Segmentation Strategies for First Time Buyers

91 - The Mad Scientists are back to tackle their most requested topic - list segmentation strategies! No matter how your consumers enter your funnel, you should have a personalized message prepared for them. You’ll increase click-through, brand loyalty, and ROI for those abandoned cart deals. 

This episode covers some in-depth strategies, so grab a coffee, a notepad, get comfy, and let’s dive in. 

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Transcript

Vira: 0:16

We will be talking about two quick segmentations for first time buyers, specifically about segmentations for flows.

Alissa: 0:45

Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome to email Einstein. Vira and Alissa here. And it's just Vira and Alissa. Marcy said no Marcy. If you guys heard the last episode at the end we had mentioned that she just didn't answer, which is kind of worse. But if you didn't listen. Last episode, last episode we had mentioned that we were going to be talking to Marcy this week about some like, best design practices and convincing her.

Vira: 1:16

Which was like a bit of us announcing it before we asked Marcy. Right?

Alissa: 1:19

Yeah, it was kind of a dumb move, but now it's a funny joke right now. Now we're all laughing together. And today's episode to get her.

Vira: 1:28

We'll still try to get her on one of our. We'll get her because she's great and our entire design team is actually amazing.

Alissa: 1:34

So amazing.

Vira: 1:35

If we can get one of our designers who are insanely busy, like, I don't know how these people, honestly, they manage like gazillion projects at the time. If we can like manage, get one of them on our podcast, it's going to be like a jackpot.

Alissa: 1:48

You know, your ear, your ears will be blessed. Very blessed.

Vira: 1:52

Yes, yes, yes.

Alissa: 1:54

So before we get started on what our episode is about today, we have to do our normal intro, right? Because I mean, and it's funny, like people are always like, you guys don't pre record that. No, we don't because it's more like fresh and it's real. We're just trying to be real here with you guys. So as always, Vira and Alissa here we are two email marketers at an email marketing agency called Flowium. We are super passionate about email marketing and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium, full service, e commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients. Our service is tailored specifically for your business and is designed to help increase your online retail revenue. We deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. That's what we're all about here at Flowium. And now Vira, please tell us what we're actually going to be talking about today since Marcy rejected us. Kidding. Marcy.

Vira: 2:55

No. Marcy, you're still going to be on our podcast.

Alissa: 2:57

We still love you, Marcy. Even when you say no to us.

Vira: 3:02

You're going to say yes to us one day. So actually or like I had this like girl who I was like, like babysitting back in the day. She was like so funny. She was, she had like trouble pronouncing the words correctly and she was like actually, she was like saying this like actually all the time. She was like 3 year old or 4 year old. She was like saying it about like regarding everything. So actually we will be talking about two quick segmentations for first time buyers. Specifically about segmentations for flows. And every time we post something about segmentation, this podcast become hit because apparently this is the topic you want to hear more about. This is the topic that we can stop talking about. That's why it's already our like maybe 607th episode. Hundreds probably, yes. About the segmentation. So yeah, let's talk some good strategies for first time buyers. In fact, we're going to have two strategies today. I will cover the first one. Alissa will talk in depth about some ideas for amendment card segmentation. I will talk briefly about welcome and exit intent segmentation. So yeah, let's, let's, let's do this.

Alissa: 4:29

Let's do it.

Vira: 4:29

So the first, the first and the big one is to segment your welcome series based on the acquisition source. It sounds very fancy, but basically the idea is to segment your flow, your welcome flow based on where your customer is coming from. What we do internally here at Fluvium all the time, we like divide people who are coming from homepage versus people or like homepage information page about us contact page versus people who actually are coming from the product pages. Because the chances are someone who went from your homepage deeper onto your website and started like researching your products, your actual products and then left. Chances are they know something about you, your brand. They already sort of like understand who you are. They went through your homepage or about us page and now they actually want to learn more about the product. So for this people, we do more like product specific Exit Intent flow. And for the rest of the people who are coming from sort of like a generic pages, we just do in depth welcome flow where we talk about the brand, we talk about the values of the brand, what we're selling, why are we the best and stuff like that. And that's just like a one idea that you can use. But listen, segmentation is powerful. According to Accenture Accenture, 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that recognize, remember and provide relevant offers and recommendations. So the more relevant your flow can be, the more value can you deliver, the higher are your chances of converting that customer. Segmenting welcome series based on where your customers are coming from is always a good idea. Another strategy that I'm like using with one of my customers is actually split your sequence based on the sort of like a sign up method. So we have like different forms for different products. So this is sort of like an advanced version of the exit intent form. So my client who's selling shocks like the car shocks, this are like the little but very expensive things apparently. I know my my clients brands so well, they are all like looking the same but they can be from like 100 bucks to like thousands of dollars. So yeah, so depending on sort of like what product the customer is looking for, you sort of can know that. Okay, if they are looking at this collection or like this brand they are a budget is like thousand dollars. If they are looking on this like cheaper section, their budget is like hundreds dollars or something like that. And also they have this like a hero hero brand, it's called Fox shocks. So if you're interested go and Google and this are sort of like a more high end ish colle. So what we did we created like a different version of the Exit intent flow with a discount that is slightly more generous. So if for that like other flows we use like $10 off or like 10% off for that more expensive one we can go with like $35 off just because the product itself is more expensive. Now what we're doing for this flows we still provide the discount code that would work for the entire website. So like the sidewide disc. In that case we try to talk more and like visually make the email more about the brand. So you will get the desk on code. You will, you can still like use it for for everything. But the email itself will be a bit more like visually and copywise about that brand. So yeah, I mean the experiment with the segment based on acquisition source, that's a big big deal. And I Know that my colleagues, they are sometimes doing like the wealth of flows based on like where custom coming from the, from like different advertisement sources. Right. So they have like a separate welcome flow for people who are coming from Facebook ads or like people who are coming through Google Ads or people who organically go through the website. I have personally created the welcome flow for one specific blog piece. One of my clients, they have this block piece that generate the most of their organic traffic and we have created a specific block with the, we have created the specific pop up with a specific signup form, a specific flow for that single sort of like blog posts. So yeah, know where your customers are coming from, know how they are different because like people who are coming from different platforms, they are slightly different. Right. It can be even like different Personas or like different people with like different goals and stuff like that. So just like segment based on the acquisition service, it's a very, very powerful tool.

Alissa: 9:20

And it's a great first impression too. Like yes, especially in the welcome flow like these, these people who are coming in and opting in through these different channels, they're not sure what to expect. Right. So if show them that you know where they've come from and you can customize what however it is that you're engaging with them, whatever that communication looks like, that's going to be way more impressive for them than just getting a generic hi, welcome. Thanks. You know like for sure there's a little more like, like it's a little more genuine. I never know if it's ingenuity. I don't think that's the right word but it's, it feels a little more genuine. Like the contact feels a little more genuine and then they're more likely to become brand loyal and love you and continue to either shop with you or follow you or engage you, whatever it that you're looking to kind of achieve from that customer engagement. So I love it.

Vira: 10:07

It's not like 1990 when everyone sees the same commercial on TV, right. You can deliver the right message to the right person. Now it's, it's easier with tools like, like email marketing.

Alissa: 10:19

A lot easier. A lot easier. So as Vira mentioned, obviously she covered the welcome flow. I'm going to cover how you can kind of do some segmentation within an abandoned cart flow which as we know, right. Is a very, very popular and very L flow. So overall any email campaigns that you send out, they tend to have a just over 14% higher average open rate and over 63% more clicks than non segmented Campaigns, which if you think about it like just taking, just going that, that step further and thinking about who it is that you're sending the email to is already going to give you some much higher KPIs and so much higher metrics that you're working with, which is amazing. And actually another study found that personalized emails deliver six times higher than transaction rates. Yeah, deliver six times higher transaction rates, which is also incredible. Right? I mean, we're looking for that transaction at the end of the day. So segmenting, personalizing, it's going to give you that. And even though the automated abandoned cart emails, we know that they're nothing new. We've talked about them a lot on this podcast. It's something that you as an email marketer probably already know about. There is advanced audience segmentation that you can utilize. So that way you're taking a more personalized approach and that will bring you above average results in your already high performing abandoned cart flow. I say already high performing. I hope it's already high performing. If it's not, you've got some work to do before you go down this route. But for those of you who have high performing abandoned cart flows, here are some things that you can do so that you can start segmenting a little more your abandoned cart flows. So the first thing that you can do is you can separate and segment based on high and low value abandoned carts.

Vira: 12:04

So that's a big one.

Alissa: 12:05

Which is. Yeah, this is a main one and it's why it's the first one. Right. So in a world where our customers are always looking for the best deal and coupon codes aren't really hard to find in most places. So you have websites like honey.com and all these other things where you could type in discount for X brand and a bunch of discount codes will come up on Google. It's not very difficult to find as a business, you're probably starting to struggle with ways to think of offering incentives. So there's like, should we do free shipping? Should we, should we do buy one, get one, should we do buy one, one, get one, 50% off. You know, like a lot of these things we've kind of heard over and over again about and it starts to get kind of old. So one of the things that you can do for your abandoned cart emails is you can actually consider splitting out your campaign flow based on the value of a cart and providing compelling messaging, not necessarily a coupon, but compelling messaging for customers with low value carts. So for customers who left higher value cards behind, you can actually provide a discount knowing that the ROI that you'll be making is a lot more worth your while. So, for example, example, if your average order value for your brand is, let's call it 40 bucks, right? 40 bucks per customer, it's unlikely that on 40 bucks per customer, you're going to be offering a 50% discount, right? I'm using very exaggerated numbers here. This is not a, this is not a set example. So if you see a customer come through and they abandon a cart and it's $40 in their cart, you're not going to offer them a massive discount. You're just going to kind of of gently persuade and encourage them to go back and make a purchase. But it's probably not likely that you'll offer a discount or a similar discount to someone who, for example, abandons 200 in their cart. Ah, this is a little more interesting. This is someone that's way above what the average customer looks like. And you see that get abandoned in their cart, it's likely that you're probably going to want that person to spend the $200. Okay, fine, maybe spending 200 is a little much. So now you're going to turn around and say, hey, we'll give you 20% off. You can't give 20% off off on a $40 purchase. But on $200, you're still making a pretty decent amount of money off that customer. So rather than sitting there and viewing and recording and managing every single cart that comes through, you can automatically set this up obviously in your abandoned cart automation. So that way if someone leaves a value of a cart that's X amount or lower, they don't get necessarily get a discount. There's just slightly different messaging that's going out to them. But someone who's more of like a high roller, they're going to either receive more of like a white glove service from, you're going to offer them some kind of incentive or you're going to give them free shipping, whatever it is. But that way, when you're splitting it based on the value that that customer will bring at that one time, which is what's in their cart, you know how to kind of talk to them a little bit differently and treat them a little bit differently. We actually had a, a client a long time ago who sold furniture and that's, that is a very different customer journey, right, to someone who sells socks, for example. So the way that we kind of set up their cart for them, their abandoned cart, is if someone abandoned a cart over I think it was like $2,000 or something like that. Then at that point, what would happen is the way we set it up in Klaviyo is they would get offered an incentive and then if they didn't take advantage of that incentive, we would send a notification automatically to a salesperson on the team to contact that customer and find out what their goals are, what they're looking for, if there's anything else that they can help with, why it is they did that, they didn't make the purchase and kind of go down that customer journey in a little more of a personalized way, which was super, super helpful. And then for anyone who's under $2,000, it's not that that customer is not worth it, right? I mean, everyone is worth it. Everyone is important in your business. But for someone who's not necessarily going to be paying over $2,000, there's not much that you need to kind of do to sort of persuade that person to make the purchase. You can just kind of either offer them like a smaller discount or not offer them a discount at all and just let them know like, hey, your card's been a bit and come back. So that's what we did for a client in the past and it did work really, really well. The brand was able to kind of target more of their like high profile, custom in and spending a lot more money with them, which just overall adds to the person's experience with the brand, but also how much the brand can capitalize on these people who are going to pay a little more money. So that's something that you can definitely do. The other thing that you can do as well as you can separate it based on whether a shopper abandoned X item or Y item. So if a retailer. So if your brand sent emails to shoppers that abandoned shopping carts which included a wristwatch and earth earrings, offering a discount on a necklace, for example, that completes the look, or a free gift that accompanies the jewelry instead of a generic free shipping could potentially improve your conversions. So one of our clients at the moment, for example, they sell ballet shoes. And the ballet shoes are not inexpensive because it's point for anyone who does ballet. It's like the solid shoes that lets ballerinas or dancers dance on like their tippy toes. Really beautiful. If you haven't been to the ballet, I definitely recommend going. But anyways, so for them, one of the things that we're doing is we're looking to, to create an abandoned cart flow and other flows that basically separate customers. If they're buying ballet shoes or accessories. So if someone is buying ballet shoes, then what we're doing is we're following up with some emails that offer an incentive on any accessories that are for the shoes specifically. But if someone is not buying ballet shoes and they're just buying a bag or a leotard or a tutu or something like that, then what we're doing is we're supplementing with an offer on the ballet shoes. So that kind of thing and that something that is really, really sensible. Because now you can kind of get even more granular on how you're offering your incentives and you can get even more specific with what you are and are not doing, rather than just saying, oh, It's a generic 20% off everything. No, you don't have to go that generic. You can offer something that's very specific and is just going to generate a little more ROI for. For your brand, essentially.

Vira: 18:34

Wow. Some of those shoes are pretty pricey. I'm like, just going to the website with like, point. Pointy shoes. They're like. Some of them are like 140 bucks.

Alissa: 18:42

Yeah, yeah.

Vira: 18:43

They're not using them for like, few months, right?

Alissa: 18:46

A week, then what? Yeah. Seriously, if you're a professional dancer, you use pointe shoes for a week and then you get rid of them.

Vira: 18:52

Oh, my goodness.

Alissa: 18:53

Isn't that crazy? Yeah, it's crazy. If you. And I think it's like, you're like, budget.

Vira: 18:58

Wow.

Alissa: 18:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not. It's not cheap to be a ballet dancer, but I think it's like, if you're.

Vira: 19:05

I'm not a ballet dancer. That's like the main reason I'm joking.

Alissa: 19:08

I'm like, I don't want to pay for $150 shoes every week. It's a lot. It's a big investment. So the other thing that you can do, and this is a little more of an advanced kind of tactic with your abandoned cart flow, is kind of like pinpointing where in the checkout process the shopper abandoned their cart on your website. So, for example, if a shopper abandons a shopping cart before or after seeing shipping fees or total costs, then your brand can kind of better understand what may have caused that shopper to actually leave the checkout process. So, for example, if your shipping and total costs occur on different pages, offering free shipping versus a discount code in a recovery email can help improve your conversions based on when that person abandoned their cart. So if I make it to that first page and I'm Using like Shopify as an example, right? So I plug in all my information and I make it to that page where it says shipping costs, plug in my address. And then it comes up and it says your shipping is $8.49. And I'm like yeah, forget about it, I'm not doing that. And I X out if I go to my inbox and now I get an abandoned car email that's like hey, like we'll give you free shipping. Am all about that. I will click on that right away and go back because it's the shipping that put me off. But if I go to the very end, so I see the shipping $8. 49 and I'm like okay, I'll take it. And then I go to the end. But then I see the tax, I'm like well okay, you know what, I'm not going to buy this. It's a little too much. And then I go back and I get like 10% off or something that would basically cover whatever that like last little bit of total cost is on tax or whatever it is. Then I'll probably go back. So it's just about being strategic of where specifically a customer went up until. So that way you understand how you can meet the need that they feel like is not being met, if that makes sense. So that's definitely something that's a little more advanced, but it is something that I would recommend doing if you're able to kind of pinpoint where it is that people are dropping off. And then the other thing that I just want to kind of explain to you guys, that kind of falls off of this like where in the process someone abandons their cart. So internally at Flowium we often will put into place two different kinds of abandoned cart flows. One is actually called added to cart, it's a Shopify metric. And the other one is abandoned cart. So just to explain the difference between the two because this is where that further segmentation happens, right? So added to cart is only useful for people who already have a profile that's in Klaviyo. So that's the first thing that you have to note. So if I hop onto your website for the first time, you can't put me in an added to cart flow. You can put me in an abandoned cart flow, but you can't put me to an added to cart flow. And the reason for that is the added to cart flow triggers. When I'm on the website you are already have my information. You're basically tracking my cookies so you can track my activity on your Website tracking my cookies sounds so funny. So you can track my activity on your website. And I'm on and I'm kind of just window shopping and browsing or whatever it is. There's a brand called Athleta that's owned by Gap Inc. That gets me every single time with this added to cart flow. So you're on the website and you're like, oh, I like these jeans. Add to my cart. Oh, I like this. Add to my cart. Oh, I like that. Add to my cart. And then I have have like five or six items that are in my cart. And then I just leave the website because I was kind of window shopping, you know, for fun. And then a couple hours later I'll get an email that says like, hey, Alissa, you added these items to your cart. Here are some other items that we think you'll like and click here so that you can actually go to your cart and update your choices so you can check out. And I was like, the first time I got that email, I was like, whoa, I work in email marketing. And they got me good. So I went back and made the purchase and I was like, I'm such a sucker.

Vira: 22:48

Like, I can't believe this got me.

Alissa: 22:50

So that's added to cart. Abandoned cart is when you add items into your cart, but then you actually begin to go through the checkout process. So you plug in your email, you plug in your address, you go to the next stage where you see the shipping, you go to the next stage where you're about to put in your payment information on any of those pages in the actual cart. That's when the abandoned cart flow would trigger. And that's why we can actually send abandoned cart flows to non like people who we don't have their profile or haven't opted into your emails yet. Because on that first page where they start the checkout process, they're asked to plug in their email and that's where we record the email and then that's where we send out or trigger the flow. So these two flows, let me tell you, I think we had one client who added an added to cart flow into their strategy. And the added to cart flow started to outperform every single flow in their strategy, including an abandoned cart. Because the thing is, if you think about it like you're going to make the most money off people who are already customers, right? Vira and I have talked about this so much. Like acquiring a new client is very, very expensive or a new customer is very expensive. Making more money off of a Current customer. Very, very easy with retention tactics, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago with Robby as well. If you haven't heard that episode, you need to listen to it. So the added to cart is like a really good retention tactic where you're basically retargeting preexisting customers. And maybe they're not even necess customers already, but they're just preexisting profiles or emails. So you're not necessarily having to go out and acquire anybody new or find anybody new or attract them. This person is already attracted to you. So all you have to do is propose and they'll say yes. I'm sorry, I'm making myself laugh. That's so embarrassing. I apologize, everybody, but.

Vira: 24:45

That's what we do on this podcast, Alissa. So you're, you're fine.

Alissa: 24:47

We just make ourselves like nothing.

Vira: 24:50

Laughing at our own jokes.

Alissa: 24:51

I know. Oh, I know. But so that. And that's why you'll find a lot of success with the added to cart. So if you haven't put that into your flow strategy yet, 10 out of 10 recommend. It's a really good one and it's just another added retention tactic that you can put into place to retarget those customers that already exist in your database. You just have to reach out to them and show them that you're interested in them so they can be interested back in you and buy.

Vira: 25:15

So yeah, it's 10 out of 10 recommend. Make me remember, like a few months ago we shared this in our like random Slack channel or something thing. It was like from the Zeus zoo store or not the zoo store, animal pet pet store or whatever. They had this like, turtle. I give five stars to this turtle. Like an animal, you know, it's like so random.

Alissa: 25:36

I forgot about that. Oh my gosh, that's amazing.

Vira: 25:40

I don't know. Made me laugh so much. Yeah. So Alissa gives 10 out of 10 to add it to card. But seriously though, it's a great, great flow. We use it for pretty much most of our clients, if not all of them. Yeah. So try it. Segmentation is a powerful tool. You know, we love it. Don't ignore it. The power of segmentation. And that's it for today's episode. Actually, we had a short and sweet episode about the segmentation next week. Guess what? We'll be talking about segmentation next week as well. But for now, don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends and family and loved ones. And if you have any questions at all about email marketing, about life. About you have some ideas for future podcast topics, send them in at flowium.com/ask and yeah, please leave us a review. If you enjoy what we do go to flowium.com/socks and you will leave us a review. We will send you the socks. You know the drill. Yeah. So thank you so much for the listening.

Alissa: 26:44

All of the socks. All of the socks. And make sure that you come back next week. We will be talking about SMS segmentation and best practices. We love segmentation. Have you noticed? Yeah. Thank you guys for listening to our ridiculous jokes and our ridiculousness and we'll see you guys next week.

Vira: 27:03

See you next week. Bye.