9 E-Commerce Customer Segmentation Examples in Email Marketing

Customer segmentation can be great for engaging with your customers, creating valuable messages for them, and increasing brand loyalty. But while most e-commerce marketers know how to segment contacts, they are not sure how to make the most of segmentation.

So, we created this guide to show you how established e-commerce brands segment their customers and target those segments using email marketing. These customer segmentation examples will help you understand how notable brands have incorporated them into their email campaigns and how you can take inspiration from them.

Table of contents

• Basics of customer segmentation

  • What is customer segmentation?
  • Types of segmentation

• 9 customer segmentation examples in email marketing

  • 1. Show products relevant to the customer's gender
  • 2. Create campaigns appropriate for the season
  • 3. Segment customers based on their personality
  • 4. Show customers recommendations based on their interests
  • 5. Nurture customers based on their lifecycle stage
  • 6. Send refill emails after the usage period
  • 7. Talk to customers in their first language
  • 8. Show them something relevant to their age
  • 9. Reward loyal customers

• What to do next?

Basics of customer segmentation

Before we get into the examples, let's briefly cover customer segmentation for people unfamiliar with the term.

What is customer segmentation?

Customer segmentation is a marketing strategy where customers are divided into groups to create targeted marketing campaigns for the individual groups, connect better with them and get better engagement and conversions. These groups are based on various criteria like demographic, geographic, etc.

For example, you can segment users who have purchased men's and women's clothing into different segments. And send them different emails to target them with clothing they might be interested in.

Here's how Lucchese created different emails containing their boots for men and women to send to the respective genders.

Source: Moosend

If you wish to learn more about segmenting your audience in general, check out our guide on audience segmentation.

Types of segmentation

Now there are different ways you can segment your subscribers, and they are:

• Demographic - Segmentation based on the customer's characteristics like age, gender, etc.

• Geographic - Segmentation based on the customer's location.

• Psychographic - Segmentation based on customer attitudes, opinions, personal values, and other traits.

• Behavioral - Segmentation based on the customer's online behavior and actions.

Now, you can use customer segmentation to target them on any platform, but here we'll be covering ways to implement them in email marketing.

9 customer segmentation examples in email marketing

Here are some customer segmentation examples in email marketing you can take inspiration from.

1. Show products relevant to the customer's gender

Type of segmentation: Demographic

Segmentation based on gender can be beneficial as men and women have different preferences. By sending them targeted campaigns for their gender, you can show them more relevant products and get more conversions.

In the email below, Adidas has specifically targeted the male gender with their email design, selection of products, copy, etc., and sent it to their male subscribers.

But be careful with this type of segmentation as some of your audience can be gender neutral, and it might miss the mark with them. Only use this type of segmentation if you are sure of your audience's gender and what they prefer. If not, stick to other forms of segmentation.

2. Create campaigns appropriate for the season

Type of segmentation: Geographic

This segmentation can be useful for selling seasonal products like umbrellas, winter boots, summer flip-flops, etc. But you can also use this type of segmentation to simply create something specifically for the season, as W&P Design has done in the example below.

They created this campaign to sell their products for making cocktails. Now, cocktails are not a seasonal product, so they could have made it general. But instead, they are targeting customers experiencing winter and providing them with cocktail recipe ideas for the winter.

By doing this, they can relate with their customers and give them exactly what they might need, thus increasing the chances of conversions.

Source: Really good emails

3. Segment customers based on their personality

Type of segmentation: Psychographic

You might argue that it's a demographic segmentation based on age range. But if you look closely, they focus on the customer's personality and if they feel like an adult or not.

Later down the email, Who Gives A Crap tries to sell to them by saying that bulk buying their toilet paper might be the easiest adulting shortcut. A pretty cheeky but effective way to get young people (both new leads & old customers) struggling with adulting to buy more of their toilet paper.

Source: Really good emails

4. Show customers recommendations based on their interests

Type of segmentation: Psychographic and behavioral

Interests is a bit more complicated type of segmentation as it is a psychographic trait, but you can only identify it by their behavior on your website or app. And to find out what they are interested in, you can look at their purchase history and browse actions like time spent on a specific page and the type of products they looked at.

In the example below, Lyst analyzes the type of products the person showed interest in and recommends similar products they might like.

Source: Really good email

You can use AI tools to analyze customers' behavior, find their interests, and recommend products accordingly. Find out more on how AI product recommendations work in our guide on AI in email marketing.

5. Nurture customers based on their lifecycle stage

Type of segmentation: Behavioral

Behavioral segmentation based on the customer's lifecycle stage can help brands improve their onboarding and nurture their leads at the right stages to get more sales.

For example, if someone bought from you long ago and hasn't made a repeat purchase, they are inactive customers. You can send them feedback emails to get to know their experience and opinions of your brand to help you win them back or improve your brand to avoid losing in the future.

In the example below, Brooks sends the email to new users interested in running to nurture them and get them to purchase by directing them to their online shoe finder to help them find the right shoe for running.

Source: Really good emails

6. Send refill emails after the usage period

Type of segmentation: Behavioral

Look at customers who have bought a certain product from your website, and send them a reminder email after the usage period to ask them to repurchase the product before it gets empty. Here's how Fullscript has done this,

Source: Really good emails

7. Talk to customers in their first language

Type of segmentation: Geographic and demographic

Segmentation based on language goes a bit deeper as you need to identify the language someone speaks, which might not always correlate with where they live. So it depends on both the geography and demography of the people.

For example, some who speak Spanish may not necessarily live in Spanish-speaking countries, but you can still send them an email in Spanish.

It's a great way to segment people by establishing a unique bond with your customers. This will work well to target people from places where English is not the primary language of communication, like Germany, Korea, etc.

Here's how McDonald's has implemented this.

Source: Really good emails

8. Show them something relevant to their age

Type of segmentation: Demographic

In this example, Vitruvi sends a back-to-school email to students showcasing a product that might help them stay focused while studying. Now, you might assume that it is meant for all students.

No, it's probably meant specifically for students who are in college because students in school usually don't care about humidifiers, nor do they have the money to buy them.

Segmenting this way is helpful to target the right people who are more likely to buy your product and are at the age to make the purchase decision.

Source: Really good emails

9. Reward loyal customers

Type of segmentation: Behavioral

Segmenting your customers based on the number of purchases will tell you who are your loyal customers and who are not. And using this information, you can create separate campaigns to reward your loyal customers with exclusive benefits, discounts, etc. Here's how DAVIDsTEA implemented this.

Source: Really good emails

What to do next?

You can start off by segmenting your customers based on the characteristics of your choice. Mailmodo provides email metrics and analytics that can help you statically and dynamically segment based on the characteristics you chose to segment by. Read our guide to discover how to create static and dynamic segments using Mailmodo to help you create more targeted email campaigns for your customers.