A Healthy Dose Of Trust Works Wonders With Your Email List

Can you feel it? The onset of the holiday season and the frenzy that accompanies it. Everywhere you look, there are bargains, deals, and coupons vying for your attention. It seems nearly impossible to escape the clutches of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It's already bad enough to be bombarded with offers in stores (when do we shop offline anymore?), but when email marketers start sending out their grande dame of all promotions, things can get utterly overwhelming.

Fortunately for us all, there's one app that can help turn those tides in our favor: list segmentation! With this strategy at your disposal, you're able to target specific segments of your audience and send messages designed specifically for them. And at this time of year when even the strongest of lists can feel inundated, segmentation is the best way to create a personal connection with your audience.

But how do you know what segments you should be targeting in order to get the best results? What segments are most likely to respond to your emails? Let's take a look at three of the most common ways email marketers use segmentation: by time, by demographics and by interests.

1. Time-Based Segmentation

For retailers, one of the biggest holidays of the year is Cyber Monday. That's when millions of people who have been shopping online all week, decide to take their purchases home in one go. So when we think about Cyber Monday, what do we tend to think about? The discounts on Black Friday , and the bargains we were able to make on Cyber Monday.

It's easy enough to send out a message featuring an exclusive sale to your entire list. But how many of those emails are actually reaching your subscriber-base? Email marketers often segment by time in order to determine which days of the week their subscribers are most likely to open their emails.

The same principle can be applied to any email marketer's list, not just retailers . Perhaps you only want to send out your weekly newsletter on Mondays, but you're getting many subscribers from Friday through Sunday. If so, it's likely that your subscribers aren't checking their email on the weekend, and wouldn't receive your message. By segmenting by time, you could send a special Cyber Monday message to your list, with the hope that more of those recipients will find it in their inboxes first thing on Monday morning.

2. Demographic Segmentation

It goes without saying that there are plenty of shopping-related emails sent over Thanksgiving weekend. So what does this mean for demographics? Well, it means that the people sending these emails are most likely male , aged 35+. But if you think of your subscriber-base as a list of people, then there's another important demographic to consider: age. Think about the other holiday season you're most likely to be sending emails: Christmas Eve. If you know that the majority of the people who check their email on Christmas Eve are aged 35+, it'll help you customize your messages even more.

3. Interest Segmentation

If the idea of segmenting your list by time is something that makes you squirm a bit, then perhaps interest-based segmentation sounds more appealing. By this method, an email marketer is able to determine which segments of their mailing list have certain interests or passions .

Conclusion

Email marketing is a wonderful way to keep in touch with your customers. But this time of year can be stressful for marketers, as so many companies are vying for the same audience. By segmenting your list by demography and/or interests, you can create email campaigns that speak directly to your audience's desires .

While you want to send out a general Thanksgiving message to all of your subscribers, it's even more important to target those who are most likely to respond. After all, if they open your email on Cyber Monday, the chances that they'll remember you again next year are much higher.