How to Use Segmentation to Ensure Your Emails Get Opened and Read

Segment your List with 30/60/90 Day segment rule and DKIM settings

In this post, we get a bit ‘techy’! I’m going to share what you can do to ensure your newsletters get delivered whenever you send your contacts an email. Also, I share a tip what you can do today to look good in front of Gmails and Hotmails and thus, improve your email open rates for the long term.

Getting people to click and open emails is so relevant right now. Why? Check out this post about the latest Apple iOS update.

So let’s dive straight in…

1. DKIM Setting improves your Open and Click-Through Rates.

First and foremost, authenticate your domain address so the ESP’s like and trust you.

The ESPs – stands for Email Service Providers – are companies that deliver emails to people’s inboxes. For example, Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, etc to name a few big ones.

If you’re sending emails using your ‘business domain’ – that’s anything after the ‘@’ at sign in the email address, then it pays to set up your DKIM settings with your domain hosting provider.

DKIM stands for – DomainKeys Identified Mail.

An online resource Dmarcian offers a more technical explanation about DKIM and what it’s used for. However, in this post I’ll list the top TWO reasons for DKIM setup.

Top two reasons as to why you should use DKIM to ensure email deliverability are:

• The message integrity is protected. With DomainKeys, the email content can be verified that it hasn’t been changed while being sent.
• Your overall domain reputation and email deliverability is improved because your emails are coming from an authentic source.

To put it in perspective: When your domain reputation is good you increase your chances of your emails being opened and read with every newsletter sent!

Do you need help setting up DKIM?

If you’re using ActiveCampaign, reach out to us and we will help you set it all up. Click here to reach out to our awesome team who can help!

2. Segmenting your list improves Open and Click-Through Rates.

How well do you know your contacts that live in your database?

Would you like to know who reads your newsletters?

One of the best ways to increase email open rates and click-through rates is by segmenting your list by how often the contact opens your emails.

Let me elaborate.

Whenever we start working with new clients, we first implement an automation called Contact Engagement Frequency. This automation runs in the background.

It monitors how often your emails get opened. Has it been 30, 60 or 90 days since the contact opened your last email you sent?

Once it reaches a 30-day of no email engagement, the automation then applies a tag against the contacts’ profile. Similarly, the tag is applied when the contact reaches 60 days and 90 days of tracking no activity.

When a contact opens or clicks on any of your emails, the clock resets.

This way you gather data about your contacts’ behaviour and start sending them relevant emails.

For example, send a one-off broadcast promoting your products to just those who haven’t opened your emails for 30 days. The idea here is to send them an irresistible promo to get them to open that email so their status changes and they get tagged ‘Reachable’.

You can use segmentation to send emails to a smaller group of people and increase open rates this way.

What’s more, by sending emails to a smaller segment, you’re bound to increase your click-through-rates and improve your open rates. The higher the click-through rate the higher the revenue that you generate from your email marketing efforts.

If you’re stuck with segmenting your list or looking for help with increasing your click-through-rates, reach out to us here, we live and breathe this stuff!

3. Regular Clean-up of your list will improve your Open and Click-Through Rates.

Cleaning doesn’t have to be a chore. List cleaning sounds like a chore but it ain’t.

It can be a manual task if you let it.

But we like to automate it.

We recommend using software such as ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo to automatically rid your database of people who don’t click or open your emails after three months of no engagement.

We use the automation mentioned previously called Contact Engagement Frequency that applies a tag when someone doesn’t engage with emails for more than 90 days.

A good rule of thumb is to find those contacts who have been dormant in your database for quite some time, i.e. haven’t been opening emails for more than 90 days.

Ninety days equals three months! This is the magic number when it comes to email deliverability.

Why?

Well, after three months of no email engagement sends a bad signal to the ESPs – Email Service Providers aka Gmails, Hotmails, etc. about your ‘FROM: business email address’.

The ESPs will flag your business emails as ‘spam’ or ‘not important’ if they see no one has been opening your emails for more than three months. The ESPs control what emails get sent to people’s inboxes. The ones people click on will be given a green light and deliverability prioritised.

FACT: Your Open Rates and Click-Through-Rates will increase dramatically once you remove the ‘dead weight’ in your database.

Unsure how to set this all up to run automatically behind the scenes?

Click here to reach out to our team, we enjoy doing this stuff!

OVER TO YOU

Whether you’re new to ActiveCampaign or not, you’ll benefit from ensuring your DKIM settings are updated. DKIM ensures your domain is authenticated and your emails won’t end up in the dreaded ‘junk or spam’ folder.
If you’re not sure how set it up, please click here to reach out to us – we do this every day!

Together along with DKIM, you should also create new segments that track engagement behaviour or your subscribers. With segmented list, you’ll start to see immediate improvement with your open rates and click-through-rates! Plus, you’ll know who’s reading your newsletters! And this in turn means you can send more targeted, relevant emails ensuring people hear your message. Which ultimately leads to more revenue for your business.