Part of getting to know your subscribers is not treating them all as if they’re the same person. That’s where segmentation comes into play. Discover the ways you can sort your subscribers into groups that will let you send targeted, relevant content to each segment.

00:22 Andy Shore: Welcome back everybody, we’re gonna continue our conversation talking about knowing your subscribers and the way you do that is with segmentation. We danced around saying it in the last episode, ’cause we knew we have a whole lot of segmentation coming up, but we’re talking about all the different ways you can do it, but this episode is gonna be what it even is. So what is segmentation, Daniel?

00:44 Daniel Miller: So, when it comes to the segmentation, I’m sure we all have the signup form on our site. Everybody starts filling that out, but the question is, does everybody really… It’s not a one-size-fits-all. So by segmenting your list of subscribers or customers, you can really start to kinda build a personalized experience for that type of person. What I mean by that is you can segment your subscribers based on interests, maybe based on their demographic, you can also maybe segment your subscribers based on previous purchase history or activity on your emails and site. There’s a million different ways that you can segment your list, but the bottom line is the reason why you wanna segment is so you’re as relevant as you possibly can be with each of your subscribers.

01:31 AS: Absolutely, and it really doesn’t even matter what you’re selling. And we mentioned this before, you probably have a wide array of products or services that you’re offering and each customer is gonna be a little bit different. You don’t sell to 100 clones of the same person, or more. It’s different based on each different group and segment that you create and the thing you need to do, as an email marketer, to not seem clueless when you’re sending out those emails, is to understand what those differences are and get to know those people. And like we mentioned in the last episode, those are real humans on the other side of those email addresses. And you need to start to understand things about those people. Daniel mentioned creating the persona of your subscribers. Download a picture, put it on the wall, look at that and write to that kind of group of person but take it even deeper. I mean, think about what does this person drive? What kind of food do they like to eat? Where do they shop for clothes? Any of those things… What blogs do they read? Any of those things are gonna help you understand that segment of your list and get to know how you can do your email marketing to that segment even better.

02:42 DM: Absolutely, and I say this all the time. I mean, any product or service, there’s a million competitors out there. It’s a rare case in this day and age that there’s one company doing one specific thing. And because of that, a lot of people, because they have so many choices, they’re gonna wanna choose the company that they feel that speaks to them, whether that’s based on the design, based on the values, whatever that is, they’re really gonna start to split hairs in that kind of way. So again, the more you can adapt to that and the more relevant you can be by segmenting your list, can be very helpful. And that’s at the top of the funnel level. Once they’re actually engaging with you, segmenting takes a whole new level of engagement to really make sure that when your subscribers subscribes to your emails, they’re not just getting a generic email that everyone else is getting, you’re providing a custom experience for them that adds value to the experience with you, so.

03:38 AS: Absolutely. And just to continue on ways in which you can understand each segment of your list, think about it in a way of, “What problem am I solving for this group of people?” Because based on what you have, you’re a toy company maybe it’s, “Hey, I like that these toys are educational,” Or some parents are like, “I just need them to not bother me for a little while,” or whatever that is. It’s you’re solving different problems and you can speak to them in that way, in that segment, to make sure you’re doing great relevant email marketing. So what would an example of this be, Daniel?

04:10 DM: An example of something for a specific problem… Well, here’s an example. Okay, and this is based on maybe a buying behavior, right. Let’s say that I own a pool store and somebody comes in and they buy a bag of chlorine for their pool. And I know that that bag of chlorine is gonna last about six months, right? I may not wanna put that person in the same stream of emails of all my other people that are getting different promotions. I may wanna create a specific segment for that person, that relates to people that have bought pool products related to chlorine and I know that that chlorine bag lasts about six months, in five-and-a-half months an email may shoot out to that person, with maybe a discount or a special promotion for their next bag of chlorine. The bottom line of what you’re trying to do there is you’re trying to relate to their experience and you’re trying to engage with them in such a level that they know that you understand exactly their needs so they’re gonna come back to shop with you in the future.

05:09 AS: Definitely. Another example is say you’re a pet shop. There’s cat people and there’s dog people. And sure, there’s some people at the center of that Venn diagram that spend their days watching YouTube videos of different types of animals being friends that you wouldn’t expect and they might love both cat and dog information, but overall, if you’re a cat person, you don’t care about the new dog toys or dog food or dog treats, or leashes, just as dog owners don’t care about the scratch pads or catnip or whatever else cat people like. I’m a dog person, so I don’t… That’s the end of my cat interest list. But if you’re sending the right, relevant information to those, that’s how you’re gonna make sales and that’s why we’re an email marketer insurance to create relationships with your customers, and that’s how you’re gonna do it, by making them feel heard and seen in your email marketing.

06:00 DM: Yeah, exactly.

06:01 AS: All right, we’ll catch you guys next time as we continue this conversation and start to talk about the different types of segmentation that you could be doing.