One of the most important and fundamental parts of your email marketing campaign is your mailing list. But, the key to really improve your results is to actually segment your lists, so you can better target people based on their unique interests. It goes without saying that no two people are exactly identical, so why would you treat everyone on your mailing list the exact same? By segmenting your list you can make better offers that produce a higher response rate and yield greater overall results from your email marketing software.

When you begin to segment your list, the first thing you need to decide is what factors or criteria will determine the various contact groups you will create. Some organizations choose to segment purely based on demographics. This can include attributes like gender (male or female), age, etc. While demographics is typically the first thing that most people think about when they discuss segmentation, there are many more factors you can use to divide your contact list. As with many things, the most obvious approach (ie. Gender-based segmentation) is not necessarily the one that will produce the greatest benefit.

Often times you can get the greatest results with your email marketing software when you segment based on past purchasing behavior. For example, if you sell 5 different products, you can segment your list based on what each customer actually purchased. So, you would have a mailing list segment for people who purchased Product "A", another one for people who purchased Product "B", and so on. This often proves to be highly effective, because you can launch special promotions that target these people and the specific products or services that you know they are interested in. Many businesses will use their email marketing software to reach out to one of these product-interest segments when a new version or model or their product or service comes out. Often times, an email marketing campaign that says, "A new version of Product A has just been released and we'll offer you 15% off if you upgrade" produces a fantastic response rate. It's important the actual word usage and offer be tailored to your business, but the concept still holds true regardless of what you are trying to promote.

A business can also segment its list based on general customer interests. For instance, a sporting goods store may segment based on the type of sports/activity the customer is interested in. So, their specific segments would have titles such as: Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey, etc. A movie theater or movie rental outlet may segment based on genre. In that case their segments would have titles such as: Drama, Action, Comedy, Horror, etc. By knowing what the customer is interested in, you can better launch meaningful campaigns with your email marketing software. After all, if you send an email to someone who has no interest in and has never played golf, but you offer them a discount on golf clubs, it's probably a wasted effort.

When it comes time to segmenting your mailing list to boost your email marketing software results, it's important that you take a closer look at your business and figure out what type of classification scheme will give you the greatest results. By giving this issue some thought at the very beginning, you will be able to reap the benefits of having a well formulated mailing list right out of the gates.


Robert Burko is President of EliteEmail.com (http://www.eliteemail.com), the complete email marketing software trusted by businesses of all types. Experience what email marketing can do for your business with a no risk free trial.