Controlling and knowing how to take advantage of “Big Data” has become a real necessity in the digital marketing space given the many challenges and opportunities it offers. For companies that use email as part of their strategy, segmenting consumers according to their characteristics, and targeting them according to that segmentation, is not only a fundamental objective but a technique they are beginning to control.
Lyris, an American email marketing company, has analyzed a number of companies with monthly email volumes of at least 50,000 messages, and has found that nearly 9 out of 10 (89%) of them use newsletters for their message campaigns of e-mail. Promotions and discounts are a little behind (86%), making the content and incentives a very even tactics.
Asked companies by the techniques they use in their campaigns, the highest percentage (85%) cited segmentation and targetting. The segmentation of lists is also considered as one of the most successful techniques, with a considerable 80% of answers, near those that mention the targetting.
It is not surprising that segmentation, given its priority and confirmation of its positive impact on the campaigns, poses no problem for companies. Segmentation was only considered somewhat complicated for 18% of responses. While many companies in other channels face the difficulty of interpreting the information they have on their customers to be able to deliver the ads and content appropriate to that information, email marketing companies seem to have that practice quite controlled, and in addition successfully.
But sophistication when it comes to segmenting lists in email marketing can be a moot point. Demographic segmentation, which uses static information about consumers to differentiate audiences, was the most popular technique. On the other hand, companies are not proceeding to segment based on previous behaviors of their customers, such as their purchase history or behavior metrics before previously sent emails.
As companies gain more experience and knowledge, we find that there is room for segmentation of lists that use not only static information about who the person is, but also dynamics about what that person has done previously.