List Segmentation – What it means-How to do it

Hi,

First, let me apologise to Sandman. He asked about list segmentation and my plan was to write a post about it yesterday.

Sandman, I apologise. A friend needed a shoulder and I put that ahead of writing yesterday’s post.

Here’s what I’m going to do:

1. I’ll go through list segmentation quickly here
2. In next month’s The Testing Spotlight, I’ll cover it fully
3. Later today, I’ll write today’s actualy post – it’s about Aweber (specifically Sean Cohen) and how they have helped me over the last 6 or 7 days. Good stuff.

List Segmentation

It means splitting your list up into sections. Each section (list) reflects some aspect of your market.

For example, you have two products: a) a pet care hair brush (list name = “petbrush”), and b)an e-book on how to build a great website for copywriters (list name = “ebookwebsites”). (Yep, my newest book.)

You can see these two items are going to appeal to very different audiences. Are there copywriters who own pets? Sure, and you want those copywriters on both lists.

In list segmentation, you build different lists based on the interests of the audience. Sticking with our example, let’s say you build your two lists up to 100,000 names each (nice, even number, right?).

Naturally, while you’re building those lists you’re also going to make or acquire new products to sell to them.

By collecting their name and e-mail address each time they make a purchase, you can segment your list further based on those purchases. Let’s say you add a nail clipper for the pet care folks.

Do you want to keep advertising the nail clipper to people who already bought it? Of course, not. So you make a new list and call it “clipperbuyers.”

Then every time you send an e-mail advertising the nail clippers, you set your e-mail manager service so it sends to the “petbrush” list AND EXCLUDES everyone on the “clipperbuyers” list.

Are you seeing how having more than one list helps you target and refine your marketing?

When I’m doing a teleseminar, I send e-mails to my whole list. When someone signs up for the teleseminar, their name gets added to a second list. This lets me exclude them from promotional e-mails and start sending follow-up e-mails.

Now, there’s a lot more to segmentation than this.

Next month, I’ll address the topic more fully in The Testing Spotlight. In the meantime, here are some resources where you can follow-up and learn more.

MailChimp.com – This takes you straight to a page on their site where they’re discussing segmentation, why you should do it, and even some ideas about ways to segment your list.

SmallBizTechnology.com – Craig Kerr has an article here that gives some good information about segmentation. Not a lot of detail about how-to – it’s good writing that explains what it’s all about.

You can also look at articles on Michel Fortin’s blog. The article I’m sending you to talks about market segmentation, and it’s relevant.

If you know how to segment a market, you already know how to do e-mail list segmentation. Just think of each list you create in your e-mail manager service as a different element of your market. List A is people who bought Product A, List B is people who bought Product B, etc.

Questions? Comments? I encourage you to post them here. Just like I answered Sandman, I’ll answer yours, too.

Have a good day.

Conrad