A Galactic Improvement
to Segmentation Pushing the Envelope of Email Personalization and Audience Analysis
A long time ago, in galaxy far, far away… Actually it was just yesterday, in marcomm offices everywhere: emails were sent and they reached the hearts and minds of customers around the globe to varying degrees of success. Welcome Jedi apprentice... you’ve generated your welcome, onboarding, engagement, and revenue generating emails, and you are strong with the force. In this chapter, we are going to focus on mastering the use of multidimensional segmentation (and ideally, database integration) to refine your email marketing prowess. The goal of practicing advanced segmentation is not simply to compile a superior list and then blast it. The true capability is much deeper; that is, to form an ever-evolving continuous stream of segments and gain an advantageous stance over various A/B testing opportunities. The learnings from targeting customer subsets can help optimize messaging, add new emails to email lifecycles, and test various sales initiatives such as promotions or new offerings.
2
[email protected] The Engagement Potential Awakens The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) asserts that segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue. Clearly, leveraging all the data you have in your arsenal to infer which email to send, when, and to whom provides significant returns of investment. Segmenting your customers into distinct groups based on demographics, psychographics, geo-location, timing and levels of interaction, will allow you to position your message and estimate your reach more precisely, thereby enhancing the overall performance of any email campaign and empowering you to send smarter.
Many truths we cling to, greatly to our own point of view they depend.” - Obi Wan By considering all the points of view within your consumer base more uniquely, you can make sure that: you don’t lose opportunities by being ‘late to the party’, you successfully dazzle your audience with messages that resonate with them personally, you avoid the spam folder whilst retaining the audience volume you’ve fought so hard to acquire.
3
[email protected] The Data Strikes Back Collecting Data Websites generate page views, clicks, signups, and eventually a purchase. Mobile apps generate installs, daily opens, and activity. Marketing activities drive email opens and clicks, impressions, and retargeted ad clicks. In most organizations, every one of these events is recorded on multiple platforms alongside other data about customers and prospects—in short, there’s an enormous amount of data to store, engage with, and update...
Difficult to see; always in motion is the future.” - Yoda Keeping data consistently up-to-date is huge priority. Stale data leads to stale lists and stale lists lead to bad customer experiences, like messages being sent at sub-optimal times or to disinterested recipients. Your segments should grow and shrink based on your customer’s behavior and should update as your customers move through the sales funnel or their attributes (e.g. search history, purchase history, purchase frequency) change.
4
[email protected] The Data Strikes Back (continued)
Storing Data Data warehouses merge data from all endpoints to a central location, revealing a more holistic view of your customers. This means you can make more effective data-driven decisions and provide more powerful, accurate, and personalized marketing campaigns. It’s likely your company already has a data warehouse where all the information exists—you just need the keys—and BI tools (e.g. Looker, Mode Analytics, Amplitude,Tableau) enable marketers to easily interpret and make use of this data.
Accessing Data Data can be daunting! Larger companies typically have dedicated data teams, however, these teams are often saturated with work and their time is exceedingly expensive. ‘Data requests’ are usually marked as low priority on task lists, and as a growth marketer you might find yourself in a cumbersome battle for internal resources. If you’re part of a rebel alliance and there’s nothing left in the budget to hire stellar data scientists, or getting more time from the data team is making you feel like a phantom menace, the glowing option is to go directly to the source itself. Here at Sendwithus we call this capability Connect: the ability to go directly to the database, instead of pulling from a third party query or downloading a CSV. The power to use the force comes from within. By virtue of being able to access and pull any data you need directly from inside the email tool, the email design process, segment determination and A/B testing can be done in tandem. You can rest assured that the data is definitely fresh, you need not worry about compromising personally identifiable information, and you no longer have to wait on unreliable data transfers.
5
[email protected] A New Hope: Advanced Segmentation The credo of any thriving business is to provide consistent value, whilst establishing and nurturing trust. Sending email campaigns that are more keenly designed around recipients—messages crafted more precisely around consumer data, and sent at the most relevant times—will absolutely allow your company build both value and trust in the eyes of your customers. The best results will come from segmenting on multiple axes—this is multi-dimensional segmentation, and it leads to higher engagement and conversions. What does multi-dimensional segmentation look like and what kinds of data inform this practice? Take a look at some possibilities from these verticals:
Mobile App Market Download History | Product Usage | Age | Operating System Bret is an iPhone-owning teenager and a sci-fi/fantasy game aficionado—I mean look at that impressive list of downloads! Since you know he has been obsessively playing *insert robo-alien-dragon themed game here* with no end in sight, you also know he will appreciate you sending him a convincing demo for the killer expansion pack (available for iOS only), that’s fresh off the digital store shelves. Actually while you’re at it, send his father a product newsletter about heart health with the top 5 heart monitoring and stress management apps available, (since his teen just charged the family account to buy that data-draining expansion pack).
6
[email protected] Advanced Segmentation (continued)
Real Estate Marketplace Saved Searches | Activity (Applications + Continued Search) | Location Lola just got a new job but she has no time for a second glass of champagne; she has a little less than month to move her family of three, from Colorado to Portland. Whilst she would love to put down a mortgage on a spacious property set ideally down the street from the best grade school in the city, renting a townhouse or a smaller home somewhere nearby is more in her purchasing power. You can see she has applied to 4 property listings, but her rate of activity in saved searches has spiked again and again. Help her fan out her search by featuring properties available in surrounding locations and feature school and safety ratings to catch her eye.
Subscription Box Service Plan Type (Duration +Tier) | Time | Survey Rating Jeff has been a customer for 9 months now and he seems pretty happy with his 12-month long subscription thus far; after all he did give you 4.5 out of 5 stars on that survey you sent him 3 months ago. Chances are, he is going to hit the resubscribe button when the time comes, but why miss an opportunity to reach out and see if he is willing to bring a friend to the service too? Send Jeff a special offer; a potential discount on his next annual subscription if he can get Gabe to stop mooching off of his own phenomenal monthly deliveries, and sign up for his own!
7
[email protected] Advanced Segmentation (continued)
Online Media Streaming Service Viewing History | Purchase History | Email-Opt In Customers who have rented/streamed movies seldomly within 365 days probably don’t care about more costly offers to upgrade. Instead, reward all the media junkies who’ve acted as early adopters and avid users by providing them the first glance of all the upcoming super-boosts in service. Maybe even throw in a special something for anyone who participates in that pesky survey you’ve been meaning to push out this quarter.
Travel Marketplace ‘Liked’ Destinations | Trip Type (Travel Preference) | Saved Searches The “Arctic Explorer Cruise” packages are not flying off the shelves and you want to do a big promotional push on this offering. By integrating data points across the spectrum, you can find people who are generally into traveling by sea, who have enjoyed the idea of ‘beating the heat’ in the past, and have expressed avid interest in specific frost-friendly destinations that just happen to be explorable en-route. Send this cross section of individuals a teaser itinerary of the potential ice-capped sea-faring adventure in their future, and they will most likely get to packing their Northface jackets.
8
[email protected] Advanced Segmentation (continued)
To sum it all up: Wide sweeping email blasts are the stuff stormtroopers are made of, whilst sophisticated and finely focused email campaigns are Sith lord powerful. Multi-dimensional segmentation is bound only by the extent of your data and your creativity; you are free to create ever more impactful campaign strategies by testing them only on subsets of people rather than the whole, therein gaining superior insights with minimal disruption. And with the use of Connect you can do all sorts of advanced segment testing, whilst never having to leave the tool to access the data upon which it runs! Take this grubHub email for example: the marketing team used location (SF), current weather patterns (rainy), and since this was received just before lunch, it’s safe to assume they considered the time (11:30 AM).
9
[email protected] Advanced Segmentation (continued)
Hypothetically, grubHub could go on to test the following promotions to hone in on a promotional offer, and the time when it is most effective, simply by offering to sample segments and seeing which offer yields the most returns.
e.g. 1 a
Any ‘large party’ lunch orders made from 12pm to 1pm (eg. over certain dollar amount) receive a free umbrella with order. vs
b
Any ‘large party’ lunch orders made from 12pm to 1pm (eg. over certain dollar amount) receive a free t-shirt with order.
e.g. 2 a
All orders made during happy hour (most off-peak hour) receive a free umbrella with order. vs
b
All orders made during happy hour (most off-peak hour) receive a free t-shirt with order.
The key takeaway here? The future of multi-dimensional segmentation is to allow marketers (by way of intelligent segment design & testing) to become just as ever-evolving as their target audience.
10
[email protected] The Return of the Exemplary Email Campaign Connect allows marketers to abandon the dark side—literally avoid being left in the dark about data. Now that access to real-time data has been unlocked, you can dream up all sorts of amazing ways to use elegant, multi-dimensional segments for your email campaigns.
Connect-users vs. non-Connect-users Clients using Connect showed :
251%
increase in CTR
130%
increase in open rate
386%
decrease in unsubscribes When using advanced continuous segmentation to access more targeted reach, you can ramp up sales potential, avoid disheartening churn rates, and apply learnings from both simple and advanced segmentation subgroups to test which segments of your audience will respond to messaging at each interval or email type. Allow every email campaign to reach its full potential by testing across segments for the best deal offers, the best copy, and the most responsive audiences.
11
[email protected] Now you’re moving away from sending email like a startup and graduating to sending email like a fully fledged enterprise—may the force be with you.
Have any questions or would you like a product demo? Drop us a note:
[email protected] Or checkout our in depth guide on How to Send Email Like a Startup
sendwithus.com
[email protected] 3252 19th St, #A San Francisco, CA 94110