

Let's kick off with a quick round-up of why email segmentation matters and discuss a few reasons why you want to begin segmenting your email list by where readers and customers are in their lifecycle with your emails. 
 

Understanding why we need to segment is often the best place to begin with segmentation.

If you understand the why, you'll have a better idea of how to approach this, starting here:
 

Your audience members are not all the same

Yes, this may seem obvious, but why? Simple. Everyone has unique preferences, interests, and needs.

This means that sending the same communication to folks with different expectations leads to an audience whose attention you don't fully have.

By creating content tailored to these varying expectations, you'll be able to keep readers more engaged and coming back to read future emails you send.
 

Your audience is at different stages of the customer lifecycle

When engaging with an email audience, some people will have interacted with your business or content at various points in time.

Ask yourself this: Have they all taken the same actions? Very likely not. So why segment for this?

By identifying where they are in this lifecycle, you can tailor content to people who are just learning about you, have become fans, have spent money, have stopped spending money, or may even have stopped reading your emails and are ghosting you.

This is where segmentation can be used to send them content that gets them to the stage you want them at.
 

You'll make more money from your emails

This is likely the most important one, isn't it?

Why? Well, why else are you sending email campaigns? If your emails are sent with no end goal in mind then you're either wasting money or are simply way too nice.

By serving the right audience, with the right content, at the right time, you'll make money happen.
 

To get this right, you need to assess the data you have and build on a plan to begin segmenting accordingly.

To segment your audience, you need two types of data points to begin with.
 

These include:

1. Known data (zero-party data) which is the data your readers and customers actively give you.
   
   This could include subscribers updating their preferences, replying to your emails to give you information, and the details they give you when signing up.
    
2. Learned data (1st-party data) which is what you're learning from the actions they take in your emails, the stuff they buy (or don't buy), and what they do on your website after clicking in your emails.

There are various ways you can use this data to segment your audience.

We covered this in Volume 6, but this includes segmenting your audience in a few ways, most commonly:

• Demographics
• Geographical data
• Audience interests
• Behaviours and actions
• Email engagement levels
• And, most effectively, by lifecycle stage

Your audiences' lifecycle stage is one of the most effective to segment by, but you need to know why to do this effectively.

When it comes to the audience or customer lifecycle, we have a multitude of opportunities.

We covered many of these opportunities in this slide presentation for a recent conference we spoke at, but these become meaningless if you don't understand the why.

If we oversimplify these categories, we get the following lifecycle stages for email, and why they matter:
 

• New customers or subscribers: These are folks you want to entice or keep if they've recently signed up.
  
  Your main aim is to establish who you are to them, what they're getting with your emails and why you offer enough value to have them stay.
  
   
• Existing customers or subscribers: Here you'll add established customers or members of your audience.
  
  Here's where you need to offer value in spades, build trust and advocacy, and create opportunities based on what you're learning about these folks.
   
• Lapsing customers or subscribers: Lastly, you'll have customers who are no longer buying, or subscribers who've started ghosting your emails.
  
  The main aim here is to get them back into the Existing audience through personalised re-engagement, incentives to show you care and content to attract renewed attention.

Easier said than done.
 

We'll be covering a few advanced segmentation strategies in the coming Volumes around these stages, so stay tuned.

The goal is to always segment. Keep asking yourself why you're segmenting the way you are and why this matters.

It makes a ton of difference to your approach.
 

Changing your approach to segmentation?

Your feedback is invaluable!

If today's knowledge has prompted a shift in the way you segment, we'd love to hear your feedback.
 

Let us know👇

Email resources of the week

Cool articles and resources to help you become a better email sender
 

Email Expert Practical Tip of the Week

Today's tip is a collection of practical tips from some of LinkedIn's best email and marketing strategic minds, curated by Jordie van Rijn.

As we know, BFCM and the holiday season is a big one for email senders, and monetising and keeping subscribers can be critical.

Grab a cup of coffee and dive into this list. We even make a feature 7th from the top, so let us know what you think of the personalised, plain-text email strategy!
 

PS: Sign up for Jordie's brilliant newsletter here👈

Smart email senders we're learning from

We believe that learning from some of the greatest in the industry is one of the best ways to improve.

We usually share three emails we've found that followed sound email principles or used innovative strategies to nail their email goals.

Today we're shaking things up!

One of our favourite sites for email inspo is Email Love. We were asked to feature some of our favourite emails and snapped up the opportunity in a dedicated Guest Curator feature I hope you'll enjoy.

I've chosen a few clever emails from some major and smaller brands that look great and adhere to (mostly) good email practices.
 

Head on over and take a look here 👀
 

Some more (email) fun to make your day better

It's that time of the year and a man's tired 🥱

Keeping up with inbox zero shouldn't be that difficult, but it's been a year.


Let's get through the Thursday of 2024 (November is in full swing already - Keep eating those emails. You've got this 💪


(PS: Thanks to Alfried Samba for this one).
 

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