Whether you have 30 or 3000 people in your email marketing account, you should take advantage of your ability to split them up into segments. How you decide to segment your list is up to you.
Do you offer a variety of products and services?
Janice owns a household goods store which carries specialty items for seniors, for children, and for pets. She markets the different categories of products to an audience for each type of product. She keeps 3 lists to make her marketing more specific.
Do your customers come to you for different reasons?
Tony owns a gym and know that he has great success when he markets specifically to the members who want to lose weight, the members who are athletes, and the members who are beginners and seniors. Imagine being an athlete and having to read something for first-time fitness clients! Not good.
Do you have an audience in different stages of relationship with you?
Bill is a consultant who develops different messaging for his past clients, those who are currently in a program with him, and those who have expressed an interest in using his services in the future. Everyone feels like he’s talking directly to them.
Do you prefer to keep track of how you met each group?
Alice prefers to offer special programs or incentives to people she met through her local chamber, through her industry organization, and to whom she met via her table at a trade show.
Keep separate lists if it makes sense – your messaging will be unique to their needs your offers will be limited to a particular group.
Constant Contact Does It For You
Here’s the cool thing – Constant Contact has a wonderful way to help you create target segments without your having to do much at all. Using our example of Janice the store owner, she links to her senior products page, the children’s product page, and the pet products page in each targeted article of her newsletter. Then she has Constant Contact add people to the appropriate list when they click a link. Those who clicked on the senior products page will now be added the “interested in senior products” by Constant Contact. Nice and easy!
Keep directing those who click to be placed in their appropriate list and in a few campaigns, you have a clear picture of who is interested in what. Now Janice can create a campaign specifically for the seniors, etc, knowing the other folks didn’t indicate they are interested in that topic. People will really appreciate when you stay with the topic they care about, instead of wasting their time combing through lots of material that is of no interest to them.