No Registration Required, So I, Too, Must Be a Segment

A few weeks ago, HubSpot offered me a report. They had me at “Hi, Nancy,” saying:

The best-performing email campaigns don't always have great subject lines. Or email copy. Or even calls-to-action … The experts at MarketingSherpa have discovered that two specific components greatly impact the success of your email campaigns: integration and segmentation.

I loved that copy, but the REAL treat was THIS Line: Get the Report Now (no registration required).

I’ve downloaded dozens of HubSpot’s great content over the past 18 months, but this was the first time I haven’t had to register all over again.

Perhaps I’m now in a “regular customer” segment. Whatever … it was sweet. And that was just the dessert. The meat followed: The report itself had great advice about how to segment your list, including these tips:

1. Be prepared to make your case and be patient. Email researcher Michael Wexler advises, "There's a high cost to entry for classic segmentation testing; it costs more than a simple test. However, this investment helps a lot. It stems lowered results, reporting of spam, unsubscribes, and it results in higher lifetime value per name."

2.  Gather your assets, namely these three: your email database, your process for testing, and great content.

3. Collect Data. MarketingSherpa identifies four types of data : endemic data from the subscriber; transactional data, behavioral data, and computed data developed from calculations performed on one or more variables.

4. Base your segments on long-term behaviors, for example:

    a) Were your customers brand-sensitive or price-sensitive?

    b) Do customers self-segmented based on the particular product purchased?

5. Identify segmentation types, for example: geographic, product type, lifecycle, personal data (self-reported, appended or behavioral).

6. Consider a variety of segmentation approaches. Even simple segmentation by customer profile or email activity can reap considerable rewards.

7. Start with a single segment (for example, subscribers). This tactic enables marketers to manage unforeseen challenges, adjust strategy, and prove the value of segmentation before getting too complicated.

8. Treat inactive subscribers as a segment, too.

9. Keep it under control; excessive segmentation can be wasteful.

10. Leverage and repurpose content to keep up with the demand of segments.

Download the full Special Report, “How to Segment & Integrate your Emails for Better Results,” from HubSpot.