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Revolution wins Sustainable Business of the Year 2026!
Revolution wins Sustainable Business of the Year 2026!
[7 min read]
Segmentation means splitting your email list into groups based on behaviour, purchase history, and engagement — then sending each group emails that are actually relevant to them. It’s one of the biggest levers for improving open rates, click rates, and revenue per email. This post covers the segments that matter most and how to build them.
Most ecommerce stores send the same email to everyone on their list.
The customer who bought three times last month gets the same message as the person who signed up six months ago and never purchased. The loyal repeat buyer gets the same “new customer discount” as someone who’s never spent a penny with you.
It’s not just inefficient. It’s actively damaging — to your open rates, your click rates, your unsubscribe rate, and ultimately your revenue.
Segmentation is the fix. And once you understand how it works, you’ll wonder how you ever sent email any other way.
Segmentation is the practice of dividing your email list into smaller groups — segments — based on shared characteristics or behaviours, and then sending each group emails that are relevant to them specifically.
The more relevant an email is to the person receiving it, the more likely they are to open it, click it, and buy. That’s the entire logic.
📊 Stat to know: Segmented email campaigns generate 46% higher open rates and up to 58% of all email revenue, according to data from Klaviyo and DMA benchmarks.
In practice, segmentation can be as simple as splitting buyers from non-buyers, or as sophisticated as targeting customers who bought a specific product category more than twice in the last 90 days and haven’t visited your site in 30.
Both approaches beat sending the same email to everyone.
This is the most fundamental split — and the one most stores don’t make.
Someone who has never bought from you needs a different message than someone who has. Non-buyers need trust-building, social proof, and an incentive to take the first step. Buyers already trust you — they need reasons to come back, not a first-purchase pitch.
Sending a “first order discount” to a customer who’s already bought from you three times is at best irrelevant, at worst insulting.
Not everyone on your list is equally interested in hearing from you right now. Segment by engagement:
| Segment | Definition | Email approach |
|---|---|---|
| Active | Opened or clicked in last 30–60 days | Full send frequency, all campaigns |
| Warm | Engaged 60–120 days ago | Slightly reduced frequency |
| Cold | No engagement in 120+ days | Re-engagement flow, then suppress |
| Winback | Previously active, gone quiet | Dedicated win-back sequence |
Sending to cold subscribers without a re-engagement strategy kills your deliverability. Inbox providers see low open rates and start filtering your emails to spam — for everyone, including your active subscribers.
RFM stands for Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value. It’s the gold standard for ecommerce segmentation and it answers one question: who are your best customers, and who is at risk of churning?
A customer who bought last week, has ordered four times, and has spent €400 with you is a VIP. They deserve different treatment — earlier access to new products, loyalty rewards, a more personal tone.
A customer who used to buy regularly but hasn’t in six months is at risk. They need a win-back sequence, not another standard newsletter.
Klaviyo has RFM segmentation built in — you can build these segments in minutes without any custom coding.
If someone has bought from your garden furniture range twice, sending them emails about your kitchen accessories isn’t relevant. Segment by what people actually buy and browse.
This is especially powerful for stores with broad product ranges — building supplies, electrical, pet, home and garden. A customer who buys professional-grade tools doesn’t want the same email as a weekend DIYer.
Category-based segments let you speak directly to each customer’s actual interests instead of casting the widest possible net.
Where is this person in their journey with your brand?
Each stage calls for a completely different email strategy. A first-time buyer needs reassurance and an invitation to come back. A VIP needs to feel valued and recognised. A lapsed customer needs a reason to remember why they bought from you in the first place.
Say you run an Irish ecommerce store selling home interiors. Here’s how the same “New Summer Collection” campaign plays out with and without segmentation:
Without segmentation: One email goes to everyone. The subject line, the copy, the offer — identical for the person who’s bought five times and the person who’s never purchased. Average open rate: 22%. Average click rate: 2.1%.
With segmentation:
Same product launch. Three emails. Dramatically different relevance for each recipient — and dramatically better results.
Klaviyo’s segmentation engine is one of its biggest strengths. Segments are dynamic — they update automatically as customer behaviour changes. Someone moves from “warm” to “cold” without you doing anything. A first-time buyer becomes a repeat buyer and shifts segments automatically.
The key building blocks:
You don’t need to master all of this on day one. Start with the basics — buyers vs. non-buyers and engagement level — and build from there as you get comfortable with the platform.
📊 Stat to know: Brands using advanced segmentation in Klaviyo see an average 3–5x improvement in revenue per recipient compared to unsegmented sends.m the start.ate, recovering even 8% of those is substantial recurring revenue — generated automatically.
Over-segmenting too early. Ten hyper-specific segments with 50 people in each is not better than three solid segments with 2,000 people in each. Start broad, then refine as your list grows and your data improves.
Segmenting once and forgetting. Segments need to stay current. A customer’s behaviour changes — your segments should reflect that. In Klaviyo, dynamic segments do this automatically. In other platforms, you may need to refresh them manually.
Ignoring the unsegmented remainder. When you build segments, you’ll often have a group that doesn’t fit neatly into any of them. Don’t ignore this group — understand who they are and what they need before you decide how to treat them.
Using segmentation as a reason to send more. More relevant emails are better than more emails. Segmentation should improve the quality of what you send, not just increase the volume.
If you’re new to segmentation, do this first:
That’s four segments. Four audiences, four different messages. Already dramatically better than one email to everyone.
From there, layer in RFM, category interest, and lifecycle stage as your confidence and list size grow.
Segmentation is one of those things that sounds straightforward but has a lot of nuance in the execution. At Revolution, we build segmentation strategies and Klaviyo setups for Irish ecommerce businesses that go beyond the basics — making sure every email you send is working as hard as it can. Get in touch with the team to find out what’s possible for your store.
