“ Care enough to create value for customers. If you get that part right, selling is easy “
~ Anthony Iannarino
Automation campaigns which are triggered by segmentation based on user activity can lead to increased leads or conversions for the client and allow the marketer to automate the entire journey of a mailer based on basic user activity.
But of late, we, the Email Analytics team at Pepipost, have experimented with a series of clients for Broadcast campaigns and we have arrived at the observation that these campaigns if done on a specific segment for particular types of content, can lead to increased results in engagement and lead to better conversion for the marketer within a shorter time.
Case in point: An Online Store for Industrial and Home Products and a Cashback Offers and Coupons Website in India, where we have managed to provide an increased engagement of 30% from their average engagement by indulging in segmented targeting.
Below are some of the insights we, gathered, by following a segmented targeting strategy for their promotional campaigns:
Increased open rates for the targeted audience
Since we targeted the campaigns for specific products to the segmented user base who had either added the product to cart or expressed a wish in terms of website clicks in purchasing that kind of products, the open rates were higher than the ones received on targeting just the general base for these campaigns.
Graph a) shows open rates for segmented campaigns were always higher than those received for the non-segmented base.
Increased clicks on the campaigns
Click rates are a vital sign of how interested your list audience are in the campaign that has been sent to their mailbox. A specific product campaign, when sent to the rest of the audience, yielded a decent click rate, but when compared to targeting to a specific product user list we saw an average increase of 1-2% on the same.
Graph b) shows the click rates were higher for segmented campaigns than those for active database targeting.
Increased probability for conversions/ROI for the brand
As the intended recipient of our specific targeted campaign at a discounted rate, has a similar kind of product in their minds and have either added to cart the product or checked it out on the website, he/she is more likely to purchase the product and this type of segmented marketing logic provides gains to the marketer in terms of increased conversions.
Improves domain reputation and hygiene
This is an obvious one as, engagement increases on the campaigns, the domain reputation will scale up and maintain itself as the segmented campaigns keep yielding results.
Increased CTOR rate
The Click to Open rate shows a higher percentage as the number of clicks on the campaigns increase and thus yield better CTOR rate.
Creative targeting for a variety of products
Segmented targeting enables a marketer to experiment with their products and kind of targeting they wish to do for each day of the campaigns.
Eg: The online industrial store decided to display a multitude of mixed products in the same HTML creative but target them to their product-specific audiences only. This worked well in terms of strategy to increase more open and clicks on the campaigns.
Now the above kind of segmented targeting does not drive away from the notion of targeting your active database as well. We recommend that you can target the rest of the active database (last 30 days subscribers, opener, clickers for last 90 days) on Informational or generic promotional offer campaigns available at your store/website.
Double the conversions
We worked with one of the leading travel portals in India for flight and hotel bookings. We segmented their database and targeted their audience based on their recently transacted base and processed the rest of the data based on recent activity. The results were amazing where we managed to double the open rates and conversions for the brand doubled as well.
Ways to segment the audience
A great way to segment the audience for targeted campaigns for their products will be to segment their abandoned cart users. Also if the brand website uses any Analytic tools for gauging their customer behavior online and across the channels then it will lead to a diverse set of users according to their preferences. Past transacted users for certain categories of products can also be targeted for such campaigns to check what percentage of customers return for purchases. These users should be targeted with a better offer for those products which they were looking at or a similar offer which could pique their interest to buy.
In a nutshell
The results of our little experiment definitely point to the fact that if the users are segmented based on their interest and preferences and targeted with specific content, the engagement soars and the conversions for the brand increase as well leading to better domain hygiene with ESPs and thus eventually to better Deliverability.
In the end, the mantra for a marketer should be to send the right content at the right time to the right user based on where they are in the buyer’s life-cycle journey.
