SMS Segmentation Strategy

92 - Today’s a sad day for the Email Einsteins podcast. This will be Alissa’s last episode with us. She’s been a core member of the Flowium family for years, and we wish her all the best! 

This isn’t just a farewell episode. We’ve got some great tips for getting the most out of your SMS list. The Email nerds are back to nerd-out about SMS once again. Tune in for our guide on segmenting your SMS list. 

This episode dives deep into the metrics you should be tracking on SMS and how best to engage every level of engaged customers. After this episode, we may have to rename the show to SMS Einsteins. 

Let’s get into it! 

Claim your free email marketing audit!

Transcript

Vira: 0:16

So in this episode, we'll be discussing the main sort of like segmentation strategies for SMS. You can't afford to ignore SMS in 2022.

Alissa: 0:48

Hello. Hello, everyone. Welcome back. Episode 92. Oh my gosh, we're so close to 100.

Vira: 0:55

Yes, we are.

Alissa: 0:58

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 before we get started with today's episode, we have some sad news to share with you guys. Actually, I mean, it's really my own news. So this is the last episode of Email Einstein that I will be on. We will still have Email Einstein. Email Einstein will live on forever. But Alissa, me, I will no longer be a co host with Vira.

Vira: 1:59

But Alissa will still very much be an email marketing nerd. I'm sure she will.

Alissa: 2:05

Yes. Yeah, I will continue as an email marketing nerd. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna miss you guys too. It's been such a wild ride recording all these episodes and everything. But yes, I will continue my journey as an email marketing nerd. I'm just going to continue that journey elsewhere. Just with life stuff coming up. A lot of you. I have a little boy named Henry who is probably going to hop into this room at any given moment and start shouting mama for attention and stuff. So I'm just, I'm moving on to something that's going to still help me move forward in email marketing, but just help me take more of a backseat on my professional side of life and focus more on being a mom so I can grow my own little email marketeer.

Vira: 2:45

Co host. I know Alissa and Henry because he has been in our podcast ever since he was like born, honestly.

Alissa: 2:54

Yeah, Pretty much. And if he. If you haven't heard his voice, he's been sitting in the room just watching and listening. So he probably knows more about email marketing than I do, honestly. But yeah, it's. It's been so much fun. Thank you guys so much for listening for all this time. Please, to me, anyways, continue to listen to email Einstein, because I know that Vira and the Flowium team have a lot in store for you guys. The way that this podcast is done and the content that we bring out, that will never stop, that will always continue. So make sure to continue. Make sure to continue telling your friends about this podcast, because I'm leaving, but the podcast is very much staying. And to be totally honest with you guys, just like a behind the scenes little note. Vira is like the brains behind everything that we do, so I'm kind of like the laughing voice that's always talking. But Vira is the one who really runs the podcast. So you guys are keeping the main person of email, Einstein, on board, which is really good. So.

Vira: 3:50

We're gonna miss you. We're definitely losing that giggling part of our podcast.

Alissa: 3:56

The one who's just always laughing.

Vira: 3:59

Now I'll have to laugh at my own jokes, which I do all the time anyways, so it's not going to be much different for you guys. But seriously though, Alissa, even though we're going to miss you, the podcast is still going to be here. In fact, we already prepared, like a bunch of really cool episodes with really cool guests. I don't want to spoiler them all to you, but we've already recorded a bunch of them, so definitely come back every Tuesday. We're here for you guys. We're here for you.

Alissa: 4:26

And I can finally listen to them. Listen to the podcast episodes because I don't hear my own voice.

Vira: 4:32

We never. We never, like, listen to our own podcast. Right, Alissa? It's like never, like the weirdest. I haven't even, like, listened to one episode of our podcast. It's just like, weird to hear yourself.

Alissa: 4:43

But now I can listen to you, Vira, with no shame. I'll be able to listen to these episodes.

Vira: 4:48

Be careful. After episode two or three, you might be able to pick up Ukrainian accent. So be careful with that disclaimer. Disclaimer. That was a good one. Gosh, I can't wait to laugh at my own jokes. Well, anyways, today we're still gonna talk about stuff. It's not just like a sad goodbye episode. We still want to make it as informational for you as possible. And even though we're email nerds. Sometimes we nerd out about sms. Can I say nerd out?

Alissa: 5:19

Yes, that is correct.

Vira: 5:20

Okay.

Alissa: 5:21

That is correct.

Vira: 5:22

Perfect. I'm gonna miss your ESL impromptu lessons.

Alissa: 5:27

My English speaking,

Vira: 5:31

That's for sure. Yeah guys, so let's talk some sms. Let's talk some SMS and let's talk segmentation. You know, we love segmentation. We kind of love sms. No, we do, we do love sms. SMS is a powerful tool even if you are not like personally sold on it. The power of SMS for your brand is, it's huge. You can't afford to Ignore SMS in 2022. So you guys, if you send an email that doesn't like quite resonate with your customer, well the worst that can happen, they can maybe skip an email or they can like not open it or they can open and not click through, which is hurtful. It does hurt, don't get me wrong. But with SMS it's a totally different dynamic. You see text messages, they are more like personal, they are more intrusive even. So if you bombard your customers with irrelevant text with tags that don't bring that like extra value to them, you risk of losing your customer, risk of losing your customers trust and eventually a client. Right. So while customers don't necessarily see all of the emails you send, be sure that they are still receiving and very much seeing your sms. Because the funny statistic about SMS is that SMS pretty much has the almost like a 100% open rate. Well not, not 100% open rate but, but like still it's like they're in the, in the 90s probably because like when you receive the, the SMS, chances that you will see it are very, very high. Right? Yeah, there is like almost like no way you can ignore it. So yeah, so you have to be a bit more careful with what you're sending and the segmentation is a big help here. So in this episode we'll be discussing the main sort of like segmentation strategies for sms which is idea is the same as for email, but it's done slightly different. So let's talk about the big one segment by engagement in email. When we define the engagement, it's usually someone who received an email within say like 60 days, open the email or clicked on the email. Right. With SMS it's different because everyone opens the sms. So it wouldn't be a very like accurate definition. So how we define the engagement we actually have the highly engaged customers. So basically these are the customers who made purchases more than say three times across the website in the past. And to this customers we try to treat them more as a VIP segment and we try to reward them for their loyalty with maybe like an additional VIP discount or something. Then we have medium to low engaged purchasers. And again this engagement is more based on their purchasing behavior than on their like actual engagement with the sms. You know what I mean? So that's like the biggest difference for me at least how we like segment different segments for SMS versus email. So medium to low engaged purchasers made up like this segment is made up for customers who have made at least one purchase in the past but not very recently. So say the definition can be someone who purchased like, like one time, one plus times more than 90 days ago, for example. So they are your medium to low engaged customers. And this people, they usually require some sort of like a win back offer, maybe like a free shipping or maybe like some sort of like a sidewise sale. So they know about you, they've purchased from you in the past but they sometimes need that little nudge, you know. But also there is like a third group, they are your least engaged, they never made a purchase and they basically never purchased. But sometimes they've even maybe like been to your website but they never purchased. And this subscribers, they probably require the most aggressive discounting or the most aggressive, I don't know, like the strategy in place. You can even like further segment this message based on like how engaged this unengaged people are. Right? Maybe there are some customers who have joined your list but they've never been to your website. But maybe there are some customers who have joined your list and been to your website within the last 90 days so you can like treat them differently. Of course this is like advanced, advanced segmentation for sms, right? But yeah, try to give them some sort of like a bonus. Maybe you can like include like a, some sort of like aggressive discount. Maybe you can do like again a free shipping or like a freebie with the purchase. So you can also include some sort of like real customer review or some sort of like social proof off your products. So yeah, this is sort of like a main big approach towards SMS and engagement. Think of it more like SMS engagement based on previous purchasing behavior versus based on how they engage with your content. I hope it wasn't like Too, too technical for you guys?

Alissa: 10:51

No, this is great and it's, it's interesting cause this is stuff that we've like sort of talked about in the past. But it's really cool to see how like easily practices that we've always kept or maintained in email apply so well to sms. You just have to kind of shift it a little bit and then just remember that like this is a super personal channel and also people inevitably going to see your messages so there's no like whoops, sent out a wrong thing. Let me just make a quick edit. Like that doesn't work in sms. You just have to be able to.

Vira: 11:19

One thing, one thing that we just discussed with you and other project managers on our call is that if person is not like engaged with email, it doesn't mean that they will be not engaged with sms.

Alissa: 11:31

Right, right.

Vira: 11:32

If, if one channel is not working for them, it doesn't mean that you have to like exclude them from like two channels.

Alissa: 11:37

Exactly.

Vira: 11:38

So like be careful with that. I actually did like an interesting experiment my changed the definition of that like SMS content segment that we're using in Klaviyo and basically in the past we've excluded all of the suppressed people from, from sms. So if they are suppressed on email we would like exclude them from SMS as well. But like this time I tried to not exclude them and you, you wouldn't believe but I got two and a half times the revenue generated from that email. Because yeah, just like, like I said, if they don't want to hear from you in email, else it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't want to receive your sms. Right. And if they don't want to receive your sms, they will probably like how to say they will unsubscribe from your sms. So yeah, definitely be careful with segments and try experimenting with it.

Alissa: 12:23

Yeah, yeah, it's the best way to do it. Okay. Your another SMS segmentation tip is to target your VIP customers and this one is really, really good to focus in on because out of anyone in your customer base that is going to want to hear from you on a private chann like sms, it's likely to be your VIP customers. So what targeting those customers really gives does for you is it gives you the opportunity to really drive a deeper level of engagement and then just build on the already preexisting strong loyalty that you have with your best customers. So what you can do with those best customers is make them feel special with exclusive offers, content, early access, but all through sms rather than just driving it to what I guess some people are now calling kind of like the basic marketing channel, which is email. Right. Like everybody gets emails, but only special people get SMS messages. SMS messages. SMS from their favorite brands. And the other thing is when you are, when you do start sending your VIP customers an SMS with an exclusive offer, you start to increase the odds that your most loyal customers are actually going to see your message and then they're actually going to access the deal and then take advantage of it. SMS gives like more of a personal feel to how you're communicating with people. So it does encourage higher brand advocacy from your best customers because it makes them feel like they're getting a very personal touch from your brand. So rather than just sending out like a generic like VIP alert, 10% off starts today for you and for everybody else that starts tomorrow. You could do something like hey name. It's Jen from Brand Name.

Vira: 14:09

Right.

Alissa: 14:10

I know that you're a VIP here and I just wanted to reach out and say like, thank you so much for your brand loyalty. Thank you so much for believing in what we do here. Here is a 15% discount that you can use today. It's good until tomorrow. Everybody else is going to get notified of our spring sale that's coming up, but I wanted to send this out to you personally because we're just so grateful to you. Thanks. That's a very long text message, but you guys catch the drift.

Vira: 14:37

That's like my high school text message.

Alissa: 14:39

Right, right. Hey girl, what's up? But the other thing that I've done quite a lot for one of my clients, he does like a week long Black Friday sale where every day of the week he launches a new deal and it's over the course of eight days for VIPs. What we did is we actually launched all of the deals two days in advance from when the actual like first day of the Black Friday week started. And we sent it all via sms and it was wild because we had so much engagement. The other thing that we did is the week before we actually launched the sale for via sms. We actually put up like a landing page to collect SMS or to collect, yeah, SMS opt ins. And we got like 500 people signing up in like the span of like two or three hours because we sent out a campaign. It was wild. And then that made the launch of the Black Friday sale via SMS even more popular and even more successful because you had all these people who are like, yes, I want to be a vip. Like I want to get early access. How can I do this and then we sent it out. So this isn't necessarily like VIP customers, but you're kind of giving other customers like a workaround on how to become a vip. Like hey, if you opt in for sms, then you'll be treated as a vip. You can do stuff like that. That also helps kind of expand your SMS program or your SMS marketing if you're just starting out. But also it just helps you target those customers. So then you're sending out personalized messaging and just getting them really engaged and interested in the new initiatives that are coming up. And you're giving them the opportunity to get access to that first, which is huge as a vip. So definitely something to try for. Sure. Yeah.

Vira: 16:19

And they are like the definition of the segment is really easy to create too. But it's gonna, I guess it's gonna depend on like who you consider the VIPs. It can be people who have placed three orders with you, five orders, maybe people who reach like certain historical spend with you. But one thing that always do we try to like give them a little bit of special treatment because this are your biggest brand advocates. Right. So definitely treat them slightly better than you do all of your other customers. Cool. Another one that we do internally a lot as well is called High Intent customers. So basically you can send targeted messages to customers who have shown some sort of like interest. I briefly already like discussed it I think in my previous in the engagement section of this podcast. Right. But the idea here is to send targeted texts to customers who have shown some sort of like interest in your product or in your service in the past, but they haven't purchased. So you can see that they've been to your website, you can see that they may be like reached out to you. Maybe they, I don't know, like subscribe to receive your sms, they are opening your sms, they are opening your emails maybe, but they are not purchasing. So this types of customers may have previously interacted with your brand in like all kinds of ways. Maybe they clicked on CTAs as well. So yeah, if they are failing to, failing to complete the purchase, just be very aggressive with the discount. That's basically our recommendation either with a discount or if you are no discount brand, maybe try to answer their questions, maybe like reach out to them and say like hey, do you have any like questions that we can answer about, about our brand? Or maybe you and or maybe here are some of the reviews of the product you're you were looking at. So try to be a bit more aggressive with a discount strategy. And try to be a bit more like helpful. One thing that we do have pretty much for all of our clients, we have enabled the two way messaging for all of them. So basically, yeah, that's, that's. I guess that's the point of the entire SMS thing, is that it's really easy to respond to. Right. Unlike email where it goes to like a generic, I don't know, like a folder or something, in SMS you can like easily reply in seconds. So enable two way messaging just to make that experience even more personable and make sure to have someone who will take care of that two way messaging. Because I don't know about the other platforms, but in Klaviyo, the way it's set up, you're basically like receiving all of the messages in Klaviyo directly. So it's not like your CEO will receive the SMS directly to her phone. Right. It's more like you would treat it more like an email, I guess. But they will receive the response to their phone. So make sure to have an assigned person who's taking care of those messages.

Alissa: 19:05

That's a huge one.

Vira: 19:07

That's a big one. That's a really good question. I think, I think people often don't realize that someone like is actually like messaging them. Yeah, I brought it up on like a call of my client and they were like super surprised. Yeah.

Alissa: 19:22

When people notice it, you have to text them back. Don't leave your customers on read. That's so awkward.

Vira: 19:28

That's rude.

Alissa: 19:29

Yeah.

Vira: 19:30

So there you have it. It's three very basic strategies. You can target or segment your customers based on engagement, based on whether or not they are VIPs, and also based on their purchase intent. These are just like a few strategies. You know, we can come up with like a million of them, but this are the tested strategies that work for like universally, pretty much for all of the brands. So try one of them and see the big results.

Alissa: 19:56

Yeah, I love it.

Vira: 19:58

I love it.

Alissa: 19:58

Sms, baby. It's the future. Guys. As always, don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. If you like what we do, make sure that you leave us a review. Just go to whatever podcast streaming platform you're using. Leave us a review. Once you do, take a screenshot of that and then Visit us at flowium.com/socks Submit an image of your review, the screenshot of your review, and we will send you your very own free pair of Flowium socks. And as always, if you do want to get involved in a community, make sure that you Join us after at flowium.com/community. It's a group of like minded email nerds, geeks and Einstein's who all get together and yeah, we, we talk all things email marketing and Henry has decided to come in and talk all things email marketing too.

Vira: 20:50

So yay, Henry.

Alissa: 20:53

Make sure you come back next week because you will not hear him in the background yet. There he is.

Vira: 20:59

We're gonna miss him. So many insights.

Alissa: 21:02

So many insights. Listen to this book of knowledge here.

Vira: 21:07

Book of knowledge. Oh gosh, yeah. Guys, next week. Come back next week. Even though Henry and Alissa unfortunately will not be with us on this podcast next week, but we have prerecorded really awesome interview with Derek Haney, the guy who knows pretty much everything about different like Shopify apps and Shopify technology. So what he does, he basically help you to pick your Shopify technology stack in the most affordable and in the most like in, in the smartest way possible. So their team, they analyze like what you're using, what you're not using, what are your business goals, what is the best app for you and it's all by the way for free. So I had a really good time like talking to him and we had of a lot, lot of really interesting insights. So I hope you're going to enjoy that interview just as much as I did. So yeah, I guess come back next Tuesday. And Alissa, thank you, thank you, thank you for like doing this podcast, for like creating this podcast with me. It was like so much fun doing it with you. We're going to miss you.

Alissa: 22:15

It's been such a blast, you know, you know, you know I have mad, mad love for you. Mad love. So thank you, thank you for everything. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, thank you guys so much.

Vira: 22:27

You can still listen. Alissa, to our podcast.

Alissa: 22:31

Now I get to leave a review and get some Flowium socks. I already have a pair, but I'm gonna see if I can sneak another pair.

Vira: 22:39

Henry, leave us a review.

Alissa: 22:43

I'll leave it from Henry. Thank you guys so much for listening and I won't see you guys next week, but we will definitely see you here at Email Einstein next week.

Vira: 22:52

See you next Tuesday. Bye.