How to Segment Email Lists Based on Content Engagement (Not Just Demographics)
Email segmentation generally refers to age, location, gender demographic, and conventional elements. While this could be helpful information, it does not encompass every aspect of what an audience might like or how they might behave. Thus, relying upon demographic features as quasi-categories for segmentation misses the mark of what email marketing can do. It's better to observe the trends in how people are looking at and utilizing the information. Segmentation based upon behavior, especially engagement with content, provides a more specific, responsive, proactive opportunity.
Why Content Engagement Is a Smarter Segmentation Signal
Demographics will tell you who your audience is, but they won't tell you what your audience wants. That's why content engagement is so valuable; it compiles real-time actions of what people choose to click on, how long they read certain articles, what topics they search for subsequently and return to. These are signs of interest as opposed to demographics that serve as stagnant, additional information. When you start to segment based on what your subscribers do within your emails, you start to personalize and then remake content that much more meaningfully for enhanced performance.
For example, two subscribers may be the same age and share the same zip code, but the one who clicks on all content related to product tutorials every time versus the one who opens all links to event invites and RSVPs clearly has different content priorities. Acknowledging this opportunity based on one simple click-through makes for a better experience. Warmy.io helps ensure that these personalized, behavior-driven emails actually land in inboxes, maximizing engagement with the right content for the right person.
Tracking Engagement Metrics That Matter
Thus, the first step to successfully segmenting your email list by content engagement is metrics. More specifically, you'll need to determine which engagement metrics make sense for tracking. While you gather demographic data for baseline information, behavioral data illustrates what people are doing based on what you send them. Therefore, you want to focus on general email metrics like open rates, click-through rates (CTR), bounce rates, and reading time per email. Such metrics indicate general user activity and help identify what keeps and doesn't keep people engaged in emails.
In addition, open rates are a standard metric, but they should be taken with a grain of salt. This metric doesn't always reflect accurate results due to privacy policies or some email providers obscuring open tracking pixels. However, using it in conjunction with others can provide certain directional topics. For example, if the open rates are high, but the CTR is low, it shows people are intrigued by your headlines but not your information. If the CTR is high regarding specific topics or links or body text within the email, it can begin to pinpoint individual tastes and topic preferences across audiences.
To analyze even more, however, some actions can be tracked that are within the email itself. For example, who clicks on links and who does not? Who downloads attachments like whitepapers or brochures or not? Who watches the videos located in the email or does not? Who responds to polls or surveys located in the email or not? All of these are signs of interested engagement; plus they provide a data point beyond mere engagement.
For instance, if one subscriber consistently clicks to the case studies but never clicks through to the sales offer, perhaps they're less interested in getting your product or service at a discount and more interested in seeing how it works in the field. If a particular group watches your how-tos embedded and downloads your user guide, they may be in explorative learning mode. These are the kinds of assessments that can create ultra-responsive segmentation.
You don't want to collect data just for the sake of collecting data; you want to collect data beyond vanity metrics.
It's vanity metrics that get you numbers that seem to do powerful things for your business. You appear more credible, more professional on the surface but it doesn't lead to action and conversion. For example, knowing that a person opened an email is not helpful to you unless you know why, but also, in a vacuum, it doesn't help you. But knowing that a subscriber who opened your email about sustainability and clicked a link to a blog post regarding the same, then followed up by downloading your free guide about sustainable practices from your website, means so much more. This subscriber has engaged with at least three different opportunities with the common thread that resonates for them in terms of interests and values or what they might be looking for at this moment.
When you assess this type of engagement over time, you can create segments that exist from proven interest and not just educated guesses. You can create a narrative that empowers opportunities for future content creation and automation. For example, when you find out which segments respond to which concepts, you can always sell that behavioral theme down the road. This leads to better segmentation and by extension, better experiences, engagement statistics, and conversion statistics.
Creating Dynamic Segments for Better Personalization
Once you've gathered enough insights about behavior, it's time to act upon it. Dynamic segmentation allows you to segment users based on what they're doing right now. While demographic segments are more static and people remain in those categories over time, these segments automatically refresh as people engage differently. Someone who opened the email about your new product launch yesterday might be interested in customer testimonials or educational offerings next week and your campaigns should reflect that.
This opens up much more relevant and timely content. You'll give the impression to your subscribers that you know them, and they'll want to continue interacting. Most email service providers that have segmentation and automation features for advanced users allow you to control this feature, too; you can create rules such as “users who clicked on educational assets three times in the last month” or “users who have not opened the last five campaigns.” This allows you to provide more targeted content about where the user currently stands on their journey.
Aligning Content Strategy with Behavioral Segments
Segmenting by engagement doesn't just give you the opportunity to re-slice your list into smaller groups. It's the kind of strategy that makes you overhaul your entire content creation game based on what you know your audience wants and needs. The value in segmenting by engagement comes from the actions you're able to take and implement. If you see what people are clicking on, what they don't bother to open, and what they seek out again, you're bound to find patterns that not only make sense to you but empower you to make more educated decisions on content in the future.
For example, if you discover that a large portion of your audience engages with how-tos, tutorials, and education pieces, then you should implement email-driven strategies based on this discovery to accommodate it. Rather than sending out a general outreach email or an infrequent recap of blog entries, think about increasing your output of educational pieces or developing an educational tutorial series or even an educational email stream sent only to members. Changes like these not only do right by user interest, but they foster trust and position you as a brand that is a readily available expert in the subject matter.
Similarly, if your email newsletter subscribers who usually connect with social responsibility stories related to your brand or sustainability efforts or efforts you utilize in the community are most likely to open and engage with your emails, they have a stronger connection with the purpose of your brand vs. the products and product features. These people don't want a hard sell; they want an empathetic, emotional connection. They want to hear founder stories, nonprofit partners, and behind-the-scenes efforts, which keep them connected for the long haul. This subsection responds better to acknowledgment of your brand's purpose vs. a hard sell about the sale/text features.
Of course, this type of behavioral segmentation should change more than just the emails you send; it should change your entire editorial calendar. The more you learn what works/doesn't work over time, the more you can concentrate on those themes for keyword integration across all content marketing efforts. Even how you construct subject lines to your tone of voice to even the types of images you use can all be adjusted for the highest performing subsections.
Additionally, engagement segmentation allows for more advanced A/B testing.
Instead of testing on your entire base group, you can test on varying factions because you have an established understanding of what groups respond to what. For example, if you notice one group engages with copy and another with visuals, you can segment based on content preference. The copy group might convert off a ten-paragraph email full of links and CTAs, while the visual group may convert off its one-paragraph appeal, image, and CTA. Testing within segments allows for more reliable and valid findings that can be applied to future efforts.
In addition, such understanding eases fatigue and unsubscription. When users are receiving emails of their preferred content type at the desired frequency they need, there's no risk of sending too much or too little off-base information. When people receive exactly what they want, they're more inclined to open, click, and convert for them, this is not another spam email but a valuable opportunity.
Ultimately, content strategy and segmentation should be a continual feedback loop. What you learn from engagement should dictate what comes next for content strategy, and what you learn from content performance should fine-tune your segments. By considering content and segmentation strategy as a comprehensive whole, your emails become more intelligent, your audience becomes more engaged, and your marketing becomes more effective.
Re-Engaging Inactive Subscribers with Tailored Content
Segmentation through content engagement isn't just for your most engaged email recipients, it's also for those who have lost interest and fallen off the face of the earth. When you can identify which users haven't opened your last three emails or which users stopped clicking on articles about a certain topic, you can create re-engagement campaigns to get them back on board with your brand.
Don't create a blanket "We miss you" email, but look at what they used to do and create contextualized content. Did they used to open your event emails? Tease them with information about your next big event. Did they download your guide a few months ago? You should send them the updated link now. You want to show them why they signed up in the first place and give them something else they want to continue to engage in your connection.
Continuously Evolving Your Segmentation Strategy
Segmentation isn't a one-off effort. It needs to evolve continuously in tandem with your audience. Creating a handful of baseline segments and relying upon them forever is certainly an easy way out but that leads to stale assumptions and reducing engagement over time. Your audience grew and so did theirs so will their interests, behaviors, and needs after some time. What's relevant six months ago might not be relevant today especially if your own content and marketing positioning has changed.
Think about how often people engage with content - it changes a lot. Seasons, product development, trending industry best practices, etc. For example, a segment that was very engaged with product tutorial how-tos may be more engaged in customer success stories or behind-the-scenes content now. Keeping a pulse on engagement can give you insight into this sooner than later. But not just periodic insights hold recurring audits monthly or quarterly to determine how well segments are performing. What's on the rise, what's decreasing, who's shifting from one segment to another (and why).
These types of audits can help you retire segments that are no longer applicable, merge similar segments, or even generate new groups that never before existed due to new engagement patterns. The goal is to keep relative content and personalization for email purposes, but for this to be true, the segments need to be as fresh as possible based on current user actions. Using outdated segments may be part of the problem with an uptick in unsubscribe rates, a drop in open rates, and reduced overall ROI when all of this could be avoided with your proactive efforts of analysis.
Furthermore, what you consider engagement should not be limited to email engagement. In this day and age, people engage with brands on a variety of channels and thus, your subscribers may be engaging with you outside of the inbox. Should your email marketing provider connect to your web analytics, CRM, or social monitoring tool, you'll be able to capture engagement from these other channels to assist in segmentation. For example, if someone clicks through your email but then visits your site three times this week or interacts with you on LinkedIn even if they did not open your last email, it signals increased interest.
When you compare email engagement to other engagement trends, you're not only expanding your knowledge of the audience, but you're also able to personalize efforts even further and make automation more nuanced. For instance, if you have a segment of people who viewed a product page, opened and clicked on an email related to that product, and downloaded a whitepaper related to that product all within three days, you have someone who is highly engaged who would benefit from a sales pitch sooner rather than later or a more appropriate follow-up campaign. But you'd never know this about someone if you stayed in a silo.
It's all about creating segmentation that expands and trains itself over time. When it receives outside signals from performance not attributed to email and real-time adjustments to your approach, you know you'll always be sending campaigns at the right time. Which means timely messaging, active subscribers, and better results.
