Segmentation is key to email sales

Online retailers could improve sales by using segmented e-mail lists, according to an Internet Retailer survey analyzed by Vovici.

Approximately 40% of respondents said that their e-mail campaigns yielded conversion rates of 2% or less.

Vovici noted that 43% of respondents did not segment their mailing lists, which could have contributed to the low conversion rates.

Identifying e-mail recipients by age, sex, annual income, past purchase history and other characteristics can generate more effective campaigns.

A MarketingSherpa study underscored the usefulness of segmentation. Marketers who used advanced e-mail tactics such as dynamic content, A/B offer testing and segmentation by user details had higher click-through rates than those who did not.

Internet Retailer noted that Fossil segments its e-mail list by shopper categories and demographics, and that its average order now has about 1.5 items in the shopping cart at checkout compared with a previous average of about one.

John DeCaprio of Fossil said that "e-mail is one of our bread-and-butter marketing tools, but we need to do a better job analyzing the messages we are sending out and the responses. When it comes to e-mail marketing, we were constantly looking at ways to minimize list fatigue."

Another point for e-mail marketers to consider is the type of e-mail they send. If the goal is to make sales, which is especially important for online retailers, then a campaign may need more transactional e-mails.

A SKYLIST survey found that among all US e-mail marketers, promotional and transactional e-mails were far down the list of the most common types used.