We talk a lot about knowing our customers; developing targeted content; and implementing a rifle or blow dart approach with our email communications. These items and more are all key for an optimal program.
One area often overlooked is having a breakdown of your subscriber’s email domains. Knowing this information can be quite helpful when developing your creative. If you find a large portion on one domain, it may justify segmenting them and developing a separate creative optimized specifically for that domain.
Some email platforms will give you a quick graphic breakdown. If not, you can always do a sort in Excel and manually determine your ratios.
Below are breakdowns from 3 different clients I work with
Here we see some differing stats. In the 1st and 3rd example, Yahoo represents 5.6% at max, while the 2nd client has over 25% of subscribers with Yahoo addresses. We can also see that in the 3rd example at least 22% is represented by education or government addresses.
Looking at these three, I was surprised at the low amount of gmail addresses. We see 9.3% in the 2nd example, but none in the 1st and 3rd!
Takeaways
1. Every list will be different and it’s helpful to know how YOUR list breaks down
2. Knowing this breakdown will aid in testing your email creative on different domains. You should be testing on more than your breakdown, but this can provide priority.
3. If you find a large portion on one domain (25%+), it may justify putting resources into segmenting those users and providing creative optimized specifically for that domain. If you’re list is very small, this will be overkill.
4. Also consider segmenting by domain and testing deliverability. (Note – some email platforms will do this automatically).
Cheers,
Forest
Questions or inputs? Feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email.
