Today, I’m going to share with you my secret to subscriber segmentation.

Here’s a hint: The most valuable way to segment your email list is the one that very few “marketing gurus” are actively talking about.

Segmentation is the act of dividing your overall subscriber database into smaller subsets based on their unique profile and/or criteria that your business might deem important. Just slicing and dicing your email list isn’t the meat and potatoes of segmentation, however. To really benefit from segmentation, you need to proactively speak to each unique subset of your database in a way that feels personalized and relevant to them.

Just about anybody you ask in the email marketing space will tell you how important subscriber segmentation is.

MailChimp measured stats for a key group of their clients, benchmarking all segmented campaigns against their non-segmented counterparts. The global results were significantly, definitively pro-segmentation.

Research by Experian Marketing Services found that personalized promotional emails enjoyed transaction rates and revenue per email six times higher than their non-personalized counterparts. An even more staggering statistic from that study? Fewer than 70% of companies surveyed were actually personalizing their messages

But few of these email marketing experts go in depth about the core and fundamental value that I believe is essential to subscriber segmentation success.

“Enough with the suspense already, Erica. Let’s hear what it is.”

Before anything else, segment email subscribers based on your business’s ideal customer journey.

Now, I am not suggesting that this is the ONLY way you should segment your subscribers. A google search on email subscriber segmentation will give you inestimable options! However, I do believe that your ideal customer journey should be at the core of your segmentation strategy. If you start with primary segmentation based on a customer’s stage in their journey with you, your entire email marketing program will benefit.

I know, because I watched this core philosophy work for the wineries I had the privilege to support in my agency career.

In my previous career running an email marketing agency specializing in the winery direct-to-consumer vertical, we automatically segmented every new brand’s database by 3 key customer journey stages:

1. Opt-in, but no purchase
2. Purchase, but no club
3. Club (separated by tier if appropriate)

I know, because this same philosophy served me very well in my year-long stint as the Director of Marketing & Sales for a local theatre company.

There, our best customers were known as “Transformers.” Not only were Transformers regular patrons in terms of buying tickets, they had also donated significant resources to the renovation effort necessary to convert what was once the Walla Walla Gas Plant into a world-class performing arts venue. Transformers received first access to tickets, priority invitation to events, and a special shout-out in the programs.   

I also occasionally gave them some love during curtain speeches.

I’ve gone all-in on this philosophy by anchoring my entire business in creating exceptional customer experiences at every stop in their journey.

Our goal at every touchpoint is to nurture the right customers into a deeper relationship with our brand.

This applies in the digital environment and the brick & mortar environment, although it manifests itself in different ways. For today, I want to delve a bit deeper on email marketing segmentation by customer journey stage.

What does your ideal customer journey look like, and how can we identify markers to easily segment based on each stage of that journey?

First, let’s put a very generic framework for a customer journey on the table for reference. This is also referred to as a sales/marketing funnel in many circles, so I’ll put it in that format because visuals = 100.

Let’s start at the top and work out way towards ADVOCACY (the pinnacle! The be-all, end-all!).

Discovery/Awareness

The discovery stage is where a customer is just getting to know that you exist. Maybe they’ve seen your product on the shelves, were impressed by your advertisement in a magazine, met you personally at a networking event, visited your website, or attended a trade show where your business had a presence. Something about you needs to pique their interest. You need to align your business to a need they have, or a problem that they need to solve.

I’ve heard of OptinMonster, but never used their product. I’ve had clients who used it, and loved it. I see their plug-in every time I log in to the WordPress backend of my website. Ironically, I visited their site the other day in search of content regarding strong lead-magnet material, and voila.

I wanted that download real bad, so I forked over my email address and now, I’m very likely in the OptinMonster database as a lead.

Microsegments to consider

You might find multiple hooks or access points to capture new subscribers (and indeed, you should!). Online sign-up forms, pop-ups, or downloaded resources can be tagged onto the subscriber record to help give you some insights into what kind of information they are most interested in. It can also help you identify what the best incentive would be for them to take the next step in their journey with you.

For instance, not only does OptinMonster now have my email address to stay in touch, they also know that I am interested in lead magnet ideas. They can use the acquisition source to focus their content delivery on more practical tips for creating lead magnets, share customer testimonials about how much X lead magnet increased their subscriber database, etc.

If the acquisition source was an event or a location visit, your target customer has a different experience and impression of your brand than a solely digital engagement, and should be spoken to accordingly. Tagging an onsite acquisition in your CRM or email marketing service helps you microsegment!

Even tagging a new subscriber from social media, or from a specific content page on your website, can give you some additional persona info to create microsegments off of.

Bottom line, if the email address doesn’t have much data associated with it, they are most likely at the “Discovery” phase with your brand. Your job is to send them information that helps them know, like, and trust your business.

Research/Interest

You’ve done the right things to gain their permission to stay in touch (acquisition), but they’ll need to learn more in order to feel comfortable making the next step in your journey. Your welcome email or series sets the tone for the relationship, and from here your job is to give the customer good reason to go even further with your business by transacting in some way. In the research and interest phase, your customer is considering your business as a potential solve for their headaches, but needs to know more.

OptinMonster nails it with their welcome sequence (just put those email subject lines in reverse order) – starting with an initial welcome that helps me understand where to start and what to expect next. Then, they deliver on their promise over the next few days to send me valuable content to help me in my journey to grow my subscriber list.

Think about some common objections to purchasing your product. What are some of the key selling points of your service? In the “Research/Interest” phase, you should be sending your subscribers content that is important to your ideal customer’s decision-making process. Testimonials from happy customers, the benefits they’ll enjoy from your product or service, lifestyle tips and hacks that make them happier and healthier because they engage further with you…

I mean, I feel like you get the picture.

Keep new subscribers out of your ongoing programming until AFTER they’ve received some form of nurture programming. The last thing you want to do is be hard-selling to your customer when they’ve just forked over their email address.

Microsegments to consider

As your customer starts to engage with your nurture content by opening emails or clicking specific links, you can start to see opportunities for microsegments within this core group. What categories of content do they open? What kinds of links do they click? If they’re getting to your product pages but not pulling the trigger to buy, it indicates an opportunity to optimize landing page content or your purchase process in order to close the deal.

And remember: don’t start hard-selling to your new subscriber until after you’ve given them a series of emails that helps them know, like, and trust you more.

Purchase/User

HOORAY! You’ve got a new customer! Give yourself 3 seconds to celebrate <truncated happy dance> and then get busy, because it’s time to overdeliver on the promises made during acquisition and nurture. 

If you transact online, make sure you send an order confirmation email that capitalizes on their initial euphoria at having made a purchase (and that overcomes any potential buyer’s remorse). If the purchase happens onsite, be sure you’re capturing the date of purchase and send a follow-up survey or thank you (and maybe solicit a great review on Yelp while you’re at it).

Think about their experience WITH your product. What does somebody who just bought from you need to do, know, or have next? How can you make sure that they actually use it and get the benefits your product promised? The messages that your purchasers receive should help them as they become users, nurture them into power-users, and then, as those power users see all the upside of your product/service, turn them into ADVOCATES.

Microsegments to consider

Once a subscriber has purchase information associated with their record, you can start to do some really fun stuff. Keep track of what they purchased, their average order value, and when they last visited you or made an online buy. These little pieces of data can be powerful drivers for triggered messages, but they can also be used to create microsegments for targeted messaging in your regularly scheduled programs.

Advocates

This is the ultimate goal: having customers so rabid for your brand/service that they tell everybody they can about it. 

Your advocates are your “frequent fliers,” your loyalty rewards members, your top tier club members, your “unlimited membership” customers. Depending on your business, you’ll call the advocates different things, and they’ll show up in your email marketing system or CRM with a different tag. Regardless of what we call them, the one thing that remains constant?

We all love these guys.

Show the love. Give, give, give, and then give some more. Regularly solicit their feedback to make sure they know how important their experience is to you. Offer them perks, first access to releases, create special events and experiences for them. Don’t lump them in with the rest of your database with every communication, or you’ll risk them feeling like you aren’t seeing them as the valuable part of your business that they are.

Advocates become your unpaid spokesmen, your un-commissioned salesforce. They introduce you to their like-minded friends and colleagues and expand your reach to more of the right kinds of customers.

And who doesn’t love having more AMAZING customers?

Summin’ it up

If you haven’t already created a segmentation strategy for your customer database, I strongly recommend you start with the key stages of your customer’s journey. This allows you to easily create more targeted and relevant content for your subscribers. It helps you meet them where they’re at in their relationship with your business, and guides them on their way to a deeper connection to you, your products, and your services.

Structure your customer segmentation and messaging strategy to nurture strangers into leads, leads into purchasers, and purchasers into advocates. These core groups usually have pretty obvious indicators within your CRM to help you parse them out, from “no data” all the way to robust purchase or loyalty/status data. By defining these groups from the onset, you’ll be better able to laser target your messages with the most high-impact and actionable info.

And as a bonus, it’s a super simple starting point that gets real bottomline results.

Are you feeling empowered to start segmenting your customers? If you’re already segmenting, what are some of the segments you’ve created? Share your successes, ideas, and challenges in the comments – I love to learn from you!