Seven Ways to Segment Your Email List

Today’s nonprofit marketing challenges are real, from avoiding spam filters to crafting content that feels like it speaks to every subscriber individually. With over half of companies using marketing automation tools to personalize emails, your audience expects content that aligns with their specific needs. How do you create emails that will stand out in crowded inboxes?

Segmenting your email list based on subscriber preferences and interests is a great way to create content that resonates with each group. In this blog post, we’ll guide you through seven key segments for successful email campaigns that activate your supporters.

The Problem: How Do You Create Emails That Grab Your Audience’s Attention?

Your subscribers have varied interests and preferences, which means sending the exact same message to everyone almost guarantees your email will get lost to inbox clutter. OptinMonster reports that 43% of people unsubscribe from emails when the content doesn’t feel relevant to them. By not personalizing your emails, you miss opportunities to build deeper connections with your supporters.

How can you ensure your email campaigns are effective in reaching the right audience and increasing engagement with your cause?

The Solution: A Segmentation Strategy That Tailors Content to Audience Interests

One of the most effective ways to reach the right audience is through segmentation–grouping subscribers based on their behavior and preferences. Tailoring your content to different segments significantly boosts open, click, and response rates. Marketers report that segmented emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more clickthroughs than unsegmented ones. By using strategies like welcome series, advocacy actions, and donor-specific messaging, you can create stronger relationships with your audience.

That said, how do you determine which segments will lead to higher engagement, improved deliverability, and greater support for your organization?

Actionable Tips for Creating an Email Segmentation Strategy

Knowing you need a segmentation strategy is easy. The hard part can be figuring out which segments make the most sense for your list. Here are seven subscriber segments to get you started.

1. New Subscribers

A Welcome Series is an easy way to cultivate relationships with new subscribers right away. This means going beyond the simple autoresponder. We suggest waiting 24 hours before the first email of this automated series goes out.

• Start with an introduction to your organization with more detail about your mission and programs. The second email should share inspirational stories from people or communities your work has impacted. In a third email you can talk about the future and what you are planning to accomplish in the coming year.
• In each email, make a call-to-action based on your goals. The ask can start small, like a social media follow, and grow to something more significant, like a donation request.
• A side benefit of a welcome series is that some subscribers will remove themselves from your list after each email. While this may sound strange, it’s a good thing. Unsubscribes help you determine who is most likely to engage with your organization. They also boost your open and click rates and improve your deliverability score over time.

2. Program or Topic Interest

If your organization runs various programs or focuses on different issues, you may increase open and click rates by segmenting your list based on these elements of your work.

• By offering your subscribers the option to choose which content they are most interested in via a web form, you can be more confident that you’re developing useful relationships with these individuals. It shows them that you care about what they care about.
• This tactic can also help your organization during fundraising campaigns. It’s a stronger ask if you can tell people that their money will go directly to support the program or issue they care about the most.

3. Opened but Didn’t Click

Open rates and click rates are important numbers to track. Another important stat to keep an eye on is click-to-open rate (CTOR), which compares the number of people who click an email link to the entire group who opened the message. According to SendGrid’s 2024 Global Email Benchmark Report, the aggregate CTOR for nonprofits is 5.7%.

• A high CTOR is better, and we recommend tracking your own stats in addition to looking at benchmarks. Using both numbers as a guide, a high open rate and low click rate lets you know that while your subject line may be working, the way you’re positioning your content isn’t.
• The subscribers who open your emails are demonstrating interest, making them an ideal group to connect with in a follow-up email. Try reframing the same content in a different way to see if it grabs their interest more effectively and turns into a click.
• This group is also a great opportunity for A/B testing. You can test two variations of a single follow-up email to see what messaging or design is more effective at converting these folks into clickers.

4. Clicked on a Link

We noted earlier in this post that giving subscribers the option to choose their own communication preferences through a web form helps you tailor content based on their interests. Monitoring clicks is another way to do this, and it doesn’t require a form completion.

• If you have topic-specific content, you can segment your list and direct specific messages to people who have clicked on previous links about this same subject. You can also use this tactic if your organization sends action alerts, such as requesting messages to elected representatives.
• Targeting a segment of your list with a related alert on a subject you know they care about can help you improve your response rate.
• Diving into your clicks can even help inform your content strategy. Let’s say links on a specific topic are outperforming others. You can find ways to use those popular pages as starting points for website pathways to other content you want people to read. Or you can create more resources on that subject to maintain interest.

5. Participated in an Advocacy Action

Your advocates are a special group of subscribers, and you want to treat them as such. They’ve proven that they care enough about your mission to take time to speak up for it, which means you’ve already captured their attention.

• At a minimum, make sure you segment your advocates so you can keep them informed about the outcome of the issue on which they took action.
• If the conversion rate on your action was high or the total number of actions taken is an impressive number, that might be something to include in your follow-up message as well. This can make them feel like they’re part of a larger community of advocates.
• Within this group there are also Super Advocates, usually defined as people who took action and donated to your cause. Analyzing this group can help you try and identify other potential Super Advocates or consider outlets for promotion where you might reach people with similar characteristics.

6. Made a Donation

The biggest reason to segment your donors is to make sure they know that they matter to you and that their donations are being put to good use. For an end-of-year campaign, you should send different content to subscribers who have already given in the same calendar year.

• These messages should start with a thank you for past support and if your tool allows, conditional content that asks for a reasonable increase in their previous donation.
• Similarly, you can ask one-time donors to sign up for recurring gifts and ask recurring donors to add to their monthly amount.
• Segmenting your donors also gives you the opportunity to inform them of how their previous support has helped your organization. If you group your donors by amount, you can tell them how their gift enabled your organization to accomplish a specific mission-related goal.

7. Inactive Subscribers

The previous six segments are based on actions people have taken. But you should also consider those who remain inactive. Inactive might mean anyone who has not opened an email in a year, or those who have stopped donating or participating in action alerts. Whatever your criteria are, you can target this group with its own campaign.

• Begin with a reintroduction to your nonprofit highlighting success stories. Your second email can offer an easy option for lapsed subscribers to update their profile and change email preferences. In a third email provide the option to connect with you in a different way, such as following you on social media.
• Set a wait time between emails. Depending on your groups and messages, this could be anywhere from three days to a week. Remove subscribers who remain inactive during this campaign.
• After each email in your campaign, return subscribers who reconnect to your active list. Deepen these relationships with a ‘welcome back’ email and other personalized automations, such as taking a new action or renewing their donations.

Conclusion: With Time and Testing, Segmentation Will Activate Your Supporters

This is only a jumping off point for creating a segmentation strategy. But there’s no need to feel overwhelmed by all the possibilities–you don’t need 100 segments right away. Base your choices on your campaign objectives and then track, measure, test, and refine. This will help you determine which segments and content you should focus on for different campaigns. In no time, you’ll increase engagement, conversions, and support for your organization.

If you’re looking for more guidance and support around list segmentation, get in touch with us to see how we can work together.