One of the most effective ways to boost your email marketing results is to segment your list and craft personalized emails, but mastering these strategies can seem daunting.
We're taking the most popular questions from our latest webinar and expanding upon them so you can take away some effective segmentation techniques and create personalized emails that drive better engagement.
You can view the webinar directly through Wistia or right here on the Blog!
Have your own question about segmentation? Let us know!
What is segmentation and why should it be important to me?
Segmentation is breaking a large group of contacts into smaller parts based on shared interests, traits, or behaviors. Simply put, segmentation helps you get the right message to the right people at the right time.
Imagine you have a pet cat. Would emails from your local pet supply store promoting a sale on dog toys interest you? Most likely, no. You would delete the email without opening it. This is where segmentation comes into play. Sending targeted messages can improve your open and click rates, increase revenue, and prevent unsubscribes.
I’m a nonprofit and I don’t sell anything. How do I use segmentation?
Segmentation can be used for nonprofits to improve donor engagement and impact your fundraising results. Your contacts can be sorted by previous donation tiers, volunteer status, or if they have donated in the past. This can be accomplished by using custom fields and then creating a custom segment after you’ve uploaded that information.
Is there an ideal number of contacts I should reach before I start to create segments?
There isn't a minimum with segmentation. Do you have different messages to convey to different subsets of your contacts? You may send a newsletter to everybody who is on your general interest list, and then you may have certain things that you only promote to a smaller subset. There's always an opportunity to group your contacts in ways that make sense to you and your organization.
What is the difference between email lists and segments? What about tags and segments?
Segmentation doesn't replace your email lists but instead enhances them. The idea with segmentation is to make your lists more targeted, by focusing on specific details or behaviors of your contacts. Segmentation can be used to narrow those interests for more targeted marketing. Tags give you the freedom to apply additional information to a contact record, that that is relevant to you. Once you have that information, you can create segments off of tags.
Is it better to create many email lists or segments from one main list?
Using segments takes the work off of your shoulders. As people fall into or out of your segments, we pull them into or out of those groups automatically. Let the system work for you and organize your contacts.
How do integrations work with segmentation?
This will highly depend on the type of integration, but most imported contact information can be used to create segments. If you are using the Shopify integration, there are special segments that can be created based on e-commerce activity such as if a contact has placed an order or abandoned an order, or quantities, like the amount spent or number of orders placed.
Does Constant Contact integrate with my CRM?
All of our integrations can be found under Tools > Apps and Integrations. If you do not see yours listed here, check with your CRM to see if they have created one. Please note we cannot provide support for third-party integrations.
Is segmentation available within my plan?
Click segmentation is available in all plans. Pre-built segments (most engaged, least engaged, etc) and custom segments are available for Standard and Premium customers.
I create and send multiple emails to different groups of contacts. It’s a lot of work to make them unique.
That’s where dynamic content blocks come in. Dynamic content blocks let you customize one email to show or hide content based on the details you've collected from your contacts, such as their city, state, job title, or any custom field you’ve created. This allows your contacts to only see what is relevant to them.
What type of criteria can I use with dynamic content?
It all depends on what information you have under your contact details. Dynamic content can be based on their location, job title, or even your custom fields. For example, if you hold events in multiple cities, you can send one email containing a list of all your upcoming events but only show your contacts the events happening in their area using the City contact detail.
Where do we find the segmentation tools?
The Segments tool is available under the Contacts tab in your account.
