5 Groups You Should Be Segmenting in Your Email List

List segmentation remains one of the most effective methods to boost the performance of your email marketing campaigns. In fact, according to the Lyris Annual Email Optimizer Report, 71percent of email marketers say list segmentation has significantly improved their results.

Though segmentation based on data points like age, gender and zip codes is a proven way to see results, few marketers take their segmentation beyond the basics. Next time you’re organizing your list, try segmenting with these creative, data-driven categories.

Organizational Type/Industry

All businesses are not created equal. Solopreneurs have very different needs than small businesses, which in turn have very different needs than medium-sized companies and enterprise-level organizations. Additionally, if you segment by industry, you can change your messaging as market conditions change-and in doing so, you’ll show your subscribers you really understand them.

Organizational Function/Job Title

This is a critical segmentation if you have a long sales cycle with multiple stakeholders. Managers and C-suite executives have very different perspectives and each will have distinct concerns you need to address. Segmenting by job title or job function allows you to hone in on these differences and answer each type of stakeholder directly.

Stage in the Sales Cycle

Creating email content that helps move buyers through the sales cycle is always a good idea. Consider high-level information for buyers at the top of the funnel to educate them on the overall topic. Then, create more detailed comparisons of your solution versus the competitor’s solution to help move buyers to the middle of the funnel. Finally, build case studies to highlight the unique appeal and strength of your solution to help close the sale at the bottom of the funnel.

Open/Click-Through Rates

According to MarketingProfs, as many as 83 percent of marketers segment their lists by past activity like opens and clicks. Creating a segment for this sort of activity allows you to provide special loyalty incentives to encourage even more of this desirable behavior. On the flip side, it allows you to retarget those subscribers who don’t engage with your communications. Perhaps a special offer will entice them to come back to you, or perhaps it’s time to ask them if they still want to remain on your list.

Content Topic

Over time, you’ll notice some subscribers are more interested in certain topics than others. Therefore, wouldn’t it make sense that these subscribers would want to see more information on the topics they enjoy? Segmenting your list by topic allows you to send subscribers more of the content they want and less of the content that could care less about.

Whatever criteria you use for your segmentation, you’ll need the right data to make it work. If you’re wondering whether you have the right data to segment your list properly, sign up for a free Email Intelligence Test to get a glimpse at what you might be missing.