CommuniGator Segmenting your email lists
7 wonders of email segmentation Customise your emails through segmentation All kinds of emails land in our inbox every day, whether it s newsletters, offers, vouchers, or confirmations. The sheer quantity is a clear indicator that the traditional batch and blast approach is not the route to take to communicate with your customers or prospects anymore. By personalising the content you send out, you ll maximise your response, this increased engagement will also increase your deliverability. In addition to this, customising what you are sending to individuals will gain and retain user attention and hopefully enable you compete with social, and other media outlets. Segmenting your email lists will allow you send relevant content to your recipients, and will also allow you to reap the ROI benefits. The key is to use the data you have available to send targeted messages that will motivate the recipient to engage with it. We have found that there are two basis of segmenting your data, according to previous activity and current demographics. 2 Segmenting your email lists
Activity Customer and prospect activity can be categorised in many ways, but determine which activity makes the most sense to your organisation and segment accordingly. Here are a few we differentiate by New subscribers A new newsletter subscriber is a perfect opportunity to warm them up as a lead, enter them into a welcome series to say thanks for choosing to receive emails from you and introduce yourself. Don t be too forceful you don t want them to regret signing up! Signing up for a free trial If you offer free trials make sure you show your value instantly, put everything into making their trial a smooth process and hopefully they ll move from being a trial customer to a paying one. Invest your efforts in getting them up and running, provide some hints and tips, or even video tutorials. We ve found that during trial periods communication should be frequent, but also only ever helpful. Non-converters If they ve taken a free trial but have failed to become a paying customer, don t give up just yet! Gather information on what they thought of the trial, what went well and what needs improving, this will allow you to better the conversion process and hopefully means you can gain them as a customer in the future. You could then periodically send them communications, special offers, new features or interesting industry news which will keep you at the forefront of their minds. Prospects / Customers / Expired customers Segmenting the communications you send according to prospects, current customers, and expired customers is vital. Prospects need to hear why they should invest the time and money in you, what your unique features are and that you offer free trials. Expired customers should be asked why they re no longer with you and whether there s anything you can do to rekindle the relationship. But don t forget your existing customers, show them a bit of love and that you value them as part of your current client base. An excellent way to do this is to offer them exclusive customer offers, training, and keeping them up to date on your latest product changes. Website Activity Use online activity to determine your next communication, by tracking activity you can identify what your current prospects may be having issues with (in which support may need to get in touch) or what interests your prospects. You can personalise the content they receive so it s relevant and timely great for showing customers you care and prospects that you understand their needs. How do you go about that, do I hear you ask? There are numerous website tracking tools out there, but with our GatorMail and GatorLeads integration we can track your website visitor s journey and send them emails according to their interests. All done automatically, sounds too good to be true right? CommuniGator Ltd 3
Demographics In a B2B context, demographics are most relevant for prospect sends, you can develop thorough buyer profiles and track and target any prospects which fit those profiles. Geographical location Location is great for targeting your prospects, whether it s by postcode, region or country. You can target for all kinds of things, we often promote our events and B2B Email Marketing Best Practice Seminars to the hot leads which are located nearby. Industry sector, title, and job function Most companies have an idea of the industry their product appeals to more, or who they feel they should target to get the best response. But you may be relevant to various people within a company, you can segment data according to job title or even job function, thus, personalising the content that will push their buttons. We have found, for example, marketing people love free trials whereas sales guys aren t too fussed. Moreover, MD s love downloadable whitepapers. Segment and test is the way forward. 4 Segmenting your email lists
About CommuniGator CommuniGator is one of the leading marketing automation software providers in the UK. Established in 2005, we ve gone through a period of evolution as the marketing landscape has changed. The core platform functionality caters to email marketing with automated welcome series, a HTML editor for designing your emails, templates, responsive design, dynamic groups based on behaviour, integration with the leading CRM platforms, an event management suite, robust reporting and so the list goes on. On the marketing automation side we re able to track prospect activity across the web pages they visit on your website and the email content they consume and take action against. This means you can build up a really detailed profile of who has done what. To read all the juicy details of what the platform offers and how we can help your business jump on over to our website: www.communigator.co.uk Give us a call: +44 (0)1483 411 911 This document and it s contents are proprietary to CommuniGator or its licensors. No part of this document may be copied, reproduced or transmitted to any third party in any form without CommuniGator s prior written consent. Our products and services include: MarketingAutomation I GatorMail I GatorLeads I GatorEvents I GatorDocs GatorSurvey I GatorSocial I GatorData I CRM Integration I Managed Services