What Is Click Segmentation? Your Customers Tell You!

What’s better than organizing your email lists so effectively that all the right emails go to the right person? It’s having your customers do the organizing for you!

Welcome to the world of click segmentation, an email marketing optimization strategy that is well-loved by marketing professionals. It combines the power of personalization with time-saving automation tools, working together to maximize the return on investment of your marketing budget.

You probably already know about email list segmentation, the process of taking your humungous email list and breaking it into more manageable chunks. You can divide the big list into smaller lists based on specific demographics or behavioral data. We’ll review some of this as we talk about click segmentation because you’ll want to set up your segmented lists before you take it to the next level.

Best of all, it doesn’t take that long to set up your systems. Click segmentation is part of straightforward strategies designed to increase value in your email marketing campaigns. Once you’ve arranged the backend of your email marketing platform, you can focus on the million other things you have to do instead!

What is click segmentation?

Here’s a quick definition:

Click segmentation is an effective process of guiding your contacts, based on the decisions they make, into smaller email lists. They decide what segments of your business they are most interested in. They tell you what kind of information they want to know. You don’t have to guess — and risk getting it wrong!

You do this by creating different link options for them to click on. These links are usually included in an email message, although they could exist on your website. You could even integrate this method into your social media marketing with ads leading prospects to landing pages with different sign-up options.

Let’s use a simple example. I send out an email to my big email list with three links. One says, “My favorite color is blue.” One says, “My favorite color is red.” The last one says, “I like purple best.” Each recipient clicks on their link, and the automation goes to work.

Without contacts knowing, they get segmented into three smaller lists I’ve already set up. Now, I know who likes what color, and I can send personalized product recommendations. Even better, I can create automated workflows to send those emails for me.

We’ll expand on the steps you’ll need to take to make this happen for your business. But first, you may be wondering what kind of segments would make sense for your customers.

Breaking down click segmentation 

These smaller email lists are known as segments. The segments will look different for almost every business, as they depend on who is in your target audience, the various locations where you operate, and the many buying decisions your customers make. 

Still, all segments fall into one of three general categories.

Demographics

This is the most familiar segment, referring to the statistical data of a population. You may be able to break your email list contacts into varying age groups, income brackets, education levels, or gender identification.

This information, while not especially personal, can help in certain retail situations. For example, if a customer clicks a link for “Men’s Fashion” rather than “Ladies’ Fashion,” you’ll know some important information.  

Geographics

This segment is based on location. Let’s say your business has different stores with managers overseeing specific areas of the region. It would be helpful to know where an email recipient is located, especially if some stores have different offers or updates. 

It’s also important to know if there are people in your email list who live outside of your service area. For example, nonprofits can partner with other organizations to provide appropriate information about resources that aren’t available otherwise.  

Psychographics

When it comes to understanding the behavior of your target audience, psychographics is perhaps the most important segment. This refers to the tastes and attitudes of a demographic. It involves the buying habits, the pain points, and the preferences of a person. Psychographics can help you understand where a person spends their time and money. 

Without a team of marketing researchers, this type of information can be very challenging to obtain. When you ask these questions directly, you risk making your customer feel like a number instead of a person. With click segmentation, though, they can volunteer this valuable information and give you the data you need to provide the products and services they want.

Benefits of click segmentation

Click segmentation, perhaps more than any other marketing strategy, gives you accurate information to fully understand your target audience. You’ll be able to speak their language because they are giving you the words they want to hear!

This audience-targeting practice also lets you:

• Improve the open rates of your email campaigns
• Save time by setting up automation processes
• Send only the most timely and relevant information to customers
• Increase your sales or donations
• Strengthen your customer relationships

Best of all, this practice works for all industries. For retail, service, nonprofits, and all other businesses, there is a great benefit to this work. It is valuable for B2B and B2C businesses, as well. Simply put, this strategy builds an infrastructure that allows your customers and leads to sort themselves into the groups that best define them. 

Getting started with click segmentation

Click segmentation requires some planning, and it starts with a quick review of email segmentation. As you probably know, email sign-up forms can be exhaustive in length. It’s bad form to ask everything of a prospect right away — and yet, how can you gain the information you need to funnel them into the appropriate segment?

Before you gather this information, you’ll need to set up your email segments. This involves knowing and/or logic.

As you add specific criteria to create your segments, filter your contacts with this logic. For example, you can create a segment for “customers who abandoned their shopping cart in the last week” AND “placed an order in the last three months.”

You may also want to add segments based on specific special events. This works best when you build a landing page on your website for each event, as you can maximize your conversion rate when there are fewer clicks for your customers. 

Setting up the email list segments may seem tricky, but it’s worth it, as it will save you a lot of time in the future. Once you’ve created these smaller lists, they will update automatically. When you send an email campaign, you’ll be able to choose who gets the message by picking the specific segments.

Asking your customers to segment themselves

Think of your email list segments as the hidden infrastructure of your email marketing plan. Without the different segments, the plan won’t hold up. 

But just as you don’t need to know about the timber used to construct the building, your customers don’t need to know what list they’re in. This background information is for you and your team to provide the most appropriate message.

Even if a customer is in two different segments (they bought a ticket to a special event AND they live in a certain region), they’ll only receive one email. You won’t have to worry about bombarding an inbox if you want to send a message to more than one group.

With that understanding and work complete, you’re ready to implement click segmentation. Wonderfully, you can automate much of this work once a person has signed up to your general email list. Here are the steps:

1. Create a workflow that is triggered to begin once someone submits their email address on a sign-up form or call-to-action button.
2. Design a general welcome email for everyone to immediately receive, letting them know they’ve successfully signed up for your list. This welcome email should highlight your brand, and it may include a free lead magnet. These are resources like eBooks, templates, checklists, or other tools serving as incentives to get people to sign up.
3. Within this email, create a few buttons people can click to “learn more” about certain segments. For example, you may only want to focus on simple geographics in this initial email. 
4. Continue your automated workflow to send specific information based on what the customer clicked. At this point, that and/or logic in your infrastructure will add the email recipient automatically into a pre-determined segment. You won’t have to do anything after you set up the workflow. 
5. Keep offering new click segmentation options with each email message. Instead of overwhelming them with options, pick a new topic each time. If you choose geographics for the welcome email, you can add clickable options for demographic or psychographic segments next. 

It won’t take long for your customers to fill up your email segments organically. Check your email heat maps to see how recipients are interacting with your messages.

Look to see if certain segments remain empty. This may give you some interesting information about your target audience, or it may encourage you to rethink your email list segments. Either way, you’ll be ready for the next step — having your email segments work for you. 

Use your segments strategically

The next phase of click segmentation is to create targeted emails in a drip campaign. This is a limited series of email messages automatically sent at a predetermined time based on a specific action or inaction. Drip campaigns are personalized, timely, and succinct. Best of all, they are effective.

To create a drip campaign, design somewhere between four and 10 email messages that are relevant to the specific segment group. Because they are short and sweet, you can focus on just one topic or theme per message. There’s no need to create long, complex newsletters for this strategy.

Instead, think of ways to engage your customers. The more you understand their pain points or interests, the easier this will be. Show them the values behind your brand. Use this initiative to get them more invested in your business. After all, marketing is all about building relationships — and that takes time.

With each of these email messages, you can use the click segmentation strategy to continue to refine your understanding of the recipient. Be open to the possibility that you’ll need to add new list segments.  

This may mean that your segments get smaller over time. That’s OK. Sending very specific, targeted messages could end in your biggest sale yet.

Creating a strategy for all your email lists

Use your email list segments to send specific, targeted messages. The primary list — which still includes everyone on the smaller lists — should serve you for general information and news.

All your lists are valuable, and you should be proud of the work you’ve done to build the infrastructure you can use to grow your business. If you haven’t already, start this journey with an inventory of your email list.

Now is a good time to clean up your primary email list. Get rid of any email addresses with a hard bounce response, which means the address no longer exists. Then, check that all profile information is as complete as possible. 

You may also want to send an email to your current subscribers to see if they are still interested in receiving valuable content from your brand. This work is often overlooked for fear of losing contacts, but you’ll improve your email deliverability and make it easier for you to connect with people who are interested.

Once you’ve cleaned up your main list, it’s time to start brainstorming the different segments that could help your marketing goals. Write down what you know about the demographics, geographics, and psychographics of your target audience. Then, think about what you don’t know. With click segmentation, you’ll learn the answers soon!