Guide to Email Segmentation | Strategies and Examples

With so many eCommerce brands vying for your shoppers’ attention in their inboxes, email segmentation is no longer just a nice-to-have.

Sending generic one-size-fits-all emails means you’re not harnessing the full power of an email marketing strategy. Shoppers now expect personalised experiences as standard, meaning every email you send should be tailored and relevant. For that, you’ll need an email segmentation strategy.

To help you with this, in this article, we’ll explore the ins and outs of email segmentation. We’ll define it, discuss why your emails need it, and reveal a step-by-step guide on how to segment your marketing emails.

What is email segmentation?

Email segmentation is the practice of dividing your main list of email contacts into smaller groups for improved campaign targeting.

You can group your contacts based on data such as:

• Demographics
• On-site behaviour
• Purchase history
• Engagement levels

Email service providers, such as Salesfire, allow you to easily build these segments directly within the platform. You can then target these shoppers with relevant email campaigns.

Why email segmentation matters

The main benefit of email segmentation is that it allows you to send your shoppers campaigns more closely tailored to them as individuals.

Each shopper will have different buying habits, interests and needs affecting the email campaigns that they’ll respond to best. This means that without segmentation, you’re potentially wasting resources sending blanket email campaigns that are ineffective with most of your audience.

This is why segmenting powers an effective email marketing strategy. With email list segmentation, your campaigns are data-driven, not based on guesswork.

By using shopper data to build your lists and craft campaigns, you can experience the benefits of email segmentation, which include:

• High email engagement: Email segmentation can help you send more relevant campaigns. These have more chance at capturing and holding your shoppers’ attention, leading to higher email opens, clicks and conversions.

• Boosted ROI: Personalised emails have been found to generate 6x more revenue than non-personalised emails.¹ Therefore, tailoring your campaigns using segmentation could lead to significant increases in return on your email marketing.

• Increased customer loyalty: Sending segmented emails can make shoppers feel like your brand understands them and sees them as more than just a number. This can help to nurture long-term customer relationships and build brand loyalty.

Now that you understand what email segmentation in email marketing is and why it matters, let’s explore some strategies.

Top email segmentation strategies

Adding customer segmentation to your email marketing strategy can be overwhelming. There are so many ways to segment shopper data that it can be difficult to decide on the right ones for your business.

To help you find a focus, we’ve picked out some of the most effective email marketing segmentation strategies. We’ve also added examples of the campaigns you could send to these segments to help you visualise how they could work for you.

1. Demographic-based segmentation

Demographic data relates to the shopper’s characteristics. Using this data to segment your shoppers means you can target certain age groups, locations, or genders with your campaigns.

This is one of the easiest ways to segment your audience as it doesn’t require real-time data. You can simply use the static data you collect from your shoppers when they sign up for an account or complete an order.

Ways you could use demographic segmentation to drive sales for your brand could include:

• Targeting a certain generation: Group shoppers belonging to a certain age group and target them with messaging that will resonate. For example, Gen Z are heavily influenced by social media trends, so you could boost email engagement in this group by referencing a relevant trend.

• Leveraging local events: If there’s a lot of buzz around an upcoming event, consider whether you could somehow link it back to your brand or products. You could then target shoppers based in the event’s surrounding area with an event-related campaign promoting your products.

2. Behavioural segmentation

Behavioural segmentation means segmenting your audience based on their on-site activity. This includes both their browsing and purchasing behaviour.

This type of segmentation is great for maximising the relevance of your campaigns. By sending campaigns based on a shopper’s latest on-site activity, you can ensure your marketing emails align with where they are in the buying journey.

Campaigns you could send using behavioural segmentation include:

• Abandoned cart recovery: This campaign targets shoppers who left your site with items still in their cart. You can motivate them to return by sending them a reminder about their abandoned basket.

• Post-purchase recommendations: Use this campaign to encourage further purchases from shoppers who’ve recently bought from you. You could target shoppers who’ve purchased a certain item with an email that recommends complementary products.

3. Engagement-based segmentation

Engagement-based segmentation involves grouping your shoppers based on the extent of their interactions with your brand.

You could segment contacts based on their lifetime value, when they last visited your site or made a purchase, or even whether they opened your recent email campaigns. By doing this, you can send marketing emails that more effectively nurture your customer relationships.

Using engagement-based segmentation, you can send campaigns that:

• Reach high-value customers: Boost the ROI of your email campaigns by sending them specifically to shoppers most likely to purchase from your brand. You can do this by targeting shoppers with high spending levels or previous email engagement.

• Re-engage lapsed customers: Segment shoppers who haven’t visited your site in a while and send them a campaign containing an exclusive discount. This can motivate these shoppers to return and reinject them into your buying funnel.

4. Customer lifecycle segmentation

Customer lifecycle segmentation is simply dividing shoppers into segments based on where they are in the customer lifecycle. It could be that they’ve just become aware of your brand, or they could be loyal customers who keep coming back for more.

With these segments, you can target shoppers with messaging specific to their lifecycle stage, helping to retain them in your ecosystem. This is important as just a 5% increase in customer retention rates could increase your profits by 25%.²

Email campaigns you could send, powered by customer lifecycle segmentation, include those that:

• Welcome new subscribers: Target shoppers who’ve recently subscribed to your mailing list with a series of emails welcoming them to your brand. Thank them for signing up and encourage their first purchase by offering an incentive. This can help give them a positive first impression of your brand and start building a strong customer relationship.

• Reward loyal shoppers: Segment shoppers who’ve purchased from you multiple times and make them feel appreciated by sending a VIP-only email campaign. Include exclusive content, such as a link for early access to your sale or a personalised discount code.

5. Interest-based segmentation

Interest-based segmentation is the targeting of your shoppers based on the products they’ve shown interest in. This is typically based on the products they’ve viewed or searched for.

While one of the most effective forms of segmentation, this is also one of the most advanced and typically requires specialist tools. Salesfire allows you to create segments based on data the platform captures from tracking shopper activity and Search queries on your site.

Creating these interest-based segments enables you to send targeted campaigns that:

• Effectively re-engage shoppers: Segmenting shoppers based on the products they’ve viewed enables you to retarget them with highly-specific email campaigns that are more likely to inspire a purchase.

• Enhance product discovery: Deliver the products your shoppers are looking for to their inbox. With Salesfire, you can feed search bar data into your campaigns to send emails featuring the brand or product a shopper searched for on your site.

Once you’ve identified a strategy you think could work for your business, the next step is to set up your campaigns.

How to get started with email segmentation

Once you’ve selected the segmentation strategies you’d like to go ahead with, you can get started with implementing them.

To begin sending successful segmented email campaigns, there are several key steps you’ll need to follow:

• Clean your contact list: To ensure the right campaign reaches the right shopper, you’ll need to make sure your data is accurate and up to date.

• Build your segments: Within your email service provider, you’ll need to set the criteria for the contacts you want to include or exclude from your segments.

• Tailor your email content: Adapt the email’s messaging to suit the intended recipients’ preferences and needs.

• Test and optimise: After sending, review your campaign’s metrics, such as open rate or unsubscribe rate, to identify how to improve future sends.

It’s also possible to automate most of these tasks using an intelligent email service provider. With a platform like Salesfire, you can build segments in seconds and choose from pre-built campaigns that trigger automatically when a shopper fits the criteria. 

The power of email segmentation

Email segmentation is becoming increasingly important for brands to stay relevant in a saturated digital marketplace. Without it, your marketing emails can easily go unnoticed as shoppers tend to favour brands delivering more personalised experiences.

From segmenting using demographics to advanced targeting based on a shopper’s interests, there’s an email segmentation strategy for every business. It’s also easy to implement, especially with the help of an email marketing tool with simple segment building and email automation capabilities.

1 Experian Marketing Services study finds personalized emails generate six times higher transaction rates | Experian

2 The Value of Keeping the Right Customers | Harvard Business Review