Email marketing is an incredibly powerful marketing channel - but only if you know how to leverage it the right way. This webinar covers why you should segment your email database, how to create segments and lists, how to use your email lists for max engagement, email marketing strategies and techniques to try and more. View the video recording here: https://www.brafton.com/webinar/segmentation-and-personalization-in-email-marketing/

1. Segmentation and
Personalization
IN EMAIL MARKETING
PRESENTED BY:

2. Email: One of the Most Valuable
Marketing Channels
Email marketing boasts high ROI:
SOURCE: LITMUS – STATE OF EMAIL REPORT
$38:1 $48:1
to
To drive results from your email marketing
strategy, you need to know how to:
Leverage and segment your email database.
Personalize your messages.
Understand your readers’ preferences
extremely well.

3. Today’s
Takeaways
Here’s what’s on our agenda for this session:
1. Email segmentation and why it matters
2.12 email segmentation strategies to try
3.How to create email segments
4.Email lists terminology
5.How to use email segments and lists in practice
6.Email personalization
7. Measuring email marketing success

4. Meet the Speakers

5. Molly Ploe
MEET THE SPEAKER:
Molly Ploe is a senior marketing specialist at
Brafton. With a degree in journalism and 8+ years
of marketing experience, she's learned that more
information, more questions and more data are
usually good things, until it all becomes
disorganized and incomprehensible. She aims to
help other marketers collect information and
organize it in useful ways that help them achieve
their goals.

6. Alison Moulton
MEET THE SPEAKER:
Alison is a Solutions Consultant and has over 7 years
experience as a Marketo practitioner and admin. She
is driven by data and thrives on helping organizations
make the most of their entire tech stack.

7. Email Segmentation
and Why it Matters

8. What is Email
Segmentation?
Email segmentation is the process of splitting
a database of email contacts in to smaller lists
of people based on specific criteria.

9. Why Does it Matter?
Email segmentation has two purposes that are both critical to effective email marketing:
1. Segmentation helps you maintain
a healthy email reputation.
2. Segmenting and personalizing your emails
makes for more effective email marketing.

10. Improving Your Email
Reputation With Segmentation
Internet service providers protect their users by preventing spam from entering their inboxes.
ISPs assign a sender score to every organization that sends emails, using proprietary methods.
High score
Your emails always land in
recipients’ inboxes
Low score
Your emails go to the spam folder
ISP puts you on a blocklist
Your emails are rejected completely

11. Factors
Contributing
to Your
Sender Score
Volume: How many emails you send.
Engagement Metrics: High open and click-
through rates show your recipients enjoy
receiving your emails. High unsubscribe rates
demonstrate the opposite.
Spam Signals: How often people take
the time to mark your email as spam.
Bounce Rates: High bounce rates
mean your email list isn’t clean.
Blocklists: Appearing on Spamhaus,
Spamcop, etc. harms your reputation.

12. How
Segmentation
Can Improve Your
Sender Score
You have more control than you might think
over those factors, thanks to segmentation.
** Tip: Track your IP and domain reputation in
Google Postmaster Tools.
Send more emails to people in your
database who are most likely to open and
engage with them.
ISPs see you as a legitimate,
non-spammy sender.
You’ll see better email
campaign outcomes.

13. Drive Email Marketing Campaign
Results With Segmentation
Segmentation is the best way to see the high ROI email is known for.
By carefully selecting your recipients, you can
make sure you’re only emailing people who
want to hear from you. They’re most likely to:
Open your emails.
Click on your links.
Spend money with your company.
You’re also weeding out under-engaged and
unengaged contacts who:
● May harm your sender score over time by ignoring
your emails or marking them as spam.
● Don’t want to hear from you right now.

14. 12 Email Segmentation
Strategies to Try

15. What Segments
Should You Create?
You can use segmentation to build any
kind of email list you can imagine.
Structure your segments in ways that
make sense for you and your specific
business and marketing goals.
Every organization’s lists will be
different, but let’s take a look at a dozen
segmentation ideas to get you started.
Just remember: More isn’t more. Having too many segments can lead to inefficiencies.

16. 1. Segment by
Bounced Email
Addresses
A bounce is when an email client rejects your
message, preventing it from landing in the inbox
or even the spam folder.
Emailing bounced addresses will hurt your
sender score – but not all bounces are alike.

17. Hard Bounce
One hard bounce
Do not try emailing again.
Rejected for permanent reasons:
● The email address is fake.
● There’s a typo in the address.

18. Soft Bounce
Safe to try emailing again.
One soft bounce
Not worth emailing again.
Repeated soft bounces
Rejected for a variety of temporary reasons:
● Your contact’s mail server went down.
● They marked your previous emails as spam.
● There’s an OOO autoresponder.
● The email client thinks your attachment
looks fishy (or phishy).

19. 2. Segment by
Email Open (or
Non-Open)
Someone who opens your email likely
recognizes your brand and enjoys your
content. Follow up with them.
Email Open:
● Course launch email → 15% open rate + some
enrollments.
● Follow-up email to people who opened but didn’t
enroll → 70% open rate + more enrollments!
We make a point of doing this after every major
asset launch:

20. 2. Segment by
Email Open (or
Non-Open)
Someone who habitually doesn’t open your
emails isn’t interested – and they may bring
down your sender score.
Keeping them out of your lists can improve
open and engagement rates, and send more
positive signals to ISPs and email clients.
Email Non-Open:

21. 3. Segment
by Industry
Audiences from different industries will
approach your offerings with different
challenges, questions and mindsets.
Create industry-relevant email copy for
people in those distinct fields.

22. 4. Segment by
Geography
Geographic segmentation is especially
important to organizations that operate
across time zones or regional boundaries.
It’s also helpful for businesses with
multiple brick-and-mortar locations.
Divide your list based on geographies to create
hyper-local email content:
Align your messaging with local
goings-on.
Use local spelling or
colloquialisms.
Share promotions that are
unique to each location.

23. 5. Segment
by Job Title
People with different job responsibilities will
have different questions about your products
or services.
Though they might work in the same industry,
they’ll all benefit from different resources
and perspectives.

24. 6. Segment by
Current Customers
The cost of retaining a customer is
generally much lower than it is to
acquire a new one.
Maintaining a list of current
customers will make it easy to share
useful information about product
upgrades, company news or
additional offerings in your catalog.

25. 7. Segment
by Former
Customers
Use your former customer segment to find out why
they’re not buying from you through a quick survey.
You can also send a quick pitch or promotion to see if
they’re interested in started something new, while
reminding them about the benefits of partnering with
your company.

26. 8. Segment by
New Contacts
Welcome new contacts to your program
through introductory emails that share helpful
resources and highlight what your brand
stands for.
This warm-up process can set you up for more
meaningful interactions via email later on.

27. 9. Segment by
Purchase History
Send customers information based on what
they’ve already purchased.
How-to guides, deeper insights and additional
product recommendations can help your
customers get the most value from their recent
purchases while keeping them engaged.

28. 10. Segment by Filled Out Form
You can learn a lot about people based on the forms they fill out on your website. Follow up
to provide exactly what they’re looking for.
Newsletter sign-up
Now you know they want your
emails. (Perfect!)
Send a roundup of great
resources until the next
newsletter goes out.
eBook download
Now you know what topics
they’re interested in.
Send a related resource to
see if that resonates, too.
Demo request
Now you know they’re in the
consideration stage of the
sales funnel.
Market accordingly.

29. 11. Segment
by Client
Lifetime Value
You’ll have customers who buy once in a
while, and then you’ll have customers who
really spend.
Thank those high-value customers for their
loyalty and patronage through rewards and
emails that show your appreciation.
You could also offer promotions to customers
who spend above a certain threshold, further
increasing their CLV.

30. 12. Segment by
Device Used
for Email
It’s essential to make sure your email looks flawless
on all devices, operating systems and email clients.
But some things work better when you tailor your
emails to different contexts.
Send mobile-first contacts emails built
specifically for mobile consumption, and
likewise with desktop-first contacts.
Doing so will create a unique viewing
experience unlike the emails you create
for cross-platform functionality.

31. How to Create
Email Segments

32. Creating
Segments in an
Email Automation
Program
Each email program is different. We’ll walk you through creating segments in Marketo.
Your email automation software has features
that allow you to create email segments
based on the data you have about each of
your contacts.

33. Email List Terminology

34. Email Segments vs. Email Lists
Once you’ve defined your segmentation, you’ve effectively created a list of people who fit into specific
criteria. Let’s pause and take a moment to distinguish between email segments and email lists:
An email segment is a subset of your
database based on qualifying criteria.
● It grows and shrinks based on how many people fit
the conditions of your segment.
● When someone makes a purchase for the first time,
they’d be pulled into a segment of current customers.
An email list is a static group of contacts.
● It grows and shrinks based on people’s
subscription preferences.
● When someone unsubscribes from your
newsletter, your email list loses that person.

35. But different email platforms use their own vernacular.
In Marketo, in addition to creating Segmentations, you
can also create Smart Lists of contacts, also based on
specific qualifiers. All of this is based on your overall
Database of contacts.

36. Email List Logic
There are many ways various email
programs approach list logic.
In Marketo, there are 3 options:
● Use ALL when people should meet
every single criterion you’ve set.
● Use ANY when people should be
included if they meet one or more
criteria.
● Use ADVANCED when you’re
dealing with a lot of criteria being
used in different ways.

37. How to Use Email Segments
and Lists in Practice

38. How Should You Use
Email Segments?
Creating segments is one thing; making the most of
them is another. This is where strategy and creativity
come together to produce an email campaign that
grabs readers’ attention and inspires action.
Let’s look at 3 techniques to leverage email
segments to create campaigns designed
for high engagement.

39. 1. Introductory Campaigns
for New Leads
When there’s someone new in your email database,
introduce your brand through a drip campaign and
give them time to enjoy the content you’re sharing.
As the campaign progresses, people will either
open or ignore your emails. Filter out unengaged
contacts every few weeks.
Only the most engaged people will make it to the end – and that’s a good thing.

40. 2. Follow-up
Campaigns
Follow-up campaigns are when you send a second
email off the back of an initial email.
For instance, after you launch an awesome asset,
you can filter out the unengaged and re-engage
people who expressed interest.
Since you’re following up on an action they took,
express gratitude, but keep your message short and
to the point. Share something valuable to make
your second email worthwhile.
Done well, these can garner incredibly high open
rates, upwards of 80%.

41. Asset Launch
EMAIL 1:
We emailed our database our State of
Content Marketing report.
● 6.7% open rate :(
● 33.8% click-to-open rate

42. Follow-up
EMAIL 2:
Two days later, we emailed only those
people who clicked the link in the first email.
● 97.4% open rate (!)
● 98.7% click-to-open rate (!)

43. 3. Autoresponder
Campaigns
These are the messages that are automatically
deployed when someone fills out a form on our
website. Most, if not all, of the forms on your website
should initiate an email.
These get the highest
open rates (34% for us,
on average). Naturally,
this is because people
have requested these
emails and expect them.

44. Email Personalization

45. Email Segmentation
vs. Email Personalization
We’ve spent a lot of time looking at segments and lists and how to use them.
This is one aspect of personalization, but that’s not the only capability when it comes to
tailoring email content to specific readers.
A mobile app developer divides its list of
customers into groups based on which apps
they downloaded.
Segmentation
The developer advertises a new feature to
just the customers who downloaded one
particular app.
Personalization

46. What is Email
Personalization?
Email personalization is the act of using email
segments or contact data to tailor messages
for the intended recipients.
Information like a contact’s first and last name,
place of work, job title and more can be used
to make your emails hyper-personal.

47. Personalization With Tokens
All this can be done with tokens, which are pieces of code that pull information from your
database and place it in your email in a natural-looking way.
Just make sure there are no data discrepancies – the last thing you want is to begin an email
with “Hi, first name.”

48. How to Get More
Personalization
Information From
Your Contacts
Forms let people enter their own
information, filling in your database for
you. So, start with a good form strategy
for your website.
Keep your forms short and minimal, asking
for only the information you really need.
For more details, consider dynamic or
smart forms that request different
information based on user signals.

49. Measuring Email
Marketing Success

50. How Do You Measure Email
Marketing Success?
When tracking the success of segmentation and personalization in your email strategy,
what really matters is your own benchmarks.
Start with a spreadsheet, like this one. Fill it in as you go,
and pay attention as patterns begin to emerge. Use this
data to figure out how to best tailor your email strategy to
your readers’ preferences.

51. Conclusion

52. Your Turn As powerful as email marketing is, it’s no lie that
it’s hard to do right. Time, experience and
experimentation are key in getting your email
strategy to be as effective as possible.
With these tips, you’ll soon be well on your way to
better open rates and excellent email ROI.

53. Thank you.
www.brafton.com www.marketo.com
molly.ploe@brafton.com