How to Design an Email List Segmentation

Successful email list segmentation allows a company to target customers with marketing messages that are applicable and customized to the customer's company relationship. Companies that have access to abundant information about their customers can create greater depth and apply more marketing intelligence during the email list segmentation process. Proper email list segmentation increases the success of marketing campaigns and helps drive sales and revenue. Through knowledge of available customer information and current product offers, you can design an email list segmentation strategy that improves your company's profits.

Instructions

1. Review available product offers. Look at new products, upgrades, products by price point and product lines. Familiarize yourself with all products, promotions and offers available. If possible, discuss marketing and advertising goals with your company's marketing department to firmly correlate an email list segmentation plan with marketing goals.

2. Create a list of potential customer groups based on the data you have available. The more information you have available on your customers, the more discrete groups you can create from your customer base. For example, you can create groups of new customers, customers who recently made a purchase, groups of customers by average purchase amount and customers grouped by demographic information like age, education, location or income.

3. Match current product offers to the appropriate customer groups. Target a product offer that will have the greatest chance for increasing sales. For example, target a promotion for a software upgrade to existing customers who have not made a recent purchase.

4. Review your customer product pairings with colleagues to ensure appropriate matching. If possible, review pairings with employees from multiple functional areas like marketing, finance and technology to obtain a more comprehensive analysis.

5. Pull lists of customers from company records or databases. Make your list pull requirements as specific as possible to ensure accuracy. For example, when pulling new customer lists, cross-reference the names with existing customer files to ensure that customer is not labeled as a new customer due to a duplicate database entry. Inaccurate list segmentation can alienate your customers.

6. Spot check your customer lists to ensure accuracy. Whenever possible, pull individual records from the lists of customers you obtain to ensure proper customer segmentation. Look up the records and match them against the customer criteria for their grouping. Once you successfully check multiple records from each customer segment, you have a completed list segmentation that is ready for marketing messages.

References

• Email Segmentation 101