If, like me, you have been reading about email marketing strategies, it will seem rather clear that to get your emails opened and generating sales, subscribers need to be contacted at the right time with the right content.
Nothing surprising here… we all receive dozens of emails each day, and if they don’t offer value we’ll just ignore them and get back to our busy lives.
The big question is: How do I, as a business owner, know who to contact and when?
For most businesses, managing a huge database of subscribers and trying to understand their needs can quickly become overwhelming or, at best, incredibly time-consuming.
You have to take into account the number of purchases from each customer, their order frequency, discount usage, how engaged they are with your brand, and so on.
And this is when the headache usually starts.
All these parameters reflect the uniqueness of each subscriber and typically the more information you can learn about your audience, the better.
No two subscribers will be the same but they can be grouped based on some common criteria:
Is the subscriber a lead or an actual customer? How often do they open your emails?
Is the customer a one-time buyer or a loyal fan?
Does your customer spend little often, or lots rarely, or indeed somewhere in between?
Leaving all the heavy lifting of data processing to your chosen software, or database marketing app, you can sit back, relax and choose who to contact and when based on the recommended segments already created for you.
At Machine Labs we have 52 pre-made segments. This includes segmentation based on order recency, frequency and monetary value, and our recommended segments:
| Category | Segment Name | Usage |
| Engagement | Very engaged | Should be mailed frequently |
| Engagement | Quite engaged | Should be mailed less frequently |
| Engagement | Disengaged | Should be rarely mailed |
| Leads | Hot | Should be mailed frequently |
| Leads | Warm | Should be mailed less frequently |
| Leads | Cold | Should be rarely mailed |
| Customers | Very recently ordered | Always exclude from offer mailings |
| Customers | Recently ordered | Generally exclude from offer mailings |
| Customers | Bought once | If you can get a customer to order #2 they tend to become a regular |
| Customers | Most loyal customers | Good to ask to refer-a-friend or invite to a VIP program |
| Customers | High spend customers | Target for retention |
| Customers | Stopped ordering | Target for reactivation |
| Customers | Respond to offers | Offer discounts to customers who respond to offers |
| Customers | Buys organically | Customers who usually buy without a promo code |
| Customers | Regular refunds | To exclude customers who frequently request refunds |
Although there is, unfortunately, no magic formula to ensure that you are sending the perfect offer at the perfect time to every single subscriber, using smart segmentation is an efficient and easy way to get the most out of your database.
Treat each customer uniquely by sending targeted content when they’re most likely to engage with it, and you’ll soon reap the benefits.
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