3 Truths Every Marketer Should Know About Email Segmentation

When it comes to email, marketers sometimes adopt the same philosophy as we have for coffee and ice cream: if some is good, more must be better. But too much of a good thing can end up being pretty bad for you, and email is no exception.

When used well, email is a pretty powerful tool for nurturing leads, upselling current customers, and even taking a lead that was disengaged and restimulating their interest in your company. But when used poorly, email has the potential to sour a potential customer’s view of your company, and even cause them to mark your messages as spam or choose to unsubscribe from them.

One of the important parts of using email in a way that your audience appreciates and responds well to is with email segmentation.

What is Email Segmentation?

Email segmentation is the process of dividing your contacts into smaller segments or lists based upon a certain trait, characteristic, or behavior. For example, you could choose to create an email segment targeted to all contacts who are marketing directors at their company. Using email segmentation allows your marketing and sales teams to send personalized emails that are geared toward a contact’s unique needs, demographics, and preferences. The result is that you’re able to nurture a relationship with leads that can lead to your business earning their trust for the long haul.

Hard Truths About Your Contacts and Your Emails

When you read about what email segmentation is and why it’s important, it probably really resonates with you. This is how we want businesses to communicate with us as consumers. We don’t want to be a part of a mass email message that isn’t targeted to our unique needs and wants. So, why do we do this as marketers? Yeah 

There are probably many answers to that question, but two that come to mind are fear and time. Fear makes us believe that more is more: that the more emails we send to as many people as possible, the better chance we have of making a sale. The feeling of always needing more time makes it easy for marketers to try and cut corners they shouldn’t. While email segmentation does require a lot of time, it is definitely time well spent. Here are three truths to consider in order to stay the course when it comes to creating targeted emails.

• Not everyone needs to read every email you send. You might think that email you just spent an hour writing, designing, and publishing is so important everyone should read it. But chances are good it probably isn’t for everyone in your database. Before you hit submit, narrow down the recipients to a list of people who will actually want to open it.
• Sending emails to fewer people will give you better results. Channeling a “more is more” mentality with your email marketing is probably going to result in higher bounce rates and unsubscribes and more recipients marking your emails as spam. Sending fewer emails to a more targeted list is likely to give you higher open rates and fewer unsubscribes.
• Segmentation is almost impossible without the right tools. Technically, you could try managing your contact database without any sort of software, but it’s going to be about as enjoyable as trying to mount a hippogriff without remembering to bow first. When you use a tool like Hubspot (that gives you the power of a marketing automation software AND a CRM), you’re able to easily and efficiently manage your contacts, create targeted emails, and publish them to a relevant audience. Not to mention, you’ll also get immediate stats and analytics on how your emails perform. Mischief managed.

Always Be Valuable

The best thing about email segmentation isn’t that it helps you more efficiently care for your contacts, or that it can result in more customers. It’s that it ensures you follow the golden rule of inbound marketing: always be valuable. The more you commit to offering your customers emails that best fit their needs and wants, the more you deepen their trust in your business and the likelihood that they’ll become a lifelong customer.

Want to learn more about building this kind of value-based relationship with your leads? Download our free ebook, Beyond the Basics: Advanced Inbound Marketing Tactics.