Market Segmentation And E-Mail Marketing

Market segmentation spreads through marketing venue after venue. Now it’s making strides in e-mail marketing.

Earlier this week, I read an article in the July 2008 issue of Internet Retailer. The article focused on the future of e-mail marketing and concluded that the bet way to survive low response rates and high unsubscribe rates of e-mail lists is to use market segmentation.

Below are a couple of quotes from the article:

“To combat these problems, e-mail marketing experts and vendors point to the need for greater segmentation of e-mail lists to target distinct groups of customers with messages they’re more likely to want and reduce the number of e-mails sent to customers.” Scott Olrich , chief marketing officer at Responsys, Inc.

“… the effectiveness of broadly written and sent e-mails has weakened. … This is where segmentation comes into play, where you can target groups of people more relevantly, like with a subject line that speaks to them. … This requires lots and lots of testing, and thinking very specifically for different customer groups.

“Showing different customers different subject lines, images, products or calls to action can make e-mail messages more applicable and thus more effective.” Julie M. Katz, e-mail marketing analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

These two top-notch marketing experts recognize the value of market segmentation and using it in e-mail marketing. Yet I’ve found that many of the emails I receive are totally ineffective.

Do Your E-mails Use Your List Members’ Language?

Do you get e-mails that are broadcast to 1000s of people on an Internet or retail marketers list? I surely do. Yet, I often find that they don’t speak to me at all. Part of that is surely because I’m a Boomer while most Internet business people are in Generation X. But the e-mails would be far more effective for me if the marketers used market segmentation to separate their lists by generation.

I know that requires gathering some information from list members, but I agree with the marketing experts quoted above, that the effort would pay off with a better return on e-mail marketing investment.

Do You Separate Your List By Their Actions?

Another part of the reason that many e-mails don’t speak to me is that the marketers don’t bother to do even basic list separation. I was on one Internet marketer’s list because I opted in for some freebie. I almost immediately bought one of his e-books. Yet I continued to get e-mails marketing that e-book. I eventually unsubscribed from his list and haven’t bought anything from him since.

If you want to avoid turning off your list members, you need to start using at least basic market segmentation like list separation. If you really want to be successful with your e-mail marketing, you need to learn more advanced market segmentation methods.

Do You Know How To Use Market Segmentation To Improve Your E-Mail Marketing?

To get information on a quick and easy market segmentation process that you can use, see my Market Segmentation E-book.

Or you can get a free report on my market segmentation process by completing the form below:

Add to Onlywire