As the digital world is so competitive, businesses must do everything possible to get to know their customers and give them a unique experience. The key to building such experiences is list segmentation — segmenting a contact list into subsets that share some common characteristics. By segmenting contacts according to engagement, brands can retarget campaigns to target audiences based on their interests and patterns, which results in higher campaigns performance, open rates, and conversions. This white paper discusses why engagement is a key consideration in segmenting contact lists and how businesses can best leverage this method.
I. Why Engaged Contact List Segmentation Matters
Engagement is a valuable measure of how interested a contact is in a brand and if they are likely to convert or buy something. By tracking and understanding engagement statistics, companies can better understand what their audiences are interested in, and they can provide personalised content that fits each demographic. Here are some of the reasons engagement segmentation is essential to marketing success:
Improved Relevance
Relevance is one of the keys to marketing success. By targeting certain audience groups based on their activity, brands are making sure that what they are communicating to each individual is relevant to them and has the best chance of receiving an appreciative response. One contact, for example, who reads a business’s blog post may be interested in education, while a contact who has read product pitches might be interested in purchase. By segmenting contacts according to their engagement, brands can build specific campaigns that are more likely to reach those segments.
Enhanced Personalization
Personalized marketing experiences have been proven to increase brand satisfaction and brand engagement. Engagement-based segmentation allows enterprises to design highly individualized campaigns according to the specific wants and interests of their consumers. Through engagement metrics, brands are able to see trends in behavior and preferences, so that they can develop content that addresses the specific demographics. This not only increases the chances of conversion but also establishes a closer connection between the business and its customers.
Increased Deliverability
Most ESPs use engagement numbers to know whether an email should be sent to a recipient’s inbox or spam folder. Segmenting contacts based on engagement can also enhance email deliverability by ensuring only engaged and engaged individuals receive a business’s messages. This not only makes the email more likely to be read but it will also lower the chances of the email becoming spam and harm a business’s sender reputation.
Better Allocation of Resources
Engagement segmentation also helps organizations allocate marketing budgets efficiently. Once businesses are aware of the audience segments that are the most engaged, they can target their marketing efforts to those groups to improve their ROI. This also allows companies to identify which segments they can further nurture or engage so that they can tailor campaigns accordingly.
II. Metrics for Measuring Engagement
When attempting to segment a contact list according to engagement, businesses must determine what engagement metrics they should be collecting and analyzing. Popular engagement metrics include:
Open percentages: The percentage of people who open a business’s emails.
CTR : The number of recipients who click on a link in an email.
Conversion rates: The number of recipients who perform a specific action (such as making a purchase or completing a form).
Time on site: The amount of time a consumer spends on a company’s website after they click from an email.
Bounce rates: Number of undeliverable emails returned from a variety of reasons, including invalid email addresses or intermittent connections.
III. What Works When Segmenting Contact Lists Based on Engagement?
For the greatest use of engagement-based contact list segmentation, companies should adopt the following best practices:
1. Monitor Engagement Metrics Constantly
The secret to effective, interaction-driven segmentation is constantly keeping track of its metrics. Companies must constantly be observing and analyzing open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates. This way they’ll learn about new trends and patterns that could reflect shifting customer needs or habits. This insistence also helps them remain responsive to the interests of their audience and implement appropriate strategy changes to maintain engagement.
2. Define Grade Thresholds
This means that companies have to come up with real metrics on the degree of engagement. In our example, depending on the engagement metrics, a contact might be active, semi-active, or inactive. One possible rule could classify contacts with open rates above 80% as active, between 40% and 80% as semi-active, and below 40% as inactive. Once these benchmarks are established, it becomes simpler for an organization to recognize segments that require marketing approaches and communications strategies.
3. Design and Deliver Re-Engagement Campaigns
Contacts that are inactive or semi-active don’t necessarily have to be abandoned. The business could design a couple of targeted re-engagement initiatives to revive interest in these sets of contacts. These could be personalized emails giving them exclusive access to discounts, promotions, or other content. This leads to the need to keep track of responses in these campaigns — if it’s not receiving any engagement, that’s a sign that it’s time to wipe those contacts off your database so that it’s clean and ready for business.
4. Diversify Content Strategies
The ability to map out the exact preferences and habits of certain audience groups will be crucial to optimizing content. Companies must establish a content strategy based on how well their contacts interact. For example, you might discover that whereas people with high levels of engagement can be exposed to more visual content (informational graphics, videos and interactive experiences), less engaged audiences may require more informational and learning material that articulates the brand’s benefit and its product or service. It is a subtle act that not only boosts engagement but also establishes an affinity between brand and audience.
5. Always Test, Always Optimize
Companies need to make continual testing and improvement an ongoing culture so that they can remain competitive and productive. Businesses often conduct A/B tests of subject lines, CTAs and sender names to figure out what’s working best for each audience. Most of the time, learning from these tests is an entry point into better messaging, and hence, a better campaign as a whole. Remember to write down your findings and adjust accordingly. This ensures that every campaign is better than the last.
Conclusion:
Engagement-based contact list segmentation empowers organizations to create personalised marketing content that resonates with their users. By tracking engagement levels and optimizing actions, businesses can build closer connections with their customers and optimize marketing to increase open rates and conversions. While customers are still looking for ever-more personalized, relevant experiences, engagement-based segmentation will be an important metric to measure in order for brands to compete in the overcrowded digital space.
