We have recently mentioned the basic, single factor method of segmenting email marketing list for the purpose of targeting emails. For greater ROI, you need to go a little further.
Let’s take the example of customer who bought a high level printer from you. A quick assessment of your data will show that 50% of those who buy replacement cartridges from you do so between four and six months into ownership and at similar times thereafter. The simple answer is to send a marketing email to all purchasers at three months or so, with an offer that will stand for three months. They would be silly to ignore it.
However, you have ignored 50% of your customers. If you return to your data you might be able to discover how the other 50% behave.
Separate all those who bought cartridges before the four to six months norm. These, after all, are likely to be your best customers in the sense of buying most. Find common factors, such as, perhaps, what type of business they are in. If they are, say, lawyers then you might consider such companies worthy of a reduction in the price of a printer given their likely high demand level on consumables.
You could also check over a year to see if there is variation in the demand for cartridges. A rather simplistic example could be accountants who might well print off more paperwork in the month or two leading up to the end of the financial year. In this case an event generated email marketing campaign for a specific segmented list might be worthwhile.
You can see that for the last example, the list was segmented from an already segmented list: those who had bought a printer. The list was segmented again: those who bought replacement cartridges at a specific time of the year.
Sub dividing email marketing lists is a way of making offers that are specific to the customer. As well as indicating the best time to send the email, it can also give ideas for the Subject Line as well, and a heading, pointing out that they would not want to run out of ink half way through an urgent print run.
