You may don't know that 77% of consumers prefer to receive permission-based marketing communications through email (stats from ExactTarget). In addition, segmenting your email marketing list is also a most important step to reduce the unsubscribe rate and improve the open rate.
Why? It's obvious that you want to send the right thing to the right people. They'll think that you are communicating with them, not someone else. When they think like that, it's more likely that they will open your emails.
When? It's also a tricky question though. I think that when you have enough resource to mange your email marketing campaign, and your list is big enough to do this (>1,000 in my opinion).
What? You may want to segment your customer list based on few conditions that you want for example:
- Gender
- Age
- Location
- Purchase habit
- Interest
- Birthday
- ...
How? There are many methods to do this; however, it's better if you know what information you need to collect your email marketing list at the beginning. If you don't, there are many ways that help to collect more information of your current email marketing list:
- Send an email and ask them directly
- Conduct a survey or contest
- Integrate with another platform such as, Google Analytic, social media or eCommerce sites
- ...
After you have all information needed, you can start segmenting your email marketing list. I used Mailchimp to manage all the email list. It's easy to do. If you need a demonstration video, please let a comment.
Have a nice day :)