If you were having a party, you wouldn't want to invite someone that you knew wouldn't want to come, right? The same is true in regards to sending your email list to someone who wouldn't care about the content in it. In this video, you'll learn the basics of email list segmentation and its benefits. Segmentation is the practice of dividing an email subscriber list into smaller groups based on criteria like interests, location, or purchase history. Once you build an email list, you need to segment it. Using segmentation, a company is able to deliver the most relevant content to its subscribers. The more tailored and personalized the email is, the more likely subscribers are to enjoy their emails, which can result in sales and brand loyalty. You can segment your list based on any number of criteria. But most companies segment their lists by geography, psychographic characteristics, demographic data, and behavioral data. Let's explore what each of those means. When you're segmenting your list by geography, you might do it by location, climate, population, language, or environment. This segmentation focuses on the physical location of your subscribers. If your brand is offering free shipping on all orders for the month of October but you're only offering it in the United States, you will want to segment your list by country so that international customers aren't misled or confused. And you wouldn't want to send an email written in Mandarin to a German speaking country, right? If you intend to send emails out in a few different languages, consider segmenting by language. Let's say you work for a clothing company in Asia. Because of the extreme variances in weather from region to region, you may want to segment your emails by environment or climate. In Asia there are many geographic regions with varied climates, such as the desert, the rainforest, and the tundra. Customers that experience cold winters, like those in Japan, China, Russia, and Korea, might be interested in your company's new winter coat. But customers in more tropical, Vietnam and Thailand, might not be. Another way to segment your list is by psychographic characteristics. Psychographic characteristics are based on customers' activities, interests, and opinions. This includes factors like lifestyles, values, and hobbies. If you handle digital marketing for a local grocery store, you might segment based on dietary preferences. Are some subscribers vegan or gluten free? Segmenting by lifestyles and diets can help ensure you send useful, targeted content to people, while also ensuring you don't send anything unappealing or offensive. If you work for a health and wellness company, your subscribers that enjoy cycling might want to know about the most famous bike paths in the world. But you may have subscribers that prefer running, in which case you'd be able to send them a list of running trails instead, thanks to segmentation. The next category to segment your list by is demographics. Demographic data includes information such as age, gender, income level, and family status. Segmenting by demographics is great because it's based on fairly consistent information, whereas psychographics are more subject to change frequently. Let's say you handle email marketing for a company that books travel. Your company has a special romantic getaway idea that they want to include in their newsletter. This is an example where it's important to know if each subscriber is single, in a relationship, married, in a domestic partnership, or has a family. So you may want to segment your lists by family status. Or let's say a famous band from the 1980s is going on tour again for the first time in 20 years. The concert venue that you handle email marketing for, wants to announce that they will be performing at your venue. However, subscribers who are under a certain age may not find this interesting at all. Thankfully your list is segmented by age groups so you can target subscribers whose age suggests they may enjoy the band. And finally, let's talk about behavioral data. Behavioral data refers to the actions your customer takes or doesn't take when it comes to shopping on your website. This is one of the most important categories, because it gives you a glimpse into how a customer engages with your specific brand and products. Purchasing habits, spending habits, browsing habits, loyalty to your brand, and engagement with your website, are all great ways to segment your list based on behavioral data. If you work for a sporting goods store, knowing whether a subscriber is visiting your site for the first time, or if they've been a longtime customer, can help you change your messaging and get the right email to that customer. For a new customer sending an email that says it's nice to meet you, here is 10% off, will work just fine. For a long time customer, you might send an email with a message like, it's great to see you again, here's 10% off on your favorite team's gear. If you want to reward customers who purchase frequently from your website, you'd segment your list based on customer loyalty to your brand. That way, only your most devoted customers receive the most exciting offers. Before we move on, let's recap. We covered four very common categories of email marketing segmentation, geography, psychographic characteristics, demographic data, and behavioral data. And as you choose one category, you can break it down even further and target audiences more specifically.
