It’s impossible to live without segmentation. White shirts hang next to the blue strip shirts and are worn with tan suits. Blue cheese goes with fruit in a dessert course or blue cheese gets crumbled into a salad. All the toy trucks and cars go into the yellow bin. Socks go in the bottom drawer, sweaters go in the top drawer. Pencils go in this cup and pens go in that cup. This quote goes in section 3 of a term paper. This data supports the primary thesis. Ashleigh is a brainiac. Jason is a jock.
We’ve been practicing segmentation since we were kids!
So why is segmentation such a mystery? When you are developing an email campaign, use your segmentation skills to create subsets of lists to personalize the message and improve email metrics. Segment by territory and reference the account executive; segment by title or role and reference product benefits unique to the role; segment by industry and use their vocabulary or even a customer example unique to that industry. You may be sending the same whitepaper or product video to everyone, but you’ve improved the odds of engagement ten-fold.
Something I say often is “Good content is easily repurposed.” Once you segment your list of contacts, you can tailor the content to the segments with very minor tweaks. The tweak can be as simple as changing the title of the whitepaper to suit the segment. Instead of one whitepaper to 10,000 names, send a tailored whitepaper to 10 segments of 1000 contacts each. You are still sending 10,000 emails but each group of 1000 is more likely to respond or engage. Just for fun you could make 4 segments randomly and use a different subject line for each of the 4 segments – engagement with subject lines always tells an interesting story.
MORE is not more. Sending any one thing to your entire contact list is not MORE. You won’t get more opens, click-throughs or conversions. No one in your contact list will feel special; no one will feel like you know them; no one is more likely to engage with your company or content; no one is going to remember you. And here’s a secret – it's easier to get to 10% conversion on a list of 1,000 than it is to get to 10% conversion against a list of 10,000.
CEOs should not be impressed with big numbers. For example, marketing sent 50,000 emails last month or marketing has 250,000 contacts in the company database. CEOs should care and react positively that marketing is sending mail to contacts in a deliberate way. That 250 contacts in that big list of contacts are actively engaged with your company and that active engagement is an indicator of a strong pipeline and forecast.
Final words: Be curious about segments in your market. Tailor content to segments for better performance. Next week the podcast series returns to brand. Have an interesting brand story or challenging brand problem. Send it in and get some free advice. From the road and until next time – good marketing and good selling.