How To Segment Your Email List & Close More Leads Like A Pro

Posted on January 8, 2013 by ccarlino

As a marketer, it is your sworn duty to deliver a solid message-to-market match. That is, the language, timing, and product offer you use to speak to your prospective customers should fit their personalities like a glove. However, if you’re getting a bunch of sign-ups to your e-mail list from the same opt-in form, how can you discern the differences between these subscribers and speak to them as individuals not a nebulous group?

The answer is list segmentation. This strategy involves collecting information from your subscribers either at opt-in or through a survey that tells you more about their individual traits. Ultimately, segmentation enables you to divide your mailing list into smaller sub-groups that all receive different correspondence and offers from your brand, resulting in high conversion rates. Below, we explore important tips on how to get started.

Age Segmentation

(source)

One of the first places most e-mail marketers begin segmentation is with basic age information. Age data guides you in determining what sort of language and cultural references are appropriate to use for your audience. As an example, if your list contains a large population under 25, it might not be impactful to compose them an email using singer David Lee Roth as an example to illustrate a higher-level marketing point.

Some typical age buckets ecommerce marketers use to segment their lists include:

Younger than 18: Teens and tweens who might not make purchases themselves but can influence the buying decisions of their elders.
18-24: The college and young adult market. These people are typically focused on educational development, freedom and independence as they head out their own.
25-31: The young professionals market. These people are starting to build their careers, settle down, and are beginning to start families.
32-40: The family years. As babies become children and teenagers, these people tend to focus on financial stability and upward motion in their careers to provide for their families.
40-50: The middle age market. As families mature, teens go off to college and people in this market tend to find more time to focus on themselves and their personal hobbies and interests.
50-65: These are people are settling into their later years and are preparing for retirement from their careers.
Older than 65: These people are the retired class. They are focused on enjoying life outside of their careers, travel, and dedication to hobbies.

Career Segmentation

(source: Victor1558)

Career data is the next “must have” email list segmentation point. The profession a person is in reveals a great deal about their thought process, personality type, and values. Entrepreneurs think differently than finance professionals, and you should never be attempting to speak to both in the same way.

This is true for all products and services, but especially when you’re selling anything work or business related. A new retail inventory system, for example, should be sold differently to high-level executives than to store managers. The former will care about ease of implementation and bottom-line impact. The latter will be impressed by the actual experience of using the technology to do their job.

Interest Categories

(source: Lenny Montana)

Consider including a “Primary interests:” field in your opt-in form. This field can either contain a drop-down menu with predefined interest categories that you set, or it can be an open-ended text entry. This information is extremely valuable, as it will shine light on what percentages of your audience care the most about the various aspects of your brand.

To see a real life example of how this works, check out Electrical Engineering Web’s Pulse media kit. Pulse has broken down their subscriber base by interest category and displays those interest as percentages in a bar graph. Clearly, this level of insight helps both Pulse and its advertisers hone in on exactly what products, services, and discussions will be most relevant to its audience.

For retailers, this could be one of the most important ways to segment your list. Offer your customers the opportunity to check off their interests from a list of the product categories you sell (pop music, designer fashion, computers and gadgets, etc). You can then create targeted email correspondence for each subscriber such that those who checked “pop music,” for example, are offered discounts on band merchandise, while those who checked “automotive” are offered similar deals on performance parts.

Psychographic Segmentation

(source: Eddiehosa)

Once you’ve nailed down the information above, you can use the different combinations you encounter to create psychographic profiles, or subscriber personas. As Pragmatic Marketing indicates, personas in marketing refer to “short descriptions or biographies of fictitious, archetypical customers.” Defining these requires creative thinking and discretion from the marketer, but can yield valuable insights into the people living behind the email addresses.

Personas will tell you about buyer motivation, and what’s important to these people beyond the narrow scope of your product or service. You’ll discover if you’re dealing with some of the following customers:

Practical career shoppers: These consumers are “facts only” decision makers who concentrate on price and utility for their job.
Entrepreneurs and dreamers: These are people who value creativity over statistics. They are concerned with how products will positively impact their lives and help them achieve their goals.
Artists and recreational shoppers: These are people who are on your site because your products relate to their hobbies. They are less concerned with price and more with how much joy and adventure the products can add to their lives.
Family shoppers: Concerned with the wellbeing and betterment of their family, these shoppers are going to be looking at price and quality of the items in search of great deals that allow them to stay on family budget.

With this understanding, you’ll learn how to speak to each segmentation of your leads in a voice that resonates with them. Rather than sending the same adrenaline-fueled hype pitch to everyone, you’ll develop several niched emails that may vary greatly between each other, and deliver each one exclusively to a particular personality type on your list.

Past Buying History

(source: AMagill)

In your subscriber database, you need to be keeping a record of which products and services each user has purchased. Of course, it’s good to know which subscribers have purchased your products before because they will be the ones most open to future pitches and supportive products. However, it is equally valuable to study the subscribers who have not bought from you.

In fact, many research organizations have studied the phenomenon of “shopping cart abandonment,” which occurs when shoppers behave as though they are ready to buy, but ultimately do not complete their transaction. Depending on the study you read, these rates can account for between 60 and 90% of shoppers who arrive on your page.

Who are these subscribers and why have they not converted? Which pitches did they receive and how were they spoken to? Are there kinks in your shopping cart system or hidden fees that appear at the last minute? By attempting to diagnose these problems, you’ll find yourself defining a new buyer persona that you failed to discover in the past. You can then use these insights to create a new list segment specifically aimed at delivering content for this type of subscriber in the future. Some tips on diagnosing and reducing this behavior for retail websites can be found in this CrazyEgg guide.

Behavioral Segmentation

(source: SamahR)

Most of the segmentation techniques discussed above are fairly simple to manually collect using opt in forms and list surveys. However, for the truly advanced email marketer, list management software such as Infusionsoft can unlock a deeper level of organization known as behavioral segmentation.

Behavioral segmentation means tracking every willful interaction the customer has had with the e-mails you send. In effect, you can create tripwires that tell you who downloaded a free guide, signed up for your online course, or opened every e-mail you’ve ever sent, etc.

Using this information, you can create hyper segmented lists that gauge both the level and area of interest for all subscribers on your list. Some ideas of how retailers can use behavioral segmentation include sending :

People who clicked the email link for a sale on sporting goods: They should receive sporting related emails in the future.

People who have opened your email about a sale on baby supplies: These are new parents who should continue to receive emails on childcare products.

People who signed up for your retail management training course: These are profitable retail professionals dedicated to their careers. They should receive further training tools and knowledge shares in the future.

Depending on how deep you want to go, the email variations and niched markets you can define are practically endless with professional email list management software.

Do You Make These 6 Email Newsletter Mistakes?

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Justin

Email messages drive 1350% more traffic than social media. A stat like this is any marketers dream, as it demonstrates the sheer power of getting into the inbox.

Anyone involved in eCommerce should be actively gathering email addresses from current and potential customers. Getting those addresses is one thing. Creating something of value to send to your list is another.

Emails can drive revenue-significant revenue – if you know what you’re doing. The following list of mistakes might be costing you money. Each one keeps your emails from being opened, read, and acted on.

Email Newsletter Mistake #1: Your emails are too long.

Online readers are scanners. When we read a blog post, download an ebook, or open up the inbox, we’re looking for information that directly affects us. Statistically speaking, users will only read about 20% of digital content. This includes your emails!

Which one would you rather read?

When online marketers send emails that are too long (or worse, not formatted correctly), readers eyes glaze over. The sheer volume of text in front of them is too much to handle. They delete the email and move on.

Solution: Make sure your text is broken up into easily-digestible paragraphs. Use bullet points, bolded headlines, and big, beautiful images where appropriate.

Email Newsletter Mistake #2: You aren’t using first names.

In his sales magnum opus, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie talks about how we’re wired to hear our first name above anything else. Even in a crowded room, using a person’s first name is the fastest way to get someone’s attention.

Think of a typical person’s email inbox as a crowded room. There is so much noise, most people can’t filter out what’s important and what’s SPAM. This, again, includes your emails.

One of the best ways to rise above the noise is by using someone’s first name. Put it in the first few lines of your email–most any email provider has an option to do this. When someone scans their inbox, they’ll “hear” you using their first name and, most likely, stop to pay attention. That split second is when your subject line will coax them into opening your email, reading the valuable information contained therein.

Solution: Gather first names when your building your email database. Use them whenever, and wherever, possible!

Email Newsletter Mistake #3: You aren’t using pop-ups.

Technically this isn’t directly related to the content in your emails, but using popups has a direct impact on building your email list. The data is in and it shows, quite clearly, that popups work.

Researcher Dan Zarrella conducted a popup experiment on his own site. Common thinking tells us popups are annoying and should be avoided. Zarrella shows we’ve been following this line of thought to our own detriment.

When popups were introduced on his blog, he saw a 103 percent increase in email subscriptions with just a .7 percent increase in bounce rates. (Email address that he could use to nurture from a sales perspective, thus increasing his profits!) While not every context will be the same, popups are a solution you’d be foolish not to implement.

Popup example from online retailer.

Same site, but this greets you after 60 seconds of being on the home page.

The correlation is simple: more email addresses means more traffic to your site or product. More traffic means more sales. More sales means more win!

Solution: Most people don’t seem to mind popups. FInd a reputable popup provider and start collecting more email addresses on your site.

Email Newsletter Mistake #4: You’re sending emails from a generic account.

People like getting emails from other people. Not faceless organizations. Not generic “info@companyname.com”, but real, flesh-and-blood human beings. Turns out this isn’t just a personal preference, it’s statistically verifiable.

When you include the company name in the “From” field, there is a 137 percent increase in open rates. For instance, if your name is Joe and you work at Acme, Co., you’d fill in the “From” field to read “Joe at Acme, Co.” This subtle change makes people twice as likely to open your emails. A no-brainer!

A good example of a “From” field from men’s outfitter, Trunk Club.

In larger organizations, sometimes sending from a “blanket” email address (e.g., “marketing@companyname.com”) is an unavoidable reality. This doesn’t mean you can’t personalize your “From” field. Identify a person who will be the “email face” for your company and put their name in the “From” field. Results will follow.

Solution: For an extra personalized touch, put a picture of the person sending the emails somewhere near the bottom of the message.

Email Newsletter Mistake #5: There is no call-to-action.

If we remember back to the second email mistake, most folks have a crowded inbox. Lots of emails means you have 7-12 seconds to capture people’s attention, engage them with your content, and get them to do something with what they’ve just read.

One of the biggest mistakes I see in sales emails is the lack of a call-to-action. There are either far too many or none at all. In short, you must answer the question, “What do I want people to do with the information I’ve just provided them?” (Hint: the answer can’t be “everything” or “nothing.”)

You want people to take advantage of a deal you’re offering? Great. Give them a link which clearly points them to the place where they can buy. Use words like “click here” or “take action!” You want to make it plain what people are supposed to do. Don’t make them guess.

Here is a good example of where to place a call-to-action. You’ll see the dark red is an attention-grabbing headline, the red is engaging copy, and the green is where you place the call-to-action.

Anatomy of an effective email.

Here’s an example from Frank & Oak:

Clear, simple, and no guesswork.

Solution: Make your CTA simple, useful, and easy to follow. Make sure the link takes them to the exact place where they can buy your product or service, or take advantage of your offer.

Email Newsletter Mistake #6: You neglect “WIIFM.”

The most common mistake you must avoid in your emails is neglecting WIIFM, or, “what’s in in for me?” “How am I going to benefit from this personally?” That’s what people want to know when they open your email. Nothing more.

They don’t care about your company’s history, how long you’ve been in business, where you’re located, or how clever you think your copywriting is. They care about getting good deals and discounts. That’s it.

Before you hit the send button on a launch promotion or newsletter, answer these questions:

What’s in this for the reader?
Why would a busy person care to open this email?
Does it benefit them personally?
If so, how?
If not, what do I need to change?

Solution: Make your emails customer-centric and you’ll profit. People don’t care about your organization as much as you think they do. They care about finding great deals.

Conclusion

Do you find yourself making any of these mistakes? If so, which ones? What did we miss? Let us know in the comments–and happy emailing!

Candy Tips – How to Write Great Emails Asking for Referrals!

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Alvinl

Merry Christmas in advance! It’s time for another Candy Tip, this time on how to write emails asking for referrals that work. Most marketing and sales folk know that word of mouth is a powerful tool to generate new sales, and that the old adage goes ”If you don’t ask, you won’t get.” That’s why it makes sense for salepeople to ask for a referral if they have just made a successful sale of say a lawn mower, property or car.

In the new economy of the Internet and eCommerce, online stores can also ask for a referral from a customer immediately after a sale. That’s what ReferralCandy does with an automated email to your customers. Assuming they like your product (and a good product always comes first), they’ll be happy to share it with friends that might want it too. But what to say in the email? Here are some tips and best practices that we’ve found through our interactions with numerous online retailers who are our clients.

Candy Tip #1 – Keep Emails Short and Sweet

So your customer has just bought that hot new item from your shop and is happy and excited by their purchase. She opens an email from you, only to find that it’s a long and winding road without a clear call to action which tells her what you would like her to do. So she quickly closes the email, moves on, and the opportunity is lost.

While there are certain cases where long and complex emails are better (e.g. you are telling a great story and building it up slowly), in general, you want to keep your emails asking for referrals short and sweet. Thank the customer for their purchase, and be clear in your call to action. Of course, you are free to add a bit of spice and colour in your email to suit your brand. Just not too much!

For example, in the sample email below, we’ve kept the email short and made a simple call to action “forward this coupon link” in a prominent colour and position at the bottom of the email.

Keep your emails short and sweet with a clear call to action.

Candy Tip #2 – It’s All About the Customer, so use “You” more than “I”

A simple rule in marketing is to demonstrate value to the customer. In other words, it should be about “You”, not “I”, “Me” or “We”. Demonstrate how your customer can benefit (e.g. get $10 cash!). As a general rule, if your email contains the words “I” or “we” more than the words “you” or “your”, you might want to look closely at rewording it!

Put yourself in the shoes of the customer. If you were reading your email as a customer, would you like what you are reading?

Candy Tip #3 – Have your Email Design Suit your Brand.

If it’s at all possible, you should use emails designs and text that suit your store’s character. What colours, fonts and designs best fit the message and image of your brand?

For ReferralCandy users, you can find out how to customize the design for your email based on our templates at the FAQ page below:

http://help.referralcandy.com/customer/portal/articles/792987-can-the-design-for-referral-emails-be-changed-

Bonus Tip – Be Specific in what you Ask for

Finally, here’s an advanced tip that requires a bit of creativity and judgement. Referrals are often more effective if you are making a specific ask. For instance, instead of asking

“Do you know anyone who wants these nutrition supplements?”

You can ask,

“Brad, can you think of 3 friends who would want to get ripped with these awesome Bion-X supplements? Forward this coupon to them today!”

We think the second sentence would definitely be more persuasive as it is asking the reader to think of 3 specific friends who want to get a “ripped” physique. So long as the email is well-crafted and creative, it should lead to better conversions.

So that’s it for this week’s Candy Tips. Oh by the way, can you think of two friends who want to get more word of mouth sales online through referrals? Might want to forward them this article.

Improving Email Open Rates

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Dinesh

Since we’re running a bunch of referral marketing campaigns, we end up sending out quite a lot of email. A hefty enough number that we got around to wondering what was really happening to all these emails. Were any of them even getting read? (Yes, they were!)

We decided to look at the stats for the last 1000 emails that were sent out by ReferralCandye. 51.3% were opened and read. Um, okay. Is that good? What are the industry averages for marketing emails anyway?

After a little digging, we found this insightful post by everyone’s favorite email marketing monkey. Scanning through the open rates of the various industries in the Mailchimp article, we see a peak of about 36.6%. Of course, Mailchimp has been around a lot longer than we have. Their stats are based on millions of emails. But it’s still interesting that ours have a significantly higher rate.

Why do we get better rates?
The increase is most likely because the emails we send out don’t really seem like marketing emails. Our referral campaign emails are sent out immediately after a sale is made at the merchant’s online store.

This means that the referral email is received by the customer along with the invoice right after the purchase. So the email feels a lot like a follow up to the invoice. And customers would be more receptive since the experience with the retailer is still fresh in their mind.

Send emails after you’ve interacted with your customer.
What does that mean if you’re trying to boost the open rates of your emails to customers? Aim to the send the email right after a customer interaction. This could be after he or she buys something or when you’ve just answered a support question. Hopefully this little tidbit will help you increase those open rates!

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