Digital marketing has evolved to ensure that personalising content when targeting customers is now standard practice. This is both to keep the end customer engaged as well as to make sure the right customers are being targeted at the right time so that marketers don’t waste their time and efforts on the wrong audience. This process is called segmentation and suppression.
What is Segmentation?
Segmentation allows you to identify your client’s target audience by filtering data. For example, you may want to find customers who are highly engaged and within a certain distance from the client’s event. Segmenting email marketing subscribers into smaller groups allows you to help your clients deliver relevant content to their customers based on specific criteria.
What is Suppression?
The ability to find the right group of people in your target audience is a great start, but it is equally important to be able to avoid the wrong audiences wherever possible. Suppression lists allow you to filter your clients’ customers that don’t want to receive emails. This could be people who aren’t interested in the content, don’t engage with the marketing or don’t fall within the target market.
How To Use Segmentation And Suppression Lists To Improve Email Performance
By making sure your client’s emails are only being received by the right people at the right time, you can maximise your agency client’s marketing efforts and keep the engagement rates as high as possible. There are a few ways to use segmentation and suppression lists to your clients’ benefit:
- Suppress Non-Responders
Some contacts will inevitably become inactive as some people lose interest over time, change their contact information or didn’t mean to subscribe in the first place. Suppressing these contacts means you will not waste any time or money by including them in marketing efforts. Non-responders negatively affect your metrics and earnings, making it more difficult to reach your goals.
- Segment Your Suppression Lists
You can segment suppression lists according to the specific groups you are targeting. While it’s important to get emails out to the audience, it is also crucial to ensure that they don’t receive the wrong kinds of emails. Making sure the right portion of your audience receives the right content can be done with some of these common types of suppression lists:
Unengaged: Use this list to filter out anyone who hasn’t taken an interest in emails in a while. Continuing to email these contacts will only cause them to lose interest further and stop opening your client’s emails altogether.
Unqualified Leads: Leads don’t always work out, meaning that some of your registered emails won’t match the criteria of the current or ideal customers. Finding and suppressing these contacts helps avoid wasting time and resources on unqualified leads.
Lifecycle: Within your client’s customer base, there is likely more than one category of people, including leads, existing customers or influencers/brand ambassadors. These different groups should receive different content based on what’s relevant to them.
Geographic: Separating email content based on location makes sense, especially if the offering is available in multiple stores, areas or even countries. You can help your client target people in different regions with content relevant to them, in their own languages and even based on events and holidays in their location.
- Opt-Outs
One of the original purposes of suppression lists was to allow anyone to unsubscribe from content they don’t wish to receive. Various countries have different laws regarding spam and unwanted emails, which is something every marketer should respect. Unsubscribed suppression lists allow you to block communication with anyone who has unsubscribed from your client’s content, creating a safeguard that helps maintain smooth email marketing operations.
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