#27 - The Most Important Skill in Email Marketing

May 16, 2024

Today, I’ll be talking about one of the most important skills in email marketing.

Beyond writing attention grabbing subject lines.

Beyond designing eye popping images.

Beyond placing well timed CTAs.

Today, I’ll be talking about segmentation.

If customer does A, put in bucket B.

This will allow you target the RIGHT people for your campaigns, not piss your audience off, and most importantly clock the most revenue possible.

Let’s begin.

First Understanding IOS 15

It’s been awhile since the IOS updates have swept across the ecosystem.

Open rates are now inflated and are no longer as ‘accurate’ in helping give an idea on engagement, so here are some strategies we run on our end.

a) Apple Privacy Opens

What we’re gonna do here is divide the # of people by the total # of openers to get the % of Apple openers in the last X days.

Helps with giving an idea on how much % of recent openers are Apple openers.

b) Apple Privacy Opens & Clicks

This is what will replace your usual open/clicked segment above if your Apple privacy opens > 50% of your total # of openers.

This excludes those who opened via Apple Privacy and did not click your email and only allows those who opened via Apple Privacy AND clicked your email to receive it, making sure that they are engaged.

Email Engagement 

This is your standard open/click in the last ‘x’ days, and we typically create for the last 14/30/60/90/120 days.

Now, how do you find your ‘sweet spot’ for what x is going to be? (there’s typically two scenarios):

a) It’s been awhile since I last ran a campaign

If so, you typically wanna start off with L30 on the first week.

Then, on the second week, check to see if you’re above at least a 20% open rate, and if so, bump it to L60. If not, remain at L30 and check again the next week. 

In essence, repeat the process indefinitely, and your x will increase over time.

It should look something like the below:

Of course, your standard exclusions apply, like:

  • Disengaged (receiving 10x open 0)

  • Bounce at least 2x

  • Recent buyers in the last 30 days

  • In CR/BR flows

  • Received >3 in the last 3 days

(please note that exclusions are ‘fluid’ and differ from account to account - use this as reference and not hard rules)

b) I already run campaigns

If so, take a look at what your list utilization looks like (ie. # of max recipients sent from a single campaign / # of total active subscribers)

If your open rates are >20%, you wanna match your open/clicked segment with the # of max recipients from a previous campaign (ie. previous campaign 10k contacts means your open/clicked segment should include at least 10k emails | you wanna play around with the number of days until you hit this number)

If open rates are <20%, then start with the L30 days as above until your open rates get slightly better.

The reason why you create this segment is because you want your campaigns going out to people who are actively engaging with your emails - thus sending good signals to your ESPs & increasing the likelihood of generating more revenue with your campaigns.

Extensions of the high engaged segment (you can look at)

  • Added to the list in the last ‘x’ days

  • Engagement at least once in the last ‘x’ days

We typically create segments for the top 3 SKUs, to get an idea of what the overlap is, as well as send out targeted campaigns on related products we can use as upsells.

Again, ‘x’ days is variable, but let’s use 30 days for example.

It’ll look something like:

What someone has done (or not done)

Has placed order at least once in the last ‘x’/30 days

Where item contains BEST SELLER 1

On Winback Opportunities

Where you have an idea that if a customer doesn’t repurchase in ‘x’ days the likelihood of them repurchasing decreases (eg: facial wash after 90 days | for high ticket this obviously will be longer)

On Users Who Are Interested In a Specific Item In The Last ‘x’ Days

This is especially useful when you’re running a campaign with that specific product (whether as an upsell or a discount), as those users are already ‘looking’ at the product and might just need an additional nudge in the right direction.

And that’s a wrap!

Hopefully this gives you an idea/refresher on inclusions/exclusions you can run when setting up your campaigns.

There’s at least a hundred different scenarios, so it really depends on how you play it, but definitely no right or wrong!

Alternatively, if you wanna skip all this brainwork, you can also always just leave it to us 😉

Have a great weekend!

Miles Malferrari