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In this Masterclass, you'll learn:

• The Importance of Email Segmentation
• 6 Common mistakes with Email Segmentation
• Benefits of Segmentation
• The 4 main types of Segments
• 4 Steps on how to create high converting segments inside your Klaviyo account
• Working with your golden Segment
• Swipe File - 15 Segments you can replicate

Why This Is Important

In 2024, the competition has skyrocketed. Customers are flooded with emails from their favorite brands, filling their inboxes daily. Without an effective strategy, your emails risk being ignored, unopened, or worse, leading to unsubscribes.

This drop in engagement can diminish your campaign's effectiveness and harm your deliverability rates. Email segmentation is all about crafting audience-focused content that truly resonates with your subscribers.

Unlike the old method of sending the same email to everyone, segmentation ensures your messages are tailored and meaningful, making a real impact. Let's explore how you can master email segmentation to boost your marketing efforts and keep your audience engaged.

What Exactly is Segmentation?

Segmentation involves dividing your broader audience into smaller, manageable groups that share similar characteristics or behaviors. These segments can be based on various factors such as demographics, purchasing behavior, geographic location, and more. The goal is to understand the unique needs and preferences of each segment to provide more relevant and targeted communications.

6 Common mistakes with Email Segmentation

1. Sending to your entire list
2. Hyper-segmenting your list - over-segmenting can waste time and might not give you the results you're looking for.
3. Sending to unengaged subscribers - Sending to chronic engaged subscribers who haven't opened your emails in over 365 days can hurt your deliverability and sender score.
4. Not collecting zero and first party data - information sourced directly through someone’s online behavior that they’ve consented to share.
5. Lack of Personalization - Not using any personalization beyond segmentation.
6. Sending to the same segment each time

(example of "hyper-segmenting")

Benefits of Segmentation

The goal of email segmentation is to create audience-focused content that resonates with subscribers. By dividing your subscriber list into targeted segments, you can develop hyper-relevant campaigns and move beyond the outdated batch-and-blast method to drive higher engagement and brand loyalty.

1. Improved Customer Understanding: By segmenting your audience, you gain deeper insights into their specific needs and preferences, allowing you to tailor your offerings accordingly.

2. Increased Engagement: Personalized marketing messages are more likely to capture the attention of your audience, leading to higher engagement rates.

3. Enhanced Customer Loyalty: Delivering relevant content and offers can build stronger relationships with your customers, fostering loyalty and repeat business.

4. Optimized Marketing Spend: Targeted campaigns reduce wasteful spending by focusing your resources on the segments most likely to convert.

You will know if you are doing segmentation right if:

• Your email deliverability increases.
• Your unsubscribe rate decreases.
• Your engagement metrics—like opens and clicks—start to go up.
• Your conversion (sales) rates start to go up.

The 4 main types of Segments

‍Demographic Segments

Exclude or include people based on characteristics such as age or gender.

Example: A supplement brand sends a female health focus campaign to their female audience.

Psychographic Segments

Interests, likings, and dislikings are the criteria for this type of segmentation.

Example: An email sent to people who have shown interest in a specific product or category.

‍Geographical Segmentation

Segments based on the location of your subscribers.

Example: A supplement store sends a campaign to all US subscribers with a special announcement

Behavioral Segmentation

Separate people based on actions they have taken or haven’t.

Example: Remind someone about a product they added to their cart but didn’t buy.

To recap:

We have 4 types of segments we use to engage with your subscribers.

1. Demographic Segmentation - based on your customers' age, gender, occupation, etc
2. Geographical Segmentation - like city, state, or country
3. Behavioral Segmentation - what stage of their customer journey they’re on (i.e new visitors VS first-time buyers).
4. Psychographic Segments - based on their personality, values and preferences.

Note: Most segments we use in Klaviyo are based on behavioral segmentation, focusing on what customers did or didn’t do. (below you’ll learn how to target some of these segments):

• Purchase History and Frequency: Differentiate between one-time shoppers and your regular, highly active customers.
• Website Visit Activity: Notice who’s frequently visiting your site versus those who are new here.
• Email Engagement: Keep an eye on email clicks to gauge who's getting ready to make a purchase.
• Customer Reviews: See who's leaving reviews and who’s not.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Identify your top spenders – your VIPs.
• Acquisition Source: Track where your website visitors are coming from.
• Last Viewed Products: Categorize visitors by the types of products they're checking out.
• Abandoned Cart Value: Differentiate between high-value and lower-value abandoned carts.

Then based on what they did (or didn't do) we want to send them the right emails to get them to take action. (i.e to buy, buy again, go to socials, leave a review)

4 Steps to Create High-Converting Segments in Your Klaviyo Account

First and foremost, collect subscriber and customer data.

Without data, you can't create segments.

(i.e an example of data collection inside of a multi-step pop-up)

When you create a segment, make sure you have a clear purpose. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Step 1 - What is my goal with this segment (Sales, brand awareness, engagement etc)
• Step 2- With the goal in mind, ask yourself "who is this content relevant for?" "Who would want to hear about this?" (Define your audience)
• Step 3- Who should definitely not hear about this? (Exclusions)
• Step 4 - Monitor and adjust your segment based on performance. (Test and improve)

As you send email campaigns and flows to your segments, you’ll learn how they’re performing by monitoring the following metrics:

• Click rate
• Conversion rate
• Revenue per recipient
• Deliverability rate
• Unsubscribe rate

Example:

If you are an apparel brand launching a new swimwear collection, it may be best to send your launch email only to subscribers in warm-weather locations or those who have been browsing swimwear. Exclude subscribers in predominantly cold-weather regions.

Your Golden Segment

AKA Your engaged segment.

To simplify it even further, it means:

This is the core segment for your email marketing and probably the segment you’ll be using the most.

Sending to engaged customers is crucial to being a successful email marketer. We recommend breaking up your Klaviyo subscribers into 30-, 60-, and 90-day engagement groups.

So the first thing we’d like to do is identify your engaged segment.

This is an example of a 30-day engaged segment:

30-Day Engaged.png

TIP: If you send daily, we recommend using a 30-day engaged criteria (using opened or clicked email). If you plan to send to subscribers weekly or monthly, extend the timeframe for opens and clicks to 60 or 90 days (and even 120-180 days) once again it all depends on deliverability.

30-day engaged

60-day engaged

90-day engaged

120-day engaged

180-day engaged

If your account is new or hasn't been sending campaigns in a while, typically we like to start small, to warm up your account properly. We'll start with the 30-day engaged segment and scale things from there to 60-day engaged, 90-day engaged, 120-day engaged and 180-day engaged.

(The "warm up process" we use to scale an account to send to broader segments; from 30-day engaged all the way to 150-180 day engaged)

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Question: Why not engaging with subscribers past 365-days.

The simple answer is: Anything beyond 365-day engaged could be considered as a “spam trap”.

Yahoo, Gmails and other major ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are using these unengaged emails to check for spammer activities.

And if you keep sending to unengaged subscribers you will get penalized and your domain score will slowly start to tank - just like Dave in our example.

We do use your entire list on major holidays like Black Friday or Cyber Monday because of all the sales opportunities but only if we are cleaning our list and monitoring our deliverability to ensure our list is nice and healthy for when we need to send wider on Black Friday so it won’t hurt our domain health for that one time.

Swipe File

Including:

1. Purpose of each segment
2. How to set it up inside of Klaviyo
3. Swipe file - campaigns ideas

Active New Signups:

What: Engage with recent subscribers (less than 30 days on your list) who haven't made their first purchase with your store.

Why: Build trust.

How: Send a campaign every few months or create a flow based on this segment.

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Campaigns you can send:

At-risk New Signups:

What: Engage with older subscribers (more than 30 days on your email list) who still haven't made their first purchase.

Why: To prevent churn.

How: Emphasize the benefits of your products and offer deep discounts to encourage their first purchase.

Holiday Shoppers Segment:

What: Identify your previous holiday shoppers.

Why: To send them targeted campaigns (i.e., "Since you bought with us last year, we're giving you early access," etc.).

How: Around major holidays (i.e., Black Friday or before big events).

Expected date of next order segment:

What: Use Klaviyo AI (Historical data) to predict the expected order date of a customer.

Why: To prevent churn and encourage another purchase.

How: Use this segment to create a flow or send a campaign.

‍Previous Buyers:

What: Identify your customers.

Why: To encourage repeat purchases and maintain customer loyalty.

How:  Customers trust you already and want to keep learning about your brand. Send them educational emails about how your products can help solve their problems and improve their quality of life.

Repeat Buyers:

What: Customers who have made more than one purchase from your store over time.

Why: Identify loyal customers who are not yet part of your Subscribe and Save program and encourage them to join.

How: Highlight the benefits of your Subscribe and Save program.

VIP:

What: VIP customers are your superfans! They keep coming back and showing loyalty by making frequent and/or high-value purchases.

Why:

• VIP customers typically spend up to 5x more than average customers, making them crucial to your business’s financial health.
• They are more likely to recommend your store to others, providing valuable word-of-mouth marketing.
• They can provide insightful feedback on your products and services, helping you improve your offerings (via surveys)

How:

• During special promotions, sales events, or product launches, offer exclusive deals and early access to VIP customers to boost repeat purchases and sales.
• Use personalized email campaigns to engage with VIP customers regularly.
• Invite VIP customers to exclusive events, webinars, or private sales to strengthen their connection to your brand.
• Introduce a VIP tier within your loyalty program to reward and incentivize high-value customers.

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Window-shoppers:

What: Window-shoppers are potential customers who have viewed a specific product more than three times in the last 30 days without making a purchase, indicating high buying intent.

Why: Since these potential buyers are very interested in the product, sending a targeted email campaign can address their specific needs and concerns - so they can finally buy it.  

How:

1. Send personalized emails with special offers, discounts, or limited-time deals to encourage them to complete their purchase.
2. Provide additional information, such as customer reviews, detailed product descriptions, or videos, to help them make an informed decision.

BONUS:

1. Retargeting Campaigns: Implement retargeting ads to remind them of the product they viewed and highlight its benefits. You can use the Facebook/Meta integration with Klaviyo to facilitate it.

Potential Buyers:

What: A subscriber who has viewed a product and clicked an email but hasn't placed any orders with your store.

Why: Drive sales.

How: Highlight product benefits and how it can change their life, and add social proof to show what other people say (cognitive bias).

Win-back:

What: A customer who bought once but hasn't placed an order in 180 days.

Why: Re-engagement.

How: Send an email to check in on them and remind them what's new in the store (consider adding a discount)

10-Email Unengaged:

What: Subscribers who haven't opened or clicked on 10 consecutive emails.

Why: Re-engagement.

How: Pull a Hail Mary and send them your best deal (clearance, etc.).

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Exclusions:

Spam Trap:

Signup Churned:

<Blue> Want to get all the right segments without all the hassle of setting them up? 👇 </blue>

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