How Email Marketers get Segmentation Wrong

A simple mistake

Email segmentation is an easy win for marketers, but is often overlooked.

A lot of emails are sent with a scattergun approach, but when you push send on a blanket email you're missing out on an opportunity. Rather than sending a bulk update, you could instead target your customers based on their past behaviour with updates on previously purchased products. What do you think is going to give you the best results?

Segmented email marketing campaigns have been shown repeatedly to be more effective, have a higher conversion rate, and to drive increased revenue, but not every retailer uses them. In many instances, they're held back by outdated retail systems; IXO Commerce is built with the modern retailer in mind.

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Email marketing is an essential part of 21st century retail. Are your business systems helping or hindering your efforts?

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So what's the benefit of segmentation?

The problem with a mass email is that some recipients are bound to be disinterested. Even your most dedicated customers will not want to purchase everything you offer. Personally, I'm not much interested in high heels. That means that if you keep sending me emails about them, I might stop listening. Every email campaign is going to have a few casualties as people unsubscribe, but when you've worked hard to build up your mailing list, you want to keep that drop off to a minimum.

By segmenting your groups, you will cut the unsubscribes and list complaints. As people get emails directly relelvant to them and their needs, the amount of spam is reduced.

Everyone likes a personal service, so when they receive an email tailored to their interests, they'll respond! All that you need to do is start splitting your mailing lists so that you can really focus on different interest groups.

Achieving better segmentation

You need to ensure that you're collecting enough information straight off the bat. Our Zone1 platform automatically records the sales information against each customer and lets you create groups based on spending patterns. You can grab the customers who bought a particular brand or product. Alternatively, why not section off your top spenders or new customers?

The trick is to collect enough information right from the start. Set up a selection of mailing groups to guage your customers' passions; you can then send custom emails to each list.

Finally, remember to use the right tool for the job. There are some truly fantastic newsletter solutions out there, and we can't pick which is the best! Instea, we like to work with a variety sot hat you can pick and choose. Each one offers dedicated support for personalisation, styling, segmentation and analytics so that no matter which system you're using there'll be a way to maximise it.

Make sure to talk to your provider to make the most of what's on offer and, if you don't have one just remember; we work directly with them to keep you life simple.

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Integrations

If you're already using an email solution, it might be worth talking to us to see how we can make the most of automation to make your life easier. These can reduce labour intensive data entry, ease compliance with GDPR and provide your marketing teams with considerably more data. An integration with Mail Chimp, for example, not only exports newsletter signups and contact preferences, but customer interests, purchase history and more, all allowing marketing automation and enhanced segmentation.

We already work with a wide variety of great companies, so just get in touch!

IXO Commerce is a digital operations platform built specifically for the modern retailer

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Manage your business with workflow automation tools that enable you and your team to get things done smoothly.

Work efficiently with a modern and intuitive user interface that links directly to your marketing platform, providing all the information that's needed for an omnichannel approach to digital marketing.

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14th October 2018