It's time to slice and dice

Hello!

Let’s talk about segmentation; it’s a great way to get the right message in front of the right people at no additional cost.

One of the most common ways to segment is around demographics. For example, sending something to people in a certain geographic area only.

This is a fine way to segment; I’ve used that method at times.

But I want to focus on something I find more valuable: Segmentation based on actions. It’s a great way to target people quickly based on their interest level, as indicated by their interactions with your emails.

Let’s dive in.

Next time you send out a newsletter or an offer to your list, divide the email audience up into three categories based on what they did with your email: the openers, the clickers and the non-openers.

For this example, let’s say you’re a small business focused on some type of home service and you just sent an email reminding people to schedule their winter tune-up.

We’ll split people out in three groups based on what they did with your email.

The openers

Your openers are the ones who opened the email but didn’t click through to schedule anything. They’re somewhat interested in what you have to say, but didn’t feel inclined to click on anything.

I would hit this group again at the start of the next week with something that says, “Limited appointments still available,” letting them know you have a few openings left to schedule their tune-up. Creating a sense of urgency might generate a few more appointments.

The clickers

Next, let’s look at the clickers. These people were interested enough that they clicked through on something in your email.

If your software tells you whether or not they scheduled a tune-up, you can hyper-target here and just hit the ones that clicked but didn’t schedule something.

Otherwise, you can hit this group with something like, “Three things to know about winter tune-ups” and it will be relevant to all of the clickers. You can include a line about, “Contact us to schedule yours if you haven’t yet.” This reminder will likely drive a few more appointments your way.

The non-openers

Finally, the non-openers would be a great group to hit with a personal message to get their attention. If you have more than one email address attached to your email marketing platform, you could send this email from a different address. For example, if you sent the initial email from the company, have this next one be from the Owner/CEO/President or an account rep they’ll work with.

You can also try using the subject line to get this group’s attention. If you can’t send the email from a different person, have the subject line say, “A message from the owner.”

Use the same email you sent the first time but with a short note at the top from the owner, saying they don’t want them to miss out on getting a tune-up before winter arrives.

This personal email will likely bring you at least some new openers and clickers, and maybe even some new appointments.

One more step you can take: slice and dice again

You can also go back to the groups again a week or two later and hit your new segments of openers, clickers and and did-not-opens with a new set of messages. The possibilities are endless.

As you segment your lists and reach out to people, pay close attention to the subject line and leverage those to increase open rates. Sometimes it’s good to be vague in your subject line and other times it’s best to be specific.

What’s that mean? For more on how you can use vague or specific subject lines in different situations, check out this free article I wrote on Medium.

You can get much more nuanced with your list segmentation. One option is to look for a specific action in an email and then target that audience.

For example, you could plant links in an email. Let’s say you’re a restaurant chain and you launch a new menu with an email blast announcement.

You could include a link in the email to some specific things:

Each of these clicks show a different type of interest and you could develop an email around each one. Maybe you’d send a follow-up to everyone who watched the video, inviting them to come into the restaurant for a cooking demo with that chef.

Think about what very specific things you can link to in your next email so that you’ll have a segment you can target.

You might want to reverse engineer this and think about a desired action you’re looking for (i.e. people to attend a live cooking demo). Then, you can think about what content those people might click on so you can build a segment.

See you next week, when this email newsletter will return to being sent on Sunday nights now that back-to-back holiday weekends have come and gone. Talk to you soon.

Please reply to this email if you have any questions or suggestions.