Email marketing segmentation helps deliver the right offers and messages to the right people at the right time. Segmentation is powerful, with seemingly limitless ideas for campaigns and automation.
I’m going to focus here on two main segments and a method to create them differently, specific to your store.
![Photo of many types of people Photo of many types of people](https://www.practicalecommerce.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Customer-segments-570x346.jpg)
Email segmentation targets individual consumer preferences.
Best customers
A key segment for most marketers is their best customers. But “best” varies from company to company. For example, a jewelry store with prices ranging from $50 to $1,000 per item would likely focus on total spend, that is, customers with the highest purchases over their lifetime.
But a retailer selling low-cost consumer goods such as coffee, vitamins or snacks might define “best” by the number of orders. The richest 10% of customers could order six times a month, compared to two on average.
A store with little history or similar ordering behavior among customers could focus on email engagement. If it sends two emails per month, a store’s “best” might be anyone who clicked on at least two in the last 90 days.
Once the top customer segment is created, a marketer can send broader email variations to this group. Recognizing their importance can be very helpful, even without offering a discount. An email to standard buyers might begin:
Acme Coffee is proud to announce Madagascar Vanilla, our newest flavor. Available today!
The best customer variation could read:
We are excited to launch our new flavor, Madagascar Vanilla. As one of our best customers, you are welcome to order first and share your feedback.
Soliciting feedback in any form from top buyers – via survey or email response – has the dual benefit of recognizing their importance and providing valuable feedback.
![Screenshot of the survey page Screenshot of the survey page](https://www.practicalecommerce.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/India-Beauty-Mart-e1705526055117-570x467.jpg)
Surveying customers and subscribers provides valuable feedback, making segmentation easier. This example is from Indie Beauty Market, an online skincare provider. Click on the image to enlarge.
(Re)join the Club
Next come lapsed customers, those who haven’t purchased in a long time. Inactive customers should not receive frequent emails because they require special attention to re-engage.
First of all, how to identify them? One metric is the average time between orders. Klaviyo and other messaging tools can do this automatically. Let’s assume the average time between orders is 60 days. A lapsed customer can last 90 days or more, which is 50% longer than average.
Another metric is email engagement. For example, customers who haven’t opened an email in six months or clicked in three months are inactive. Exact numbers depend on a store’s products and email frequency.
Once identified, attract inactive customers with an automated email sequence that excludes recipients after they click. The sequence could be as follows.
- Note that “it’s been a while” and briefly inform them of new products, promotions or improvements.
- A week later, offer a discount on their next purchase.
- The following week, solicit feedback by providing assistance, such as “Is there anything we can do for you?” » or “Are you looking for a certain product that we don’t carry?”
- A week later, inform the recipients that you will no longer email them because it appears they are not interested. Good angles are “Is it time to say goodbye?” or “Should we stay quiet for now?”
Customer Preferences
Customers are not limited by the amount (or frequency) of their purchases. Encourage their engagement by knowing the content or products that interest them. For example, my company produces software for musicians. We like to know their musical preferences, like rock, metal or country.
To determine this, we first look at their behavior: what they buy or click, not how much or how often. Did they click on email links about metal guitars? Yes! We are adding them to our “Interested in Metal” segment.
We are also building a survey, directly integrated into Klaviyo, our messaging software. Klaviyo provides a personalized “email preferences” page to collect arbitrary information from subscribers. We place answers to survey questions on this page and redirect them directly to a subscriber’s profile for segment creation.
Combining behavioral and customer-provided data allows for highly granular segments, leading to exceptional results through targeted email campaigns. Our “interested” emails (e.g. “Interested in metal”) consistently have 60% opens and 4-5% clicks, which is very strong for e-commerce.
Next steps
Segmentation is a free feature of any email service provider worth its salt. Start using it immediately if you haven’t already. This produces better results for your business And clients.