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Segmentation

Segment to increase order rate

Segmentation increases click rates, order rates, and deliverability. Your active profiles are the most important part of your list. 

Active profiles are subscribers who have engaged in the last 180 days. Keep that part of your list growing, and active, with segmentation. Creating more segments helps you increase your campaign volume by sending smaller, more targeted campaigns to specific audiences.

Your segmentation checklist

Send 3/4 of campaigns to segments rather than lists.

Use 8 or more unique segments per month for campaign sends.

Use a tiered engagement segmentation strategy, or an RFM segmentation strategy.
 

Best practices & strategic guidance

Segmentation is a highly useful tool for achieving 3 key priorities:

PRIORITY #1

PRIORITY #2

PRIORITY #3

For email, maintaining a good “sender reputation” so your emails land in
recipient inboxes

For SMS, segment your most engaged SMS subscribers, and send messages to them multiple times per week

Across both channels, personalize
messages to drive higher
engagement rates

If the majority of your recipients do not open or click your emails, inbox providers will assume you’re sending spam and start to filter your emails to spam folders for all recipients. Using segmentation to only send to your engaged subscribers, or to simply exclude those who’ve stopped engaging from regular sends, is key to maintaining strong email deliverability.

Don’t ignore the rest of your SMS subscriber list, though. Aim for at least one SMS message to folks on your SMS list each week, monitoring engagement rates to see which parts of your audience respond best to which types of messages––and build segments from there.

Personalized emails and texts have significantly higher engagement rates compared to generic, one-size-fits-all marketing. Your key to personalized marketing is creating tailored audiences for strategic sends. By using segmentation to define a specific audience that you believe will be most interested in specific content you have prepared, you can deliver more personalized messages at scale.

Select a segment to dive deeper:

For entrepreneurs

Small businesses

Enterprise brands

For entrepreneurs

Focus on a “less is more” approach when developing a segmentation strategy and target your fully engaged audience—those recently subscribed, or often opening and clicking emails—to maximize reach. 

If you’re new to segmentation, start here:

Build loyalty with your budding VIPs:

Create a segment of customers who have purchased at least 3x. Then, foster a more personal relationship that will also increase their future average order value (AOV) and lifetime value (LTV).

You can do this by sending them advanced notice of new releases or promotions, allowing them to pick out their own bundle of 2+ products to receive 5% off the bundle, inviting them to feature their favorite products on their social media in exchange for a free gift, sending them a survey to ask what more they would like to see from your marketing content, or sending them a survey to ask what products or services they most need right now in your company’s product category.

Launch location-specific campaigns:

As you grow your customer base, begin to segment your audience by location. Send emails about an upcoming pop-up location to your Brooklyn base, if that’s where you will be. Or, let folks in Texas know they can find your new goods in H-E-B.

Keep baseline relationships in both email and SMS:

Make sure each person on your email and SMS list, no matter how you are segmenting, is getting at least one message in that channel each week. 

Quick tip

Use this logic in Klaviyo to build your main campaign audience:

Is consented to receive email marketing AND has been created in the last 90 days OR has opened at least one email in the last 90 days OR has clicked at least one email in the last 90 days

Build your main campaign audience

For small businesses

For regular weekly campaign sending, implement a tiered engagement segmentation strategy that looks like this:

Send 70% of campaigns to engaged profiles: 

Send 20% of campaigns to a broader audience:

Send 10% of campaigns to the whole list:

Here's what to send to this segment:

Here's what to send to this segment:

Here's what to send to this segment:

  • Standard snackable content
  • Less targeted promotions
  • Highly relevant or unique content, such as content from a guest writer or influencer campaign content
  • Large promotions
  • Large traffic-driving events
  • Most promotions
  • Most traffic-driving events

For enterprise brands

When shaping a more advanced campaign strategy and building your audiences around engagement, consider recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM).

As you build Klaviyo-recommended RFM segments, remember that segmentation is only half the battle. You also need to alter the language in your messages for that specific segment. Here are a few examples.
 


 

For “nearly theres” (prospects):

Be more assertive. Know the pain points, highlight the value prop, and be persuasive to ask for that click

For potential enthusiasts and potential high rollers (customers):

Be more delicate with your messaging. Entice them to come back for more, or for similar products.

For high rollers and brand enthusiasts (VIPs): 

Prioritize advocacy and continued nurturing to ensure ongoing loyalty and repeat sales. Keep them coming back for more.
 

Core marketing audience

75% of your time goes here

High rollers

Retain and leverage

Perks, exclusivity, advocacy prompts

Recent

Frequent

High value

Recent

Frequent

Low value

Brand enthusiasts

Increse average order value

Related products, volume discount

Potential High rollers

Increase frequency

Tease perks, replenishment

Recent

Not frequent

High value

Recent

Not frequent

Low value

Potential enthusiasts

Increse AOV or frequency

Best sellers, related products

Recent

Frequent

Recent

Not frequent

Nearly theres

Nudge over the line

Sell value, FOMO, mild discounts

Waiting for wows

Push over the line

Limited deals, best offers

If you do nothing else: Make segmentation a critical part of your campaigns

Segmenting by engagement level matters: 

Top-performing brands often implement a tiered engagement segmentation strategy in which they send 70% of campaigns to engaged profiles, 20% to a broader audience, and 10% to the whole list.

Not sure where to start? 
Pick a few high-value segments, like repeat purchasers, new shoppers, or high-value customers, and craft campaigns specifically for them. Find more ideas in our best practices guide on creating an engagement-based sending strategy.

The top 10% of fast-growing brands make segmentation a critical part of their campaigns, which keeps their spam and bounce rates low.

Build more segments

More inspiration & use cases 

3 successful SMS & email segmentation use cases from Jenni Kayne, Huda Beauty, and Compass Coffee

Learn more

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