You likely already know that email is a highly effective way to reach your customers. After all, 91 percent of email users check their inboxes at least once per day.

At the same time you want to make sure your emails aren’t marked as spam! Nothing would be more frustrating than to spend time developing an email marketing campaign, only to learn that all your messages ended up in someone’s spam filter. The key to avoiding this? Email segmentation.

The value of email segregation

Imagine you are a young professional in your mid 20’s. You are looking for a hip, new place to go to with friends after work for a drink and something to eat. Maybe some trivia or occasional live entertainment would be fantastic as well. Chances are, you are not going to appreciate emails that are aimed towards the early-bird, retiree demographic. You would be interested, however, in an email that contains coupons for a free drink for the next trivia night.

When you send emails that completely miss the mark with your audience, you drastically increase the odds of being marked as spam. People will open your message, realize it has nothing to do with them or their interests, and hit the delete button. They will also become increasingly likely to disregard future messages, often without even opening them.

Email segmentation is the art of sorting your email list into groups so that the people on your email list receive the messages that are most relevant to them.

How to segment an email list

You can segment an email list in a variety of different ways. Some factors to consider are:

  • age demographics
  • types of dining experiences (early birds vs. night owls)
  • new diners versus regular customers
  • interests (quiet meal or live entertainment)

You can use nearly any criteria you can imagine that might influence people’s buying behavior. The goal is to send an email that makes people want to come back to your business.

Nuts and bolts of email segmentation

But how do you segment your email list when you know nothing about your customers? The trick is collecting what we call “smart” emails, which are emails that come packed with information. To do that, you need to have a living breathing email list, instead of a stale one that never gets updated.

Zenreach makes it easy to grow a smart email list because we gather emails from your customers when they sign onto WiFi. With that information, you can segment your email list based on everything from age and gender to frequency and timing of visits.

For example, you can create an email for first time visitors, asking about their experiences and offering a coupon for a return visit. You can send another email to those who have not visited your restaurant or bar in a while, and another email to your most loyal guests.  If you notice other visitors who tend to come in when you are offering events such as live entertainment, then a campaign detailing upcoming events might be most effective. Segmenting is easy once you have the information to do it well.

Segmenting email lists is a straightforward and effective way to reach your customers with the right message at the right time.

The goal is to send an email that has a higher chance of getting opened and bringing customers back. Think of ways your customers can be segmented and the types of emails that will appeal most to each of them–and watch your loyal customer base grow.

Interested in learning more?


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