As any seasoned email marketer knows, there are almost an unlimited amount of ways to segment email marketing subscriber data. In the second installment of this three-part overview, Jordan Lane provides a summary of some common email segmentation sources, tips, and best practices.

Part II – Demographic segmentation

Gender, age, ethnicity, interests, education level, occupation, location, marital status, number of children, and income are all examples of demographic attributes that can be used to effectively segment your email subscribers. Depending on the nature of your business and industry, you can combine such attributes to create highly targeted audiences that really zero-in on your best customers. So why would you target females with your email marketing messages when your best customers are more specifically hispanic females aged 45-60 with a college degree and adult-aged children?

The reason why many fail to use sophisticated demographic segmentation is because they have difficulty gathering all the demographic information they desire from the initial registration page. As a general rule, the more information you require at sign-up, the likelier a prospect will abandon the registration process or provide false information.

To help email marketers gather the info they need for sophisticated demographic information, I’ve compiled a list of techniques to improve the data collection process:

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I recently was taking a look at some email registration pages out there when I came across a nice little email registration feature that The Puma Store uses on their site.

In the lower right hand corner of their home page, an email subscription box awaits your email address. Once the address is submitted, a good looking registration page appears in a dialog box for the user to enter more details. After filling out that information, the user is sent back to the home page. The cool thing about Puma’s design is that after signing up for email, the area where the subscription field resided now displays a simple line of text, saying “Thank you for signing up!”

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While a lot of the industry talk today revolves around the latest technologies and newest communications tools, I thought I’d offer a personal anecdote about using relatively low-tech means to drive customer data acquisition.

Take a look at the attached photograph I recently snapped on my Blackberry from a Robeks smoothie shop. That’s a store-owned laptop computer sitting by the cash register, inviting customers to fill out the email registration page on their website. It’s an idea so simple that it comes off as clever — just an open laptop with a browser opened to their email registration form. The top of the form had a rotating banner offering special coupons via email, which demonstrated the value of signing up.

I took a moment to fill out my information on the laptop, received my smoothie and left the shop. The next day I received my welcome email and appeared to be entrenched in the customer lifecycle. To be honest, Robeks could use a little help on the follow up communications, but the acquisition effort was simply perfect. The rotating screen and form gave me — and others — something to look at and do as we waited to place and receive our smoothie orders.

To make it even better, Robeks simultaneously offered a mobile program where I could send a text to receive coupons on my phone. I love the idea, particularly during the holidays, of providing an incentivized mobile or email sign-up opportunity while customers wait in checkout lines. It’s just a great way to make a customer feel wanted and appreciated, and it certainly gives you something to do while waiting to get to the register.

The following entry is a response to Erin Geoghegan’s piece arguing in favor of shorter email registration pages. Enjoy!

Counterpoint: It’s important to capture as much data as possible during the email sign-up process. The data you capture enables you to deliver the most relevant emails right away, know more about your audience, and build the foundation for successful, long-term customer relationships.

The sign-up page is a great place to capture customer data, especially for non-retailers. If you’re offering a highly personalized email marketing experience, why not give your subscribers the ability to receive the most targeted campaigns right away?

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Point: As consumer patience and attention spans decrease, asking for information beyond an email address (up-front) will most likely result in them not completing the sign-up process at all.

In my opinion, name and email address — or even just email address — should typically be the only information that marketers ask for in their email sign-up forms. Understandably, if it is completely necessary for your business to ask for more information, such as a zip code, then by all means do so. Otherwise, the usage of these two simple entry fields is my recommended maximum.

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