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. 

Early Whys and Wherefores of Twitter Lists

I don’t know where I was the week Twitter “lists” hit the net [October 15-ish] because I’m just getting hip to what is going on. To understand the Twitter List Hooplah, John Haydon's explanation here is as good as any, better than most.

Bottom line: Depending on your purpose, the Twitter “list” scenario mimics your file cabinet, your Rolodex, the snooty books you display on the shelf behind your desk, or a team of research assistants.

The File Cabinet Scenario
In perhaps its most popular use (so far), the Twitter list – which you must create yourself by picking, choosing, and categorizing the people you follow – becomes a sort of digital file cabinet, with your various “who’s who" compartmentalized in separate folders. The purpose of the File Cabinet is to help you keep track of people according to the group/tribe/philosophy/psychosis to which you assign them.

The Rolodex Scenario
The ubiquitous Robert Scoble is trying to keep up with 10,000 people. It used to drive him crazy, but now he has stuff streaming in by groups. The system works so well that, within days of Twitter List release, Scoble says Twitter Lists replaced Google Reader for him. Visit @Scobleizer for a peek at the 40 cognoscentious lists Robert has compiled.

The My List Is Bigger Than Your List Scenario
Like The New York Social Diary -- and depending on who's doing the compiling -- various lists (like those Scoble has put together) can segué to a Very Important List of Very Important People. Todd Zeigler at the Bivings Group thinks Twitter lists will become the bellwether of whom to follow. “I think Twitter Lists will end up helping separate the men from the boys when it comes to influence. In addition to seeing a Twitter user's follower count, we can now see the number of other Twitter users who have added them to lists. I would argue that getting added to a list is a bigger deal than simply getting someone to follow you.” Heaven help us all.

The Research Team Scenario
Kabir Bedi at PromotionWorld has a good article on how to set up and use Twitter lists. For my purposes, the feature that describes how to use Twitter for “Online Journalism” beckons. “Many news organizations and publishers are using Twitter lists to create staff directories, recommending their favorite Twitter people and specific information. This enables them to use Lists for curated real-time streams and to follow events.” Yeah, baby.

The downside to all this is the certain emergence of Twitter Envy, leading to Twitternoia, culminating in Twitter Syndrome. Watch TMZ for reports on desperate tactics related to getting Twillisted.

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From Marketing Sherpa: A Lesson in Content Giveaway

Getting bloggers to repost your stuff is one objective of any content provider bent on going viral. Today, Marketing Sherpa -- which has great members-only subscription content (and well worth it) -- found a clever way to get bloggers involved.

One link in their free e-newsletter hopped to a post titled New Chart: "Do Email Tactics That Take More Work Get A Bigger Payoff? The link included “The Chart of the Week,” [above] which displayed the “Levels of Effectiveness” inherent in various email marketing activities. That was good, but better was the clever note for bloggers posted at the bottom of the chart:

Feel free to post this chart (in its entirety) or link to this page. Sherpa’s Chart of the Week is yours to use in your blog, presentation, or simply for reference.

p.s. The chart shows that the most effective ploy of email marketers is delivering content relevant to segments. But that takes effort. The chart indicates that adding event-triggers to emails takes some front-end work, but also boosts the effectiveness of non-house lists.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo