Email Segmentation 101
Improve Deliverability, Personalize the Customer Experience, and Increase Sales With These Core Segmentation Practices
Max Sturtevant
I'm Max. I'm the founder of Well Copy, an email marketing agency that has generated over $20M in email attributed revenue for clients in the last 12 months. I live inside of Shopify and Klaviyo.
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What Is Segmentation?
Segmentation 101
Segments are very similar to lists, but different in one key way.
Lists are stagnant. As the name suggests, it's just a flat list of people.
Segments are dynamic. They can change at any second, based on the requirements you set on the segment.
As the name suggests, it's a segment of your full email list. A subset of people who meet certain characteristics you provide.
The Possibilities Are Quite Endless
1
Basic
Segmenting based on general email open and click behavior
2
Intermediate
Segmentation based on recent store activity such as cart abandonments
3
Pro
Segmenting based on specific email / flow engagement and specific product category interests
But… Let's Not Get Too Complicated
Yes, you could hyper segment your list by their favorite color and if their belly button is an innie or an outie…
And yes, that would probably increase your conversion rate…
But at what cost?
Would you rather send 1-2 targeted campaigns per week to different email groups of 10,000 people OR 3-4 broader email campaigns per week to 50,000 people?
The latter will outperform 99 times out of 100.
Yes, you should segment… but don't get carried away and distracted from the basics.
Focus on high leverage, which I will be sharing with you in this guide.
Why Segment?
The Purpose of Segmentation
Segmentation allows you to pinpoint certain members of your list so that you can gather data and create targeted emails to send based on where they are at in the customer journey.
Benefits of proper segmentation:
  • More sales
  • Improved deliverability
  • Save time with automation
  • Personalized customer experience
Basic Use Cases
1
Engaged Lists for Improved Deliverability
You can segment your general list for campaigns to only include people who have recently opened or clicked emails so you ensure you only send to people who want to open your emails.
2
Interested Customers for More Sales
You can target people who have been active on your site or even added items to their cart but haven't made a purchase and send them extra content to try to get them to cross the line.
3
Targeted Campaigns Based on Product Interests
Another possibility is sending emails about specific product collections to people who have bought or shown interest in these items before
4
Remove Unengaged Profiles for Improved Deliverability
It's important to always track and suppress people who haven't been engaging with your emails since customers will naturally churn. Since they aren't opening your emails you want to remove them from your list so you aren't harming your deliverability.
Different Types of Segmentation
Email Engagement Segmentation
This type of segmentation is great for deliverability and understanding how your list is responding to your emails.
Typically, you want to send most your emails to people who are the most engaged in your email list.
You can judge engagement based on email opens, clicks, bounces, and more
Key Segments:
  • People who have opened in email in the past 60 days
  • Engaged profiles
  • People who have clicked in email in the past 60 days
  • Most engaged profiles
  • People who have subscribed to email marketing in the past 30 days
  • Fresh profiles
  • People who have bounced at least one email over all time
  • High risk profiles
  • People who have marked an email as spam at least once over all time
  • Uninterested profiles
  • People who haven't opened an email at least once in the past 120 days
  • Churned subscribers
Store Engagement Segmentation
This type of segmentation is used to understand how active your customers are in your website.
You can get a feel for where people are being lost in the funnel.
These segments and metrics allow you to track when people are viewing items, adding to cart, and making purchases.
Key Segments:
  • People who have viewed a product at least once in the past 30 days but have not made a purchase in this time
  • Interested customers
  • People who have added to cart or started checkout at least once in the past 30 days but have not made a purchase in this time
  • High likelihood to purchase customers
  • People who have placed order at least once in the past 30 days
  • Recent buyers
  • People who have placed 5+ orders over all time
  • VIP customers
  • People who have viewed at least 3 products but have not made a purchase in the past 30 days
  • Window shoppers
Location Segmentation
You can segment members in your list based on where they are at in the world.
This can be very helpful for personalized targeted campaigns towards people in different areas, such as for sending invites to in-person events to people in your area.
Different areas of the world also have different requirements for compliance, this helps you create emails tailored to the person's region.
Common Segments:
  • Segment customers by home state in your brand headquarters
  • Segment customers based on country
Predictive Analytics Segmentation
Predictive analytics are a Klaviyo feature , which aren't perfect but give you some data to work with.
It will look at customer behavior to predict certain metrics or characteristics.
Use Cases:
  • Find high spenders with predicted AOV calculations and send them large bundle deals
  • Find VIP customers with total lifetime value calculations
  • Segment and send timely messages to customers based on average time between purchases
  • Segment based on gender and send specific products and emails
Key Segments
X Day Engaged Email Members
For Sending 3x+ Emails Per Week
This should be your base engaged email segment for sending email campaigns to.
We send to this segment to ensure we are only sending to people who want to receive our emails and make sure we keep high engagement rates to boost our deliverability.
You can adjust this from any day you want.
I recommend starting with 30 day engaged and slowly open your list to 60, 90, and 120 as your open rates go up.
Definition for 60 Day Engaged:
  • Someone can receive email marketing because person is subscribed
  • Someone has opened email at least once in the past 60 days OR clicked email at least once in the past 60 days
  • Someone has bounced email 0 times over all time
Unengaged Email Members
For Sending 1x Email Per Month
This is a list to use for re-engagement campaigns.
These people have opened an email in the past but haven't done so recently. You can even choose to suppress these profiles if you choose.
Definition for Unengaged Members:
  • Someone can receive email marketing because person is subscribed
  • Someone has opened email at least once over all time
  • Someone has opened email zero times in the past 90 days
  • Someone has clicked email zero times in the past 90 days
High-Potential Purchasers
For Sending 1x-2x EXTRA Emails Per Month (on top of engaged list sends)
This list is a set of people who have been active on your site and have made it somewhere in the funnel but haven't made a purchase.
You can send them more emails to try to get them over the edge and increase your sales.
Definition for High Potential Purchases:
  • Someone can receive email marketing because person is subscribed
  • Someone has placed order 0 times in the past 30 days
  • Someone has been active on site at least once in the past 30 days
  • OR someone has viewed product at least once in the past 30 days
  • OR someone has added to cart at least once in the past 30 days
  • OR someone has started checkout at least once in the past 30 days
VIP Customers
For Sending 1x EXTRA Emails Per Month (on top of engaged list sends)
This segment is pretty self explanatory.
These are your customers who are fans of your brand and keep coming back.
You can choose to make your VIP list either on their total number or purchases with you or total amount spent at your store.
I prefer total number of purchases because you can predict it a little better and send emails to people every purchase letting them know how many purchases they are away from the VIP list.
It's a good idea to have a simple VIP email flow to anybody who joins this segment thanking them, giving some exclusive content, and giving a generous offer.
On top of this, it may be smart to send a VIP email once a quarter with an exclusive deal or offer.
Definition for VIP Customers:
  • Someone can receive email marketing because person is subscribed
  • Someone has placed order at least 5 times over all time
Winback Potential Customers
For Sending 1x EXTRA Emails Per Month (on top of engaged list sends)
This list is exclusive to people who have bought a certain period of time ago but haven't purchased recently.
The amount of time is going to vary based on the store and the average buying period in between purchases.
For this group you will want a few flow emails to fire when they enter the segment encouraging them to come back and make another purchase. It may be a good idea to send them a discount as well.
Base Definition for Winback Potential Customers:
  • Someone can receive email marketing because person is subscribed
  • Someone has placed order at least once in the past 150 days
  • Someone has placed order zero times in the last 90 days
Suppress List
For Not Sending ANY Emails To
This is an email segment of people that aren't engaging with your emails and / or are high risk email profiles that don't deserve to be sent emails.
You should be looking at this once a month and suppressing these profiles to save money on your Klaviyo bill, which will charge based on your email profiles.
Base Definition for Suppress List:
  • Someone has opened email zero times in the last 180 days
  • OR someone has bounced email at least once over all time
  • OR someone has marked email as spam at least once over all time
Interested in X Product / Category
For Sending 1x-2x EXTRA Emails Per Month (on top of engaged list sends)
This is a list of people who have had any interest in a specific product / category in your store that you set.
This list can be great to send targeted sales, announcements, or releases related to the item(s) you have.
You can do this for both products or specific categories, you just have to customize the filter on the segment definition to choose either "product" or "category".
Definition for Interested Segment (Category):
  • Someone can receive email marketing because person is subscribed
  • Someone has viewed item where category is [category] at least once over all time.
  • OR someone has added item to cart where category is [category] at least once over all time.
  • OR someone has started checkout with item where collection is [collection] at least once over all time.
  • OR Someone has placed order with item where collection is [collection] at least once over all time.
X Cross Sell
For Sending 1x-2x EXTRA Emails Per Month (on top of engaged list sends)
This is a list of people who have purchased an item or category in your store that you set.
If you have a common cross sell you can create this segment to anybody who purchases one item to send them a cross sell flow or email.
You can do this for both products or specific categories, you just have to customize the filter on the segment definition to choose either "product" or "category".
Definition for X Cross Sell (Category):
  • Someone can receive email marketing because person is subscribed
  • Someone has placed order with item where collection is [collection] at least once over all time.
BONUS SEGMENTATION HACK
Received X Email But Didn't Open
This is a very useful segment trick you can use to resend important emails to people who didn't open the original email.
Someone could have been busy at the time you sent the email and didn't have a chance to look at it, sending 1-2 days later to this segment helps you get the most out of your email
We often use this for product releases, big sales, or big announcements.
Simply duplicate your original email and change the sending list to this segment.
Step 1
Click onto the campaign you want to resend and copy the long code in the URL
Step 2
Create a segment with the following conditions:
  • Someone has received email at least once over all time where message equals [CODE YOU COPIED FROM STEP 1]
  • Someone had opened email zero times over all time where message equals [CODE YOU COPIED FROM STEP 1]
Step 3
Duplicate the campaign you chose and send to the segment you just made ✅
Extra Tip
Don't get too carried away ;)
Make sure you cover the basics and do them well BEFORE going crazy with segmentation.
That's It For This One!
Thanks for reading, I hope you got some value :)
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Where To Find Me
Feel free to email me max@wellcopy.net to ask any questions, happy to help.
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