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For brands, email personalization is not an option anymore — it’s a requirement.
Subscribers no longer want to receive emails that have nothing to do with them personally. In fact, 72% of consumers say they only engage with emails that are tailored to their interests!
If you want your contacts to respond to your emails and convert more, you need to make sure you’re sending them relevant and personalized messages that hit home.
One of the best ways to do that is with segmentation.
In this post, we’ll show you 8 best ways to segment your contacts in Sendlane, including:
- Purchase history
- Number of orders
- Website activity
- Interests & preferences
… and more!
Ready? Let’s get started.
Pro-tip: Download The eCommerce Segmentation Handbook to learn all about email segmentation in detail!
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The Top 8 Ways to Segment Contacts in Sendlane
1. Purchase history
Segmenting your contacts based on their purchase history is one of the best ways to send high-performing, targeted email campaigns.
If a contact has already bought a certain product from your store, chances are they’re going to want to purchase similar or complementary products, too!
You can leverage that information to send them tailored marketing emails, such as product recommendations and sale alerts, based on their past purchases.
For example, if several people have bought flavored coffee from your store, you can create a segment of these customers and send them product recommendation emails that highlight new flavors, best sellers, coffee mugs, and more!
Doing so would make your emails get more clicks and opens, and you’ll be more likely to make a sale!
You can also use your contact’s purchase history to send them reminders in the future.
Let's use the same example. If a contact regularly buys flavored coffee from your store, you can send them an email that reminds them to make a purchase just before their current pack ends!
Here’s an example of how Bones Coffee Company does it:
2. Number of orders
Another way eCommerce businesses can zero in on their contacts is by using Number of Orders segmentation.
This simply means you create a segment based on the number of orders customers have placed on your store in the past.
Doing so will help you identify your most loyal, high-value customers, as well as customers who need a little more convincing to make repeat purchases.
This information can help you create and send tailored emails that are more likely to convert!
For example, let’s say you want to create a segment of VIP customers who have purchased more than 5 products from your website.
Here’s how you’ll set up this segment in Sendlane:
These customers love buying from you!
To show them your appreciation (and win their hearts/wallets,) you can send them special discounts, enter them in a loyalty program or just send a Thank You message to make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Here’s an example of a Thank You email from Loeffler Randall:
You can also create multiple segments based on the number of orders. For example, you might want to create three segments:
- 1-5 purchases
- 5-10 purchases
- 10+ purchases
This would allow you to focus on all types of customers, even ones who aren’t buying from you too often.
3. Product category
Similar to segmenting by purchase history, this technique can help you target customers who have visibly shown interest in a certain type of product.
This interest can be identified through a past purchase, excessive clicks or more time than usual spent lingering on a web page.
Use this information to send contacts targeted and relevant emails that highlight the specific product category they’ve shown interest in!
For example, if a group of contacts have purchased items from a specific designer category in your clothing store, you can create a segment of those contacts, and send them personalized emails when you have new items from that designer in stock!
Another way to create this segment is by sending a short survey to your contacts asking them their preferred product categories.
This way, even if they haven’t made a purchase yet, you’ll know what kind of emails these contacts want to receive from you!
4. Website activity
The way your contacts interact with your website says a lot about what they’re interested in and likely to respond to!
This is why Sendlane lets you track website activity with its Beacon feature — so you can create targeted segments and personalized emails that actually work.
For example, you can analyze the web pages that contacts are spending the most time one, the specific product pages they’re engaging with, and even the device they’re browsing from!
You can then use this information to create targeted segments, such as “Not Visited Website in 60 Days”, “Mobile Shoppers”, or “Window Shoppers.”
With Mobile Shoppers, for example, you can double down on your marketing efforts by sending SMS alerts along with your emails.
5. Customer lifetime value (CLTV)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) is an important metric that shows businesses the total amount of profit they can expect to earn from a customer over time.
Segmenting customers by their Lifetime Value can help you identify your high- and low-value customers, and gain a better understanding of where to focus your email marketing efforts!
For example, you can create three segments based on CLTV:
- Very profitable customers ($1,000+)
- Profitable customers ($250 - $1,000)
- Unprofitable customers ($0 - $250)
Now, you can send tailored emails to each segment based on how much they’re worth to your business!
To your very profitable customers, for example, you can send loyalty rewards and tailored product recommendations in an attempt to retain them.
Similarly, to unprofitable and average customers, you can send upsell offers, educational content that helps them learn more about your products, and social proof like testimonials in an attempt to increase their LTV.
6. Average Order Value (AOV)
Another popular segmentation technique is to create a list of contacts based on their Average Order Value (AOV).
The AOV is essentially the average amount of money a customer spends on each purchase.
You can create segments based on high, medium, and low AOV to send tailored emails that aim to increase the AOV for each customer!
For example, let’s say you create three segments based on AOV for your pet shop:
- High AOV ($75+)
- Medium AOV ($50 - $75)
- Low AOV ($0 - $50)
To customers with a high AOV, you can send emails recommending expensive products, like imported cat litter, high-quality cat food and fancy pet toys.
Since these people already spend more on your store, they’re more likely to respond to these emails than others.
To customers with medium and low AOV, you can send emails highlighting cheaper products, sales, discounts, and upsell offers in an attempt to increase their order value!
7. Interests & preferences
What better way is there to segment your customers than by their interests and preferences?
There are tons of ways you can get your hands on this information!
One way is to conduct a short email survey asking your contacts about their interests and email preferences.
For example, you might have a bunch of contacts who would rather receive emails once a week, while others might be open to receiving daily emails!
You can use this info to tailor your email sending frequency to each segment so you don’t come across as too annoying or intrusive!
You could also segment your contacts based on interests like hobbies, products, and other information they might have filled in on an opt-in form or a survey.
Use this data to create targeted emails that people would welcome in their inboxes!
For instance, let’s say you run a shoe store and you recently conducted a survey asking contacts their favorite types of shoes.
You might want to create a segment for contacts who picked Sandals and Heels. Here’s what this would look like set up in Sendlane:
You now know who to send emails about sandals and heels to — from product recommendations to sale alerts to new arrivals!
To maximize engagement and conversions, you can create highly targeted segments based on multiple interests and preferences.
For example, you can create a segment of contacts who love heels and sandals, and who would only like to receive one email per week.
8. Contact engagement
Segmenting contacts based on how they interact with your emails is one of the best ways to improve the effectiveness of your future campaigns!
For example, you can segment your contacts based on how much they opened or clicked your emails in the last 30 days. Here’s what that could look like:
- Very active subscribers: Opened all emails in the last 30 days
- Active subscribers: Opened at least 1 email in the last 30 days
- Inactive subscribers: Did not open any email in the last 30 days
Here’s an example of how you can set this up in Sendlane:
Once you’ve narrowed down your subscribers by their level of activity, you can send targeted segments to get them to engage with you even more!
To inactive subscribers, for example, you can send creative “We Miss You” emails to get them back, like Brit + Co does:
If that alone doesn’t work, throw in a discount, free shipping, or a similar perk to get them to notice you!
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Get more results out of your email marketing by segmenting your contacts
Segmenting your contacts can be highly rewarding for your eCommerce business!
Not only does it help you identify the different types of customers you have, it also lets you reach out to each one more personally.
This ultimately drives up your engagement and conversion rates as contacts are more likely to respond to emails that resonate with them.
For you, this means more sales, loyal customers, and ROI!
Learn more about segmentation by downloading The eCommerce Segmentation Handbook!
Ready to level up your email marketing with multivariate segmentation? Sign up for Sendlane’s free 60 day trial and take it for a test drive!
