Segmentation is the process of identifying groups of similar customers as well as potential customers and prioritizing both groups in order to address and understand their behavior. This allows companies to respond with an appropriate marketing strategy, satisfying the different preferences of each chosen segment. Utilizing segmentation allows email marketers to achieve higher relevance, more successful campaigns and diffuse any association with spam
What is the difference between spam and email marketing?
Many people have trouble differentiating spam from legitimate email marketing. They can be easily confused if an email marketing campaign is not done properly. Spam is unsolicited email in which recipients did not give the sender permission to the send the email. It accounts for nearly 54 percent of all internet email. Legitimate email campaigns have permission from recipients to send them their emails.
Why is segmentation important?
People are becoming weary of spam. They are increasingly deleting emails that resemble any form of advertising. Some people have even added spam filter devices on their email accounts that also filter out legitimate email marketing campaigns. Spam is the number one concern for a legitimate marketing campaign. One way to counteract the nuisance is using segmentation to personalize email messages. By using data on consumers and customizing emails for a specified target audience, consumers will feel more obligated to read the email and less worried that your marketing campaign is spam. According to Joseph Turow, professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications, one of the most important things to remember in creating a successful email marketing campaign is "Don't overload people with messages, get to them with exactly what you think they want to know, and don't bother them too much with it," This can only be done by using segmentation.
Easy way to start segmenting.
First thing you can do is delete unresponsive addresses. It makes no sense to continue sending emails to people who do not respond. You can also create extremely accurate segments that reflect marketing goals if you collect data on recipients at registration or follow-up requests. It is advised to gather some information on demographics or other data that can boost the sorting process but you can still design helpful segments based on a recipient's history on your web-site.
Kurt is the Public Relations Manager for Kinetica Media, an Internet marketing company that works to harness the power of websites, email and search marketing for businesses so they can get and keep more customers.. Visit www.kineticamedia.com to see how their proven online marketing services can increase your customer loyalty & overall sales.
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