Today, we're going to talk about the benefits of audience segmentation and how it can impact your response rates, conversion rates and unsubscribe rates.

Segmenting out your audience is a very important part of lifecycle email marketing. Now, we've all heard of an e-mail blast which is essentially nothing more than creating an email message and sending it to your entire list. Although there are benefits to doing this, those benefits are far outweighed by the damage you can inflict on the size of your list as well as the relationship you have with your users. This is what often happens when everyone looks the same in the eyes of your email marketer. For example, say you purchase some very specific replacement like a muffler for your 2002 Honda Accord from an online parts retailer. If you received an email 2 months later highlighting a sale on brake pads for the same year, make and model as the car you ordered the muffler for, you may be interested in checking out the sale since the parts highlighted are specific to a car you own and have already ordered parts for.

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However, if 2 months after your muffler purchase you receive an email announcing a sale on replacement convertible tops, you're likely to ignore the email. If the next email you receive from this company highlights a sale on wheel and snow tire packages for Ford Trucks, you may get annoyed. Receiving a series of emails like this tells the user that you are not treating them special in any way; in fact, it has the complete opposite effect. It tells the user that you are lumping them in with everyone who has ever ordered parts or expressed interest in receiving emails, regardless of what product they own. This kind of generalized campaign will often result in users disengaging from your communication stream which can eventually shrink list size as unsubscribes increase and reduce repeat conversions as users begin to shop elsewhere for their automotive parts needs.

Sticking with the above example, if you had the ability to create audience segments based upon past purchase history, you would be able to send a sale announcement for Honda parts to Honda owners, Toyota parts to Toyota owners, convertible replacement parts to owners of convertibles etc. By engaging your customers on a level they can personally identify with, you are fostering a relationship where you can become the go-to source for information, pricing, availability, questions and orders for all of their automotive needs. Here at Exclusive Concepts, we do everything we can to segment out our clients' lists and send highly targeted messages with the right content to the right person at the right time. That is how we define Lifecycle Email Marketing and our clients see the results of our efforts.

If you are looking for a way to get a lot more revenue from your e-mail approach, consider our Optimized Lifecycle Email Marketing service to augment your other marketing efforts. We’ll show you how it works if you’d like – just give us a call at 800-504-4324.

Thank you for listening – have a wonderful Email Thursday!