It’s essential that your holiday email marketing is on point. The subject lines, the timing, the cadence, the email copy … email marketers pore over each of these as they develop their holiday campaigns.

But sometimes, it’s easy to forget one crucial element: the recipient. Who are you sending your emails to?

This part may be more important than you think. Email sends are at an all-time high during the holidays. Unfortunately, opens and clicks are also at their lowest. What can you do to bridge the gap? Segment your email lists.

According to Klaviyo, segmenting your email list can do powerful things for eCommerce. In their large-scale survey of 1.5 billion emails, sending an email to a quarter or less of a website’s total list resulted in 50% higher open rates, 100% higher click-through rates, and nearly double the revenue! 

Let’s set your eCommerce site up for success this holiday season. Here’s how to segment your lists now, and start building them for optimal sales later.

1. Locate Your Gift Givers

There are some people who will ignore your eCommerce store all year long, until the holidays come around—and they reliably return to buy. That’s okay. It’s on you to remind them that you’re their favorite gift-giving destination.

Find Your Segment: Review your sales from last holiday season. Identify all customers who purchased only during the holiday season, and made no purchases during the rest of the year. Start with the date of your first holiday sale (e.g. Thanksgiving or Black Friday), and finish with the last holiday sale (e.g. Cyber Monday or Boxing Day). 

Grow Your Segment: Develop holiday content for your website, with a special focus on Gift Guides. These should curate your products into helpful lists, themed by type of gift (e.g. stocking stuffer, main event), type of recipient (e.g. mom, dad, pet owner), or cost (e.g. under $25, $50, or $100). Add an email signup form to these pages. Anyone who submits their email through one of these gift guides should automatically be added to your gift-giving segment. 

2. Love Your Loyal Fans

Loyal fans, brand advocates, customer VIPs… these folks go by many names, but whoever they are, you know and love them—and they love you right back! Your most engaged and loyal customers deserve a dedicated email list of their own.

Find Your Segment: Create a segment of everyone in your customer loyalty or rewards program. Don’t have one of those? No problem. Make do by searching your customer database for repeat purchasers.

When creating your campaign for these folks, let them know how special they are with an exclusive discount, just for your VIPs. Make sure this is actually exclusive. You shouldn’t be sharing it on social media, and the discount amount should be higher than what you’re advertising everywhere else. (Can’t afford to offer a steeper discount? Give them a redeemable promo code for a free gift so you can contain costs.)

Grow Your Segment: Create a customer rewards program and publicize it on your website. By joining the program, people automatically opt in to your email list. Sephora does this nicely with their VIB (“Very Important Beauty”) program:

3. Sniff Out Big Spenders

Often, big spenders are a subcategory of your loyal fans. These are the people who buy consistently from you, and consistently buy a lot from you. Maximize their cart totals this holiday season with a targeted email campaign that features your major items, not the stocking stuffers.

Find Your Segment: Filter your customer list by those with cart totals above a specific amount (e.g. $200 or more, the exact amount depends on your product pricing), or anyone who has cart totals in the top 15th to 20th percentile of all sales. Then, email them content befitting a big spender. This may be one of the gift guides you created in step one (“Gifts Under $100”), or blog features dedicated to individual, big-ticket items.

Grow Your Segment: These people like to live large. Treat them like the VIPs they are with an exclusive sneak peek of your holiday items. Run a social campaign teasing that if they want first access to your holiday sale, they need to sign up for your email list first.