How to segment your email database to get better results

If you’re sending the same emails to everyone on your database, you’re undermining your efforts and missing a big part of why email marketing is so powerful

Over recent years, we’ve introduced a new service into our business, one that has really helped us to understand what makes a Mailchimp account good or bad.

The Mailchimp Health Check Report (learn more about it here), allows us to review an organisation’s Mailchimp account and give them specific feedback on what’s working, what’s not, and the opportunities that are being missed.

…and without doubt, one area that we see again and again come up short is when we see the the organisation only ever sending the same email to everyone in their audience.

You see… if you are able to send different emails to different groups of people, emails that are relevant to them and their situation, your chances of success with email marketing will skyrocket.

The bottom line is that segmenting your database and using it to send targeted emails is the best way you can get more… more opens, more clicks, and most importantly, more conversions.

…so why is it that we see so many organisations miss out on this golden egg? 

Why are you failing at email segmentation?

I think we can all agree that the more relevant you are to an individual, the more likely you’re going to stimulate an action.

I’m a big American Football fan and follow the Cincinnati Bengals, so when I get an email from the NFL Shop… talking about offers for every team, I’m not that interested.

…but when I get an email talking about my team, I’m much more likely to open.

So why is it that if we all agree that being more relevant is a very good thing… that so many struggle doing it with their email marketing through Mailchimp?

Based on discussions with users and some analysis, here are the key reasons why… and some thoughts on how to actually implement.

The key reasons why Mailchimp users struggle with segmentation include: 

• Don’t have a clear idea of how to actually segment their database
• Don’t understand how to store segmentation data in Mailchimp
• Unsure of how to get the data they need to segment their emails
• No idea where to start with email segmentation

How should i segment my database?

The first barrier that many come up against is how should I actually segment my database?

There are an awful lot of different strategies you can use to segment your database to improve your performance:

• Demographics
  Using things like age, gender, income, or job role are all potentially valid ways to segment your database
• Relationship Status
  This is about your relationship with them. Are they a customer or a prospect?
• E-Commerce Data
  Knowing what someone purchased, when they bought it and lots of other data from an e-commerce shop is a great way to target different groups. This is where the classic abandoned cart email sits – which is an email specifically targeted at someone who doesn’t complete a purchase.
• Where they signed up
  A classic way of segmenting your data is knowing where they signed up – so you can send them information based on the form they completed.
• Engagement
  Segmenting your audience by how much they engage with your emails is important when it comes to email deliverability. Sending emails to everyone when a proportion of your database has proven not to be engaged is harmful to your sender reputation.
• User Preferences
  Giving your users the ability to choose what they want to hear from you about. This could be different subjects of interest, or different types of emails (newsletter vs sales promotions), or even how often they want to get emails.

All of these are options you can have to segment your database… but how do you know what’s right for you?

One of the main challenges with segmentation is going overboard and segmenting too much, in the fear you’ll be missing an opportunity.

Here at Chimp Answers we call this “going down the rabbit hole“.

The key with segmentation strategy is about balancing the time and effort to both capture segmentation data and use it in campaigns, against the return we can get on this time.

Consider this… if time was unlimited, then you’d create an individual to every contact you had, tailoring it perfectly for their situation, knowing you were being 100% relevant to them.

The problem is, time isn’t unlimited, and so we need to be careful, picking the segmentation strategy we’re going to adopt to ensure a decent return based on the time we can invest.

A great place to start is to decide on whether you want to “slice the cake” or “lick the icing”.

Slicing the cake is about taking your database and splitting it up into distinct sections. What basis you do this on is down to you, what you sell and your marketplace… but the idea is that you have a number of clear ‘segments’ in your database who you can be more relevant to… or certainly more relevant than if you were just sending everyone the same email!

The other option is what we call “Licking the Icing“. In this strategy instead of taking your database and cutting it into big slices… you identify a small group of less than 5% of your main database, but the contacts in this small segment are so perfectly aligned with you that by speaking to them directly with the right message, they’ll almost bite your hand off to buy.

It doesn’t matter whether you slice the cake or lick the icing… as long as you’re clear on the best segments to initially target to get the best results, based on the time you’ve got available.

…which is fine, as long as you technically know how to store your segmentation information in Mailchimp!

How do I store data in Mailchimp so I can segment my database?

We’ve written several blog posts about how Mailchimp can store different types of data, but for the sake of this article, we’ll keep it short and sweet:

• Fields are for personal information about an individual (email, name, birthday, address)
• Groups are for information you want people to tell you to use as segmentation, as it’s much easier to allow groups to be seen in the forms you create – and thus they’re ideal to use for “user preferences” such as “interests” or “frequency”.
• Tags are for your own “tracking” as they can’t be seen by users – a good example of this is when someone completes a form, you can add a tag to them automatically. Alternatively, if they purchase from you, you can add a tag to them of “Customer”.
• E-Commerce Data is held separately and is populated from an e-commerce store that is connected up.
• Segments are essentially “database queries” that you can make – asking Mailchimp to let you know who’s got what data (e.g. in a specific group AND tagged)

So you need to understand the type of segmentation strategy you’re using… and the type of data you’re storing, so you know “where” it can be stored and pulled from for your targeted campaigns.

…but then of course, there’s the age old question of “how do I actually collect the data”?

How do I get the data I need so I can segment my database

If data is the fuel that email marketing runs on, then capturing the data you need is the refinery that produces the fuel – so without the right data capture in place, some of your efforts to segment your email marketing will fail.

Obviously, some of the data you could segment on is already available. Segmenting on engagement is using data Mailchimp already tracks. If you’ve an e-commerce store that is connected to Mailchimp, the data is there already.

It’s the stuff where you need data from your subscribers that’s a bit harder to get, which is where the forms you use to collect information are hugely important.

If you’re looking to capture data about individuals that requires them to tell you themselves (via a form), here’s some things you need to consider…

• Start asking as soon as possible
  From experience we’ve learned that if you don’t ask for the “segmentation” information at the point of their initial signup, then it’s very hard to go back to someone later on and ask them again.
• Don’t ask for too much
  There is definitely something called “Form Fatigue” which shows that when someone completes a form, the more questions they get asked, the less likely they are to complete it – so keep your segmentation focus short.
• Use tags to track
  As mentioned previously, one way of segmenting is by identifying which form someone has completed – and using tags to track this is essential (and hidden from the user)
• Consider the tools you use
  There are lots of tools for creating forms (and pop-ups) available, some are great… some less so – finding a tool that is flexible enough to do what you want is key. Mailchimp’s own forms are “average”… but there are some great tools out there you can use which do so much more.
• Think about 2 step forms
  If you’ve got the right tool, a two step form is a great idea… you can use the first form to get the “primary” info… and then redict them to another for the segmentation stuff (and incentivise them to give you data).
• Have an incentive
  Segmentation data is valuable to you as it’ll improve your entire email marketing plan – so don’t be scared to offer incentives to people to give you that key extra information.

Here at Chimp Answers, we’re very clear that successful email marketing is all about the data you collect – and therefore the way you do it (and the forms you use) are extremely important and shouldn’t be an after thought.

… so where do I actually start?

If you’ve read this far, you may thinking – “great Robin, I understand the importance of segmenting and sending different emails to different people – but where do I start?”

If this is you, here’s some of the more obvious options we’d recommend you start putting in place as soon as you can. Some are automated emails… some you can use as a standard campaign – but whichever it is (and it hopefully is both), make sure you’re using the data.

• Ask one extra question in your forms and store this as a group in Mailchimp
  You don’t want to go over the top at the start, so picking the one question (whether it’s a “slice the cake” or “lick the icing” question, doesn’t matter) and ensure all your forms have this question.
  …and of course make sure you’ve a nice automated email tailored to their response (especially if you’re “licking the icing”.)
• Use email engagement to ensure you’re optimising your sends
  There’s numerous methods, but Mailchimp makes it easy to find those who are ‘disengaged – just create a segment and look at the options… you’ll see people who are “new”, but also those who engage often, rarely or never… send those marked as never to see if they want to positively opt out.
• Make sure you’re tracking all your form submissions with tags
  This is a must in our books – firstly because it’ll allow you segment, but more importantly, it’ll tell you which forms are working (and the ones that aren’t).
• Look at segmenting customers from prospects
  E-commerce data makes this easy… but even if you add this information manually, it’ll still be relevant – and let’s face it, customers reltionship with you is different to that of prospects – so you can definitely say something different.
• Use your e-commerce shop data
  If you’ve connected up your e-commerce shop to Mailchimp – the data is there… it’s just down to you to use it.  Whether it’s an abandoned cart email or a thank you for their first purchase and an offer to buy again (with a coupon), the data lets you be more relevant.

There are lots of different things you could do, but in our view, these are the “low hanging fruit” that should be easy to implement and that you should look to put in place quickly.

Segmentation = Relevance = Results

At the core of all good marketing is one word – RELEVANCE.

The more relevant you are to someone, the better results you’re going to have – it’s that simple.

The issue we all face in a digital world is how to be relevant… and that requires data.

If you can collect the right data in the right way, then this will give you the power to unleash an unstoppable segmentation strategy for your organisation in your emails.

We all see the adverts about better email design and fantastic subject lines and how they can get results.

…the fact is though, that they don’t hold a candle to the power of your database and the ability to be relevant to your audience.

That truly is a super power!