People who fill out a form on your website want to learn more about your company. But it doesn’t mean they want everything you have to offer. By carefully segmenting your education marketing email list, you can send thoughtful messages to targeted audiences—dramatically boosting your open, click through and conversion rates.
According to the latest research from MailChimp, segmented email marketing campaigns result in 14 percent higher open rates and 101 percent higher click rates than non-segmented campaigns.
Here are five ways to segment your list for marketing in education:
Job title or role
Emails sent to a teacher shouldn’t contain the same information as those sent to an administrator. Since your marketing strategy is to push people through the sales funnel, knowing their role in the purchasing process is key to nurturing the lead properly. Does the person have final approval authority, have purchasing influence, or are they just gathering information for others? By segmenting your list according to job role, you can send tailored messages to encourage specific actions by multiple participants in the buying process.
Demographics
Data such as a person’s age, gender and the size of their company or organization can tell you a lot about their needs and interests. If you’re a B2B software provider selling to education vendors, for instance, segmenting by company size helps you know whether to market the small business or enterprise version of your software—and it can help you craft a marketing strategy that takes into account the complexities of their buying cycles.
Geographic Location
Segmenting by location allows you to offer regional content or promotions. For instance, if you’re going to be at a higher education marketing trade show in Atlanta, contact your Georgia-based prospects encouraging them to connect with you while you’re there. It also lets you schedule messages, or send webinar invitations, that are time zone specific.
Behavior
Behavior may be the most important form of email marketing segmentation if you separate your customers by past purchases. You can recommend replacements, renewals or similar items to match their personal interests. Consider REI. If you’re an outdoors person who purchased camping gear, you don’t need to see sales or information for running apparel. Retailers who do a good job of segmenting based on purchase behavior don’t inundate loyal buyers with emails they won’t open, and the same is true in the education market.
You also can segment by website behaviors, targeting messages based on the pages that prospects visit, or the items they show interest in.
Level of Engagement
Segmenting by engagement allows you to develop campaigns tailored to where your prospects are in the education marketing funnel. This might entail setting up separate lists for “aware,” “interested,” considering” and “evaluating,” and then crafting messages designed to move each group to the next level. Or, you might create a list of “inactive” subscribers who haven’t opened your emails in a few months, and seek to re-engage them.
Getting Started
So, where do you start?
Job titles, geographic locations and other demographic information can be pulled from the web forms people fill out when they ask to receive information. Surveys and contests are also a great way to secure segment-defining profile data.
We can help you manage your current organic email list, or advise you on building a new one as part of your education marketing strategy. If you know how important email marketing is, but you feel your current approach isn’t returning results, contact us. We’ll guide you in starting a fresh email marketing campaign to draw new business leads from customers and prospects alike.