Email marketing is most often used in journalism and marketing industries – however the most profitable industry for email marketing is retail. By far, email marketing encourages the highest rate of conversion within the retail sector. The fact is that today’s consumer landscape needs customization and exposure – two things that email marketing excels at, especially when you’re utilizing list segmentation. And the one industry that’s ripe to benefit from this equation is retail.

Divide & Conquer: Why Segmentation Works For Retailers

If you believe in the saying that no two consumers are alike, then there’s a good chance that you’ll be a fan of list segmentations. That fact is, that theirs is very rarely one list to rule them all; you need to divide and conquer your email marketing list. After all, you took great pains and considerable time to cultivate relationships and curate your email marketing list. What does is say about you as a retailer if you’re now sending all your contacts one generic email? It’s says your unoriginal and impolite. And frankly, it’s poor email etiquette.

You may have already thought of segmentation. Perhaps you have a segmented list by demographic, by gender or age. However, this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to segmented lists. Lists of this caliber are great for when you want to offer a special, a new product or service, or even highlight a feature that’s best suited for a specific group. Yet, the real question is: how do you target the different levels engagement among your email subscribers.

Where List Segmentation Gets Interesting

Today’s consumer falls into four basic categories, and your segmented email list should be able to identify and cater to each type. How to engage with a responder, for example, should differ from how you engage with a new subscriber, versus those who simply click yet don’t act, and worse still there are the “deadbeats,” which are people how have never opened an email from you. There’s a way to deal with each of these and a strategy that factors in which point of the sales funnel is acting as a bottleneck that prevents them from moving forward.

Targeting Content Generation Around List Segmentation

Rather than creating content and then sending it to segmented lists, you can also work backwards to create content around segmented lists. This means that your looking at your segmented email marketing lists to see which might have the highest success rates, which you want to target because they don’t, and which audience hasn’t perhaps received a customized email marketing piece to encourage conversion. That said, you next step is to dig in and see which of the 4 types of subscribers your dealing with. Once you’ve figured that out and know how exactly you’re dealing with, you can go back to the content drawing board to develop customized content.

Taking this approach facilitates content generation, particular for more intensive projects like video email marketing pieces, ensuring that you’re efforts are honed in for a specific audience and stage of conversion.

How to Reuse Segmented Email Marketing Lists

One of frequent mistakes those managing an email marketing campaign will do is that a past campaign gets pushed into an email archive. However, these email campaigns still have some serious mileage in them. Furthermore, not finding a way to repurpose them in some way is a limited use of resources. You’ve spent the time crafting content and taken the time to design a campaign – so why should that effort be lost once you click send?

Work with your email marketing team (or your content department) to expose them to free training resources that can help you maximize sales within your sector. Or for more information about setting up email marketing, call us at 800.430.4095.

Targeted Emailing is a great tool for list segmentation. Check out our latest Ask Andy video on targeted emailing:

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by Shireen Qudosi

Shireen Qudosi is Benchmark Email's Online Marketing Specialist and Small Business Advocate. An Orange County based writer, Shireen specializes in online marketing and public relations. She has written for over 75 publications and has launched nine successful new media campaigns to date. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Denver Post, the Oklahoman and Green Air Radio, among others.