Email segmentation is a great strategy to take your conversions from where they are to where you want them to be. Find out why I don’t recommend segmenting for 90 percent of my audience.
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Transcript
Welcome back friend. This is the fresh princess of email marketing and you’re listening to episode nine of the email sound booth podcast. Lucky me. Today we’re talking about what you really need to know about segmenting in email. Emails. I know this is a hot topic, so I’m just going to jump right into it and let you know that I don’t recommend segmenting emails for 90 percent of my audience. Gasp.
Yes, I know there are a ton of email marketers out there that preach email segmentation and you know what they’re right. Segmentation does work. It will maximize Your sales and conversions. But if you ain’t got nothing to maximize in the first place, maybe this isn’t for you. I know email feels super hard and you maybe right now you spend the majority of your time avoiding it.
And then maybe, you know, if that’s the case, you don’t need to worry about email segmentation just yet. You feel me? What we do need to focus on is creating email marketing habits first. We need to focus on creating. Relationships with our subscribers, right? We need to focus on being able to actually commit to a once a week newsletter, you know, if you’ve read anything from my blog or you’ve listened to other episodes on this podcast, if you’re part of our email sound booth, Facebook group, uh, you know, you know that I strongly believe in committing to the practice and building relationships with your subscribers, right?
So, Again, if you are listening or watching this right now and you suffer any of these symptoms of email marketing, flopped launch, one to six months of no email sent, no replies, even though you ask all the time, a low open rate or an even worse click rate. Chances are you don’t need to focus on email segmentation just yet.
Please consider this your permission slip to forget about it. Right now there are more immediate fires to put out and that’s okay. Segmenting can and should come later. But most likely much, much later, right? Uh, for example, I am with this email list on email marketing. Um, I am nearly five years into it and I only have two segments on my list.
Customers, people have given me a dollar or more and. non customers. That is my only segmentation. And, you know, I actually saw Kennedy from Email Marketing Heroes recently put on his Facebook, he has the same thing in his, uh, email service provider, which I thought was hilarious. So what is email segmentation?
Maybe I should back up and talk about segmenting and why I’m so upset right now. Email segmentation is breaking down your email list into smaller groups based on certain criteria, maybe geographic location, interest, purchase history, like I just talked about. Have you given me a dollar or not? Segmenting your list helps you get more targeted messages out to customers and potential buyers that have something in common.
Yes, this is a good thing. Again, it will increase your engagement. And sales. I’m not saying it won’t. Segmenting emails is a great strategy to improve your conversions. It’s amazing for people who have spent years building their audience. They know their different customer avatars. It’s even better for e commerce and commerce retailers.
But again, if you don’t know, your customers. If you don’t know those criteria, then it’s just a little extra work and a lot more stress. So here’s an email or example of segmentation like in the real world. Say, Liz Wilcox, I own a shoe store. If it snows outside, I don’t want to send an email about flip flops to people that live in snowy areas.
Areas, right? Instead, I’d want to target those folks with content around boots and other like snowshoe stuff, right? By segmenting my email list for the store, I can make sure the right message reaches the right person at the right time. It also means no energy wasted sending emails to people who may not be interested.
Again, uh, you know, I might be selling snowshoes to people in Florida. They don’t really, you know, chances are slim, they’re going to need that. So that. type of segmenting is extremely rational for that type of business. But no, I said segmenting allows for more targeted messages earlier, right? If you are not sending regular messages, emails in the first place, what good does segmenting do?
So why am I not recommending you segment your list? Honestly, email marketing is hard enough. Most micro businesses like you and me don’t need to segment our emails. Email is complicated or, well, I mean, it feels complicated, right? And the reality is. Many of us, we don’t have marketing departments. Sure, we might outsource some stuff, but we tend to be marketing, research and development, customer service, content creation.
We’re all those departments rolled into one. Am I right? With email, let’s keep the process simple so we can just get moving. Number one, create your opt in. Number two, build your welcome sequence. Number three, nurture that community with consistent newsletters. Consistent, consistent, consistent. Can I get an amen?
Why am I singing? I don’t know. Moving on to number four. Build your real connections with your subscribers. So again, just create your opt in, create the way to get people on your list, build the welcome sequence, nurture the community with consistent newsletters, and start building real connections with your subscribers.
Once you’ve mastered those steps, then that’s when you can start to know who is actually on your list and how you can serve them. That’s when you can start the next set or next step. In email marketing segmentation, segmentation is a 2. 0 strategy. And you know what? I’m excited for you to get there. Yes, there will be, there will come a time when I will say, yes, my email friend, you should start to segment your list.
It makes total sense. You’ve built your business to a point where you’ve gotten different offers and that makes sense for only specific people at specific times. Yes, segment your list. You have come to that time, right? And I promise you will get there, but please, I beg of you, don’t skip steps. Just get to emailing.
Don’t let email segmentation get in the way. Be another roadblock for you that just stops you from sending those consistent newsletters. Consider this your permission slip to just start emailing now. All right, let’s summarize. Email segmentation, a great strategy to take your conversions from where they are to where you want them to be.
But you’ve got to have decent conversions in the first place. Only focus on segmenting your list after you’ve nailed list building, after you have a solid welcome sequence, after you feel connected to your email list because you email them on a regular basement or basement, regular basis. That’s when segmentation can really help.
You and your businesses soar. Okey doke, my friend. I hope that was helpful. As always, come back to the review section of this podcast. Let me know how this episode helped you and yeah, happy emailing my friend. Can’t wait to see what you do.
