Email Segmentation: Don’t Mix Your Mail Streams

Over the past few weeks we’ve talked about several ways that you can segment your emails to maximize your ROI. In addition to segmenting by activity and by demographics and purchase behavior, you should also organize your sends by email stream or type.

Again, start with something simple and then work your way up. Here are a couple of suggestions:

1. Marketing vs. Transactional: Marketing email tends to have higher delivery failures since it is most often labeled as SPAM or goes unread, unopened, or treated as “junk mail” by recipients. Since transactional email has higher open rates, a best practice is to send your transactional messages on a separate IP. This way you can better monitor, troubleshoot, and track delivery success rates (and failures) by your major email streams.
2. Email Type: You can further segment your email streams into the types of email sent. For instance, order cancellations that are initiated by a customer may receive separate treatment and follow-up than an order cancellation that is initiated by the company. Keep in mind that customer support emails may be one of your most critical messages in terms of delivery. It may be a good idea to isolate these messages to ensure they reach your users.

Email Segmentation: The Bottom Line

No matter what type of email you send, you should always follow email best practices to make sure your emails get delivered. Now that ISPs are actively monitoring engagement to determine delivery, email optimization has become imperative and it all starts with segmentation. By segmenting your email by activity, demographics, behavior, and email stream and type, you can create interesting dialogues that will deepen your relationship with your users.

Moreover, you should monitor your email delivery and response rates with every deployment. This data can help you prevent delivery failures from negatively impacting your email program and provide important clues as to how recipients are responding to your messages. Your end goal should be to focus on your customer and deliver the best possible email experience. That means wherever possible, customize your emails to speak directly to your users.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to approach segmenting your email, download our free guide, Email Segmentation Strategies, for tips and helpful examples.