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Email Segmentation in logistics: How to Keep Your Logistics Company’s Clients Informed Without Annoying Them.

Dec 11, 2023
admin taking calls for dispatching - driver and customer support
admin taking calls for dispatching - driver and customer support

Table of Contents:

Email segmentation is a simple, efficient and highly effective way to keep your clients up-to-date without bombarding them with unwanted emails.  

Global e-commerce currently makes up around 22% of retail sales. And pretty much all of these online sales involve delivery logistics at some stage. So in this brave new world of online retail, logistics businesses need to adopt brave new ways to keep their customers informed about the progress of their goods. They also need to be highly proactive to keep existing clients engaged and attract new business. 

Email marketing stands at the forefront of the methods that logistics operators can use to keep their existing customers happy, and to attract new customers. But it isn’t quite as simple as just sending out swags of generic emails. 

To ensure that the correct messages are being sent to the right customers at the right time, email segmentation plays a vital role in every successful email marketing strategy. But to do this effectively, you need lots of data about your customers and what their preferences are.  

Luckily, help is at hand. If you are using a logistics software system to control and monitor your deliveries, the data generated by that system is a goldmine of useful info that can be used to sort your client lists into useful segments.   

So if are looking for new ways to keep your clients informed, and if you want to increase your logistics business’s sales and profit margin (and who wouldn’t want to do that?), read on as we give you the skinny on how to use email marketing segmentation effectively. 

What is Email List Segmentation?

Email segmentation is the division of your customer database into small groups (called segments) based on specific sets of criteria. Segmentation is a way to deliver relevant email marketing information that is personalised to each set of users, based on factors such as their geographic location, type of goods they ship or receive, delivery parameters and many other criteria right down to age, gender and preferred after-work beer. 

Generic email blasts

Many logistics businesses still believe that everyone on their subscriber list should get the same content, generated from one big list and with minimal effort put in by the marketing team. But as is often the case, a lack of effort will always be rewarded by a lack of results. 

If all you have to give your customers is some generic information, then they are not getting something that makes it worth their effort to respond to or act on, your business’s call to action. This is why email list segmentation is so important.

Make it personal

Everybody loves to feel the personal touch. By segmenting your customer database into useful lists, you can send personalised messages to them, address their individual needs, respond to their queries and solve their delivery problems. 

Email segmentation enables you to say a friendly and personal hello to your customers and, hopefully, not have to wave them goodbye.

Why you need email marketing segmentation

List segmentation provides you with the capability to send more relevant content to your clients. And the more relevant your email communications are, the more likely it is that your target audience will open them, engage with your business, and choose to use you for their logistics needs instead of that fly-by-night operator down the road!

But your email audience isn’t a monolithic clump of people waiting to hear from you. They are a multi-faceted, endlessly different collection of desires, attention spans and needs. So splitting your customer database up into segments, based on certain characteristics, will help to increase your message’s relevance to them. 

How to Segment an Email List. 

Let’s start with a generic (see what we did there) list of segments that you could apply to your database of customers. Then, we’ll take a look at a specific (albeit fictional) example of how a logistics business can start with a cumbersome list of customer contacts and compartmentalise it down into manageable and highly focused segments.   

Geographic segmentation 

The most obvious way for a logistics business to set up a set of email segments is by using the geographic location of your customers. It makes sense when you think about it: you are in the business of sending things from one geographic location to another. 

With any luck, your customer base will include people all around the world so you can tailor your email segmentation to take into account their time zones, the season of the year where they live, and, perhaps, some aspects of their lifestyles.

Customer behaviour email segmentation 

Automated email workflow tools work in conjunction with logistics software systems to gather information about your clients based on their previous behaviour. You can then set up your email marketing campaign to target specific segments of your client list.

Customer behaviour segments can be based on such parameters as:

  • Browsing behaviour. Are they engaging with your website or are they just looking?
  • Delivery anniversaries. Are there certain times of the year when clients need you more than others?
  • Servicing and upgrades. Do you have a new route or have added a new vehicle to your delivery fleet? Your existing clients may have additional delivery requirements that your added service can help them with. 

Content-specific email segmentation

This kind of segmentation relies on data and metrics gathered by your automated email workflow tools and by your logistics software. You can drill down into this data to figure out where your customers send and receive goods, how happy they were/are with your service, trends in their use of your services, and specific requirements that they look for and use repeatedly. 

Ok. All this generic information is fine. But now let’s take a look at a specific, but imaginary, example.

Email marketing segmentation for Ferg’s Rural Deliveries.

Imagine a logistics business – let’s call it Ferg’s Rural Deliveries – that specialises in delivering goods and services to farmers around New South Wales. His customer database will include people who have different types of farms such as:

  • Sheep farms.
  • Dairy Farms.
  • Cropping farms.
  • Beef farms.
  • Horticulture farms.
  • Lifestyle farms.

So straight away, Ferg has broken his customer email list into some segments that he can target differently. That was easy, wasn’t it, Fergie?

Now, he can go a step further.

A sheep farmer, for instance, is going to have a different set of needs to a cropping farmer. These might include:

  • Lambing-time supplies.
  • Sheep shearing-time supplies.
  • Fence-building gear.
  • Water troughs.
  • Sheepdog food.

A lifestyle farm owner, on the other hand, might be more in need of such things as: 

  • Irrigation and stock-water systems.
  • Animal feed such as pellets or chicken meal.
  • Small items of farm machinery.
  • Fruit tree covers.

Ferg now has a set of segments based on some pretty basic parameters, which he can use to compose specific email content to send to these different groups. But wait…there’s more!

Now he can specifically target lambing time for his sheep farmer customer segment. This next level of email segmentation might include:

  • Time of year.
  • Breed of sheep and farm geography.
  • Potential weather conditions at lambing time.
  • Essential items for a lambing shepherd.
  • New and improved products to use for lambing ewes.
  • Wet weather gear for lambing shepherds.

Our imaginary farm delivery champ, Ferg, is now really on the case with his email marketing segmentation. His sheep farmer clients are now receiving information tailored specifically to their needs. And that is just the start. With the help of some email marketing segmentation tools, he can continue to split his flock of customers up into smaller and more targeted segments. 

So let’s take a look at a few companies that can help you (and ‘ol Ferg) get your email segmentation up and running.  

Email Marketing Segmentation Tools

There are many many companies out there that provide email list segmentation tools. Each one uses different criteria to set up both your email segmentation lists, and the email marketing workflows that are used to automatically generate and send emails to your different segments.

Of course, the exact requirements of your particular logistics business will mean that you’ll need to discuss options with your marketing manager, your software provider and your chosen email marketing company. But to give you a broad idea of what to look for, let’s check out a few companies that offer email segmentation tools.

Enudge 

Keeping it local, Enudge are an Australian firm that offers a comprehensive toolkit for effective email marketing, designed to cater to various needs without overburdening your budget. Whether your goal is to dispatch a one-time promotional campaign or to foster deeper engagement with your existing clientele, Enudge is equipped to handle it all. Moreover, it assures the security and locality of your data by maintaining all storage within Australia, adding an extra layer of trust and reliability to its service.

Klaviyo 

Klaviyo are the data-crunching kings (and queens). They specialise in analysing metrics to find patterns and pathways that can then be followed and utilised to a business’s best advantage. Their platform sets email segmentation at the top of its list of preferred tools for successful email marketing. Their self-described “best-in-class” segmentation systems use state-of-the-art algorithms to figure out all sorts of cool and groovy ways to approach your customer segments.   

Mailchimp

The Mailchimp guys do it old school. Well, they have been around since the early days of ecommerce, so they know what works and what doesn’t. Their extensive and user-friendly email segmentation tools let you customise your lists to your heart’s content, and get hyper-focused on your client’s needs and responses.

Their tools enable you to build and save segments to use with different marketing campaigns – such as email, postcard and social media ad campaigns – and to enhance your segments with advanced tools such as A/B testing and “nested” lists composed of specific activity parameters. 

Email Segmentation is Your Go-to Strategy.

Email segmentation will enhance your logistics business’s sales, drive up your income and, best of all, put more money in your bank account. Not only that, email segmentation will ensure that your customers will look forward to hearing from you and be open to all sorts of new ideas and opportunities to use your services.

Ask one of the team at TransVirtual for some advice about the best email marketing segmentation tools for your business and how you can utilise the data generated by your software package. You could even ask old Ferg at Ferg’s Rural Deliveries for advice. He really knows his email segmentation…and the best time to deliver lambing supplies!  

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