Most response analysis tests for email campaigns will prove and re-prove that the majority of all the response you ever get from a new email name will come within the first 6-8 transmissions – see email marketing response rates.

You need a segmentation strategy for your email list.

There are several ways you can segment your email list:

• New to file,  new customers and leads
• Source, online offline etc.
• Recency of purchase
• Number of emails already sent
• How much money have they spent

All of these segmentation strategies have merit depending on your business model. The way an e-commerce site will approach customer segmentation strategy will differ from how a lead generation site will approach segmentation.

However, one type of segmentation is always useful. That is the new to file email contact. These folks can be new customers or leads but in both cases they justify a solid segmentation strategy.

New email customers segmentation

New customer segments should not be simply pooled together with your 12 or 24 month buyer file. Remember, after about 8 transmissions these people are going to start tuning you out. And that’s even if you are relevant and interesting. So, if you are going to get anything good out of your email promotions you better do it in the first 8 sends.

12m and 24 month buyer files often contain mostly one time buyers and customers who have not purchased for a long time. Approaching these folks with discounts and sales focused on “reactivating” makes sense. Most people have tuned you out but it only takes a few responses to make email “pay” for itself. So the average business will continue to blast away at these customers even with the pathetic response rates they get.

Hitting new customer segments with the same sales message you are using to stimulate “reactivations” of older email segments is a mistake. In many cases you are actually down-selling your hottest customers.

Instead these new customer segments should be regarded as prime targets for up-selling and migrating to higher ticket items. This approach will increase the lifetime value of the customer. If you can effectively automate this process then do so. And if your average sale is high enough you may want to actually start manually responding with customized sales pitches to your new customers especially for the first few highly lucrative sends. see email marketing response rates.

New email leads segmentation

Segmentation strategies for new leads (newsletter sign ups, contest entries etc.) are different from new customer segmentation strategies. But some of the same principles apply.

Don’t just throw your new leads into the same pot with all your 12m leads. Again these leads are most likely to reply within the first 6-8 transmissions, after that they start to tune you out regardless of your message. In fact if you are a B2B company trying to convert these leads by phone you may want to hold back form email until you have exhausted the phone. You’ll always get a better response by phone.

If you are approaching new lead segments by email then think of each of your 6-8 first sends as a sequence of persuasion. And this persuasion should be pointing these leads towards higher life time value, higher ticket sales and so forth.

Don’t start off by offering deep discounts and sales or other low margin tactics. Yes, try these methods after all else fails but use these first 6-8 email sends as unique opportunity to develop high margin sales.

Overall  email Segmentation strategy

When developing your email promotions be sure to use segmentation strategy as a method for making email promotions more profitable.