Imagine that you're a financial coach. Some of your clients come to you for help with their personal finances and others come to you for help with their business finances. Chances are, the "personal finances" people do not want to read your emails about business finances, and vice versa. That's why list segmentation is so important.
The more you can segment your list the better. Segmentation begins when a person joins your list - perhaps they opted-in to a lead magnet or signed up for a webinar. They signed up because they wanted to learn more about a specific topic or solution. If you can send them future messages that address their unique needs, then you're on your way to creating loyal followers. However, if you send everyone on your list the same messages, you are likely sending some emails to people who have no interest in the topic, which increases the likelihood that they will not open your emails and/or will unsubscribe.
Here are 9 strategies to segment your list:
Personal Demographics – Knowing your audience’s demographics can help you segment your list. Some demographics to consider are income, sex, age, gender, location, etc. For B2B audiences, company position, education level, and business type might be helpful.
Quiz Results – Surveys and quizzes can provide a lot of information as well as fun. For example, if you offer various levels of services or products, you can use a quiz to send them to the right offer. This will segment them based on their answer, and ultimately the type of information you will send to them in the future.
Email Engagement & Behavior – Your subscribers can segment themselves, based on what they click to access. Focus on the people who take action occasionally. Get tougher with people who don’t read or take action. In other words, if you see that there are people who are not opening your emails, consider removing them from the list, unless they are affiliates, or just set their accounts to “don’t email.” This keeps your list clean and helps with your overall deliverability rate.
Geography – Use the geo-location demographic if you want to do certain things with people from a specific place. For example, you can target a certain state or city. Perhaps you're going to be traveling and want to invite your local followers to attend your live event. By focusing certain offers on geography, you can get more responses to local events.
Purchasing Behavior – When a list member purchases your coaching, course, or product, it’s important to move them to a “customer/client list” or “product list” so they don’t keep getting the same promotional emails to buy something they already have. If someone already enrolled in your group coaching program, you don't want to keep sending them emails inviting them to enroll in your group coaching program! This helps to move them through to the next level of your sales funnel.
Spending Behavior – Segmenting by spending behavior is very helpful. Let’s say you offered a high-priced VIP Day and some people bought it. Label them in your system as "VIP Day" and also add them to a price-based list, such as “high ticket client,” for people who make high-priced purchases.
Their Place in The Buying Cycle – Every customer has a general buying cycle, it goes something like this. Awareness, assessment of competition, alleviation of risk, decision making, and then finally achievement of results, based on the purchase decision. If you know where your audience member is in this cycle, it’s easier to ascertain what type of content to offer. For example, someone might not be decline to sign up for your group coaching program, so you offer them a downsell product, like one of your online courses, which might be similar but a more affordable option for them.
Behavior on Your Website – You can segment your audience by their behavior on your website. Offer various opportunities to your website visitors, including freebie offers, low-cost options, and more. Each choice they make can move them to the right list, if your autoresponder has this option.
Personal Interests – Knowing your audience’s personal interests can help you provide more relevant solutions as well as meaningful, related, stories and examples. Ask them to check a box identifying an interest, which will trigger them to receive a specific label based on the interest selected. Ensure that these interests are related to your niche.
Segment your list using the features of your marketing automation technology. For example, Keap allows you to build one big list and use tags to segment your list based on how users sign up, what they buy, as well as other behaviors. Click here for a 14-day free trial of Keap.
Blog articles may include affiliate links. If you purchase a product using the link, I receive a commission. There is no additional cost to you.

Comments