Email Segmentation: 10 Best Practices That Drive Results

An email marketing campaign that delivers the right messages to the right people at the right time is one of the most effective ways to reach your audience. The problem? Many email campaigns don’t quite nail all those “rights.” 

We’ve all experienced the frustration of signing up for an email list, only to have our inbox clogged with messages that just don’t feel relevant. And that type of strategy can really backfire—56% of people will unsubscribe from an email list if they feel the content is no longer relevant to them.

Segmentation helps your email campaigns get all those “rights” . . . well, right. It involves dividing your email subscribers into smaller lists based on certain criteria, such as their location or purchase history. With this approach, you can send more personalized content to your audience to keep them engaged, leading to:

• Higher open and click-through rates
• Lower unsubscribe rates
• Better brand loyalty
• Higher conversion rates

Use these 10 best practices to create personalized, segmented email campaigns that keep your audience hooked.

1. Start with clean, centralized contact data

A strong segmentation strategy starts with clean, accurate data that’s easy to access and manage.

If you’re not regularly cleaning your email list, you’ll likely end up with duplicate contacts, invalid email addresses, and other inaccuracies. When those errors slip into your segments, they lead to mistargeted emails and higher unsubscribe rates.

One of the easiest ways to update email data regularly and sync it across systems is by using a centralized CRM and enhancing it with automation features via a solution like Tenon.

Tenon’s automated data enrichment makes it easy to keep your contacts up to date, removing invalid email addresses and other data errors before they affect your email segments. With clean data, you can also adjust your email segments whenever you want, without having to edit your list first.

2. Use dynamic tags and filters instead of static lists

Your audience’s behavior and preferences will change over time, and your email segments will need to change with them. Instead of managing static lists that require manual updates, dynamic tags automatically update based on behavior or status changes in your CRM.

In other words, if a salesperson sets up a demo with a new lead, their tag might shift from “prospect” to “engaged”—which moves them into a different segment with more relevant content.

You can also use tags to sort contacts by engagement level, product use, or any data point that matters to your business.

Tenon offers advanced tagging and filtering capabilities to help you build flexible, scalable email segments for your marketing strategy. It supports “dot-walking” across your existing ServiceNow tables, which helps you pull data from several levels deep for granular segmentation.

3. Segment by behavior, not just demographics

Many companies segment their emails based on static customer demographics, such as their location, industry, or company size. But while demographics are useful, they only tell part of the story. Behavioral segmentation helps you go deeper and deliver more relevant content.

Rather than segmenting just by location or industry, look at what your audience is actually doing, like their purchase history, recent site activity, or email engagement.

You might build a segment for users who haven’t interacted in 30 days, or one for active prospects who open every email but haven’t purchased yet. This lets you speak directly to specific customer concerns and pain points, nudging them toward conversion. 

Tenon helps you build these behavior-based journeys with the data you already have in ServiceNow. You can even trigger personalized email or SMS messages based on specific actions your customers take.

4. Build segments around the client lifecycle

Your customers go through a consistent lifecycle as they interact with your brand. They start as leads and then become new customers, with some turning into repeat purchasers or even brand evangelists!

To generate more engagement, send emails to targeted groups based on where they are in your customer lifecycle. Leads who are brand new may need more product education, while repeat buyers and loyal customers are probably more interested in exclusive offers or early access perks. 

Tenon’s automated list updates help you keep your customers segmented based on their lifecycle stage. When clients take action and move from one stage of the lifecycle to another, Tenon automatically pulls that data from ServiceNow and uses it to adjust customer segmentation.

5. Use demographic segmentation to personalize, not just target

Remember how we said that demographics only tell part of the story? Here’s that part: Demographics are invaluable for personalizing content for better engagement and a more positive customer experience. 

Going the extra mile with targeted emails helps you build stronger customer relationships. The research backs this up, with 81% of consumers reporting that they prefer personalized brand interactions. 

That said, if you do opt to segment your users based on things like their location or industry, the focus should still be on individual personalization that elevates the customer experience. 

Just because two users work in the same industry doesn’t mean they’ll have the same needs or be at the same stage in the customer journey. So use your demographic data to inform details like email subject lines, send timing, and offers, but let your behavioral data determine the rest. 

For example:

• B2C: Use demographic data to send a 20%-off promo email featuring your new fall collection to women aged 25–40. Then take it a step further with behavioral data—sending different subject lines and product highlights to each customer segment based on their shopping patterns.
• B2B: When promoting a webinar, segment by job title or industry to reach the right audience. Then personalize the message based on past behavior: highlight advanced takeaways for those who’ve attended similar events or downloaded related resources, and use a more introductory pitch for new leads.

Tenon’s drag-and-drop email designer makes it easy to customize emails for each segment of your audience, without the need for advanced technical or coding skills. It’s an effective but low-lift way to make sure each recipient gets the right message for them.

6. Monitor segment performance and iterate

Your email segmentation strategy needs to stay flexible and shift alongside your changing customer needs and business goals, and that means continuous tracking and optimization.

Instead of just looking at overall email marketing metrics like open rates or click-through rates, drill down into performance by segment. You’ll get a clearer picture of what’s working and where there’s room to improve.

Try A/B testing to learn more about what your audience responds to. For instance, test two different visual layouts with the same copy to see which one drives more clicks. If the data shows a strong preference, adjust future email formats accordingly to drive higher engagement levels.

Tenon makes this easy with a centralized dashboard that shows segment performance at a glance. You can even create custom reports to share insights about your targeted campaigns with your team or stakeholders.

7. Keep email marketing segmentation simple and sustainable

Email segmentation should be an ongoing part of your digital marketing strategy. If your segmentation strategy is too complex, it could slow your marketing team down, making it hard to create successful campaigns at scale.

One common pitfall is oversegmenting: trying to account for every possible persona with a custom list. That approach makes campaign planning a mess and can lead to burnout.

Instead, build a few core segments that align with your business goals. A SaaS company might focus on “lead,” “engaged,” and “inactive,” while an e-commerce brand might use “browser,” “first-time buyer,” and “loyal customer.” CRM data can help you identify which segments make the most sense for your brand.

With Tenon, it’s easy to manage your lists as your strategy evolves. Automation keeps your segments fresh, and clean list views give you a clear picture of who you’re talking to.

8. Combine segmentation with email automation

As your brand grows, you won’t have the time to build every campaign manually. Marketing automation helps you scale without losing the personal touch.

With Tenon, you can build automated email workflows to make sure all your customers are getting timely follow-ups. Delivering these messages at the right time is key to keeping leads from falling out of your sales funnel. 

Use automation to create engaging email sequences like:

• Welcome emails for new subscribers to help them learn more about your brand and offerings
• Re-engagement emails for dormant customers or leads to nudge them back into the funnel 
• Promo emails with product recommendations based on past purchases
• Abandoned cart messages that encourage browsers to come back and buy
• Follow-up emails with onboarding steps or usage tips when customers purchase a specific product

Automated email flows also have stronger open rates, with an average of 48.57% across all industries—around 10% higher than one-off marketing campaign emails.

9. Don’t forget to re-segment over time

Your business changes. Your audience changes. So should your email segments.

Set a regular schedule to review and refresh your email segmentation—whether that’s quarterly, annually, or after major product updates. The goal is to make sure your segments still reflect your current strategy and audience behavior.

• Fast-moving businesses like e-commerce brands, SaaS startups, or seasonal product companies may benefit from re-segmenting quarterly, especially if customer behavior or offerings shift frequently.
  
  
• Slower-moving industries like B2B services, manufacturing, or higher education might only need to revisit segments annually, or after significant changes like a new product launch or shift in business goals.

Tenon helps you update your segmentation strategy faster and with less effort. Dynamic segmentation and real-time data sync eliminate the slog of manually recategorizing every customer and help you ensure that everyone gets the most relevant emails for their needs.

10. Align segmentation with business goals

Ultimately, your email marketing strategy needs to support your business goals. If your marketing messages aren’t aligned with your objectives, you’ll struggle to get the conversions you want. Instead of just mirroring the latest email marketing trends, make sure your strategies are adapted to your unique business model.

Let’s say your main goal is to grow your user base, but you’re only sending emails to returning customers. You’re probably not going to hit your acquisition targets. A better move would be to grow your email list using your website, social media, and lead magnets, then segment those new leads based on where they came from and tailor your messages from there.

You can also use Tenon to turn your ServiceNow data into valuable marketing insights. With Tenon’s analytics tools, it’s easy to identify which email marketing strategies are driving the highest ROI, so you can focus your resources and efforts where they’ll have the biggest impact.

Smarter segmentation starts with better tools

Thoughtful segmentation helps you send more personalized, relevant emails and build better customer relationships with stronger engagement. But to do it right, you need clean data and tools that work with you. 

Tenon has the features you need to pull off personalized, journey-based segmentation at scale. It centralizes your client data, pulling insights out of ServiceNow and turning them into visual, actionable segments. And with dynamic list management and automation features that keep things running smoothly in the background, you can focus more on strategy and less on admin. 

Ready for email segmentation that goes beyond demographics? Book a demo with Tenon today!

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