Struggling with low email engagement and poor deliverability rates? The problem might not be your content but your audience targeting. Segmenting your email lists can improve deliverability, reduce spam complaints, and enhance overall engagement. Let’s dive into why segmentation works, review some practical steps and advanced tactics for email list segmentation so you can tailor your email strategy to improve deliverability, opens and conversions.

Email Segmentation Matters

Without knowing anything about your business, you can always name several audience segments that (should) exist in your CRM:

• Current Customers
• Past Customers
• Contacts who entered your pipeline, but who didn’t close
• Contact who have never entered your pipeline and have some potential
• Contacts who you will never sell to because they’re a poor fit (no budget, no interest, etc.)

These roughly translate to your lifecycle stages! If you’re using HubSpot you already have your contacts segmented this way. 

Other Very Helpful Segmentation Would Include

• Customers grouped by which product or service they’ve engaged with
• Assets or pages they’ve interacted with
• Mailing lists or interests they’ve subscribed to or indicated in other profile preferences 

Not every recipient on your mailing list wants or needs the same message. Email segmentation allows you to tailor content to specific groups within your list, increasing relevance, engagement, and deliverability. But even if you don’t have the time or resources to create unique emails for each of these segments, it is still beneficial to clone that one email and send different email batches to your key contact segments.  

The Connection Between Segmentation and Deliverability

Segmentation helps with more than your messaging more than - it’s a practical strategy that directly impacts your email deliverability. Here’s how:

• Smaller, Segmented Lists Increase Engagement: When you’re sending a relevant email to your most engaged contacts, you’re going to have higher delivery, open and click rates.
  
  
  
  
• Higher Engagement Boosts Reputation: ISPs (Internet Service Providers) reward high engagement rates, such as opens and clicks, by improving inbox placement. Sending to your most engaged contacts first will increase deliverability for future sends to your less engaged lists.
• Targeted Content Reduces Spam Complaints: Customizing your content and sending targeted  emails minimizes the chances of users marking your emails as spam.

How to Strategically Segment Your Email List

1. Start with Clean Data

Remove invalid or outdated email addresses. A clean list lays the foundation for effective segmentation and improves deliverability right away.

• Delete - invalid contacts (hard bounces, incorrect emails, unsubscribes, etc). If you can’t email them, and they have no other reason to still be there, clean them out.
• Create a Suppression List - contacts that need to stay in the system but won’t/can’t be emailed. This is often past customers, competitors, hard bounces and unsubscribes that aren’t going to be deleted.

2. Define Your Segments

Common segmentation criteria include:

• Lifecycle Stage: New leads, active customers, or dormant subscribers.
• Products or Services: What specific solutions, services or products they are interested in.
• Demographics: Age, location, or industry.
• Website Behavior: Specific content or promotions for those who have been visiting certain website pages.
• Email Engagement: Segmenting on email engagement to have a list of those who have opened a recent email and another for those who have not can greatly improve deliverability for that first list. If someone stays on the unengaged list for long enough, they may be a candidate for removal from the CRM or a special email targeting long-dormant contacts to encourage them to re-engage.

3. Create Relevant Messaging

You may choose to send the same email to two different segments to test differences in their engagement. That’s totally OK! You probably wouldn’t be surprised to see that segmenting this way results in higher open and click rates from your list of Most Engaged contacts. 

Crafting unique email content that speaks directly to each segment’s needs goes a long way to improve open rates and engagement rates.

• A re-engagement email for dormant subscribers might offer a special discount or invite them to update their preferences,
• A customer appreciation email can be more candid and personal than a broad marketing newsletter,
• Contacts who are using a particular service can be sent updates on that service,
• Changing your language to match regionality can help your message land better with different nationalities.

When your messaging is more specific to your recipients, you will see an increase in open rates which will help improve future deliverability. 

4. Monitor and Optimize

Analyze metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates to refine your segmentation strategy over time. If you have contacts who are consistently unengaged and you can’t get them to engage, consider removing them from your email lists, or only include them in certain mailouts. 

All hard-bounces and unsubscribes should be removed from your lists so you stop trying to send to people who can’t receive your emails. 

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Over-Segmenting Your List: While segmentation is powerful, creating too many small segments can lead to inefficiency and diluted messaging.
• Ignoring Data Health: Even with great segmentation, a poorly maintained list will hurt your deliverability.
• Neglecting Personalization: Segmentation and personalization go hand in hand. Use dynamic content to make emails feel one-on-one.

Conclusion: Why Segmentation is Worth the Effort

Email segmentation isn’t just a nice-to-have, it is essential for improving deliverability and driving better results. By breaking your list into targeted groups, you’ll send the right message to the right audience at the right time. The payoff? Better inbox placement, stronger engagement, and a healthier sender reputation.

If you’re interested in learning more, contact us at CRO:NYX Digital. We're here to help with all your email marketing needs.