Congratulations! You’ve made it to the final week of the Ready, Set, Send Challenge!
Over the past few weeks, you’ve learned the ins and outs of goal setting, designing the perfect email, audience building, multi-channel campaigns and reporting. Now it’s time to grab one last tool to add to your belt. The best part? You’ll get bragging rights to tell all your friends that you’re officially a master of marketing. All jokes aside, your hard work over the past few weeks has been incredible to see. This week, we’ll dive into the nitty gritty and start cleaning. We’re organizing your contacts with segmentation so you can increase engagement! This strategy will help you dramatically improve your email campaigns.
I’m David Fischer, the founder of Solutions for Growth, one of the country’s largest Solution Providers of Constant Contact. For over 14 years we’ve managed thousands of email campaigns and supported hundreds of small businesses, so I think we know a thing or two about email marketing! 🙂
Have you been sending the same email to all your contacts? Imagine how much more effective your campaigns could be if you tailor your email content to specific segments, whether these segments are based on demographics, purchase history, or engagement levels; by understanding your subscribers' preferences and behaviors, you can offer more relevant messages, improve conversion rates and reduce unsubscribes. Let’s dive in and finish this 6-week challenge to become the ultimate marketing warriors!
Segmentation is the process of organizing your contacts into smaller, more targeted groups based on shared characteristics or information.
Contact segmentation is like selecting the ideal gift for your subscribers. Pretend, for a moment, you operate a grocery store and you incentivize sign-ups from customers. As part of your marketing efforts, you run a Cheese of the Month Club promotion. When customers sign up, they're all dropped in a general list of contacts. Now, one of your customers receives the Cheese of the Month promotion, but they're lactose intolerant. Sure, it's well-intentioned, but it leaves the customer wanting more catered content for what they’re interested in.
Instead, imagine when customers sign up, they are given a few different list options to join. One of those lists might be the Cheese of the Month Club, but another might be for the in-house coffee shop. Now, this customer can select a list that represents something relevant to them and receive Café Rewards. This is the magic of segmentation.
When you deliver relevant content to the right lists and segments, they’re more likely to engage. This fosters excitement and inspiration, making them eager to interact–not only boosting brand awareness but also driving more clicks.
It’s time to saddle up and take a look at the tools we have to segment your contacts efficiently. Let’s use the ones that make the most sense for your contacts!
Once segments are created and sent, look at your data for click and unsubscribe rates after each send. This helps you determine if your email was successful or if you need to switch things up. You can see how well your campaign performed now that it's catered to the right audiences.
Let’s say you didn’t capture additional data about your contacts– did you know that you can use their engagement with your emails to do a segmentation campaign? Most plans with Constant Contact have built-in engagement segments where the system automatically sorts your contacts into most engaged, somewhat engaged and least engaged.
By strategically segmenting your contacts, you can craft more engaging and targeted email campaigns that boost your chances of achieving your marketing goals (think back to Week 1!). So, let’s get to work and start building out your segments and watch your email marketing ROI soar!
This week’s focus is on email list segmentation to improve engagement and ROI. Create targeted groups based on your audience's data and personalize your emails for better results. Track your performance with clicks and unsubscribes. Complete the worksheet and share a screenshot to earn your badge!
David Fischer Solutions For Growth Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. |
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I am not sure how a list like this can evolve as people age. I guess I could use click segmentation to assume their age based on the programs they click on, but that wouldn't be the most accurate and would only work for people who click links.
@user386358 age is a great way to segment, and yes, it can be derived by other actions people take. Once you know that, as you indicate in the third column, your messaging can be customized for them. Consider creating a birthday contest, where people enter by giving their birthday, and the winner gets something of value, like a discount on tuition. I hope this helps.
We've been managing email programs for client for the past 14 years, and are one of the country's largest Constant Contact Solution Providers - perhaps we help you!
David Fischer Solutions For Growth Help others find this post by giving it kudos. Note: I am not a Constant Contact employee. |
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We have over 125 lists broken up into industries and certain Vendors. We created the following segments that will help send to these lists more efficiently. The only problem is that we have over 30 lists just for the Automotive Industry for our vendors, so we have to break up the segment list into three places. I wish you could have at least 30 lists in a segment, not just 10. We tried to start using tags when people open our emails, but we are not consistent with it yet.
Given that we are a nonprofit organization helping economic growth in the area, it is not really in our interest to segment this as if we are selling a product and are trying to advertise it to different groups of people. That being said, here is the information that we gather.
Hi @JenniferS7. These are so detailed! I can tell you've put thought into your segments so you can send them relevant information and actions for them to take.
Thank you for the feedback about the segment tool and list selection. I'll send it over to our Product teams.
Congrats on completing all six weeks! You're a rockstar 🎸 🌟
Thanks for sharing @JenniferS7! With more than 125 lists, including 30 just for cars, it shows that you're working hard to handle different groups for reaching out to specific industries. Keep up the good work!
Regarding the segmentation limit, I understand how the cap of 10 lists per segment could be limiting, especially when working with such a large dataset. While it may currently require breaking up your lists into multiple segments, I’ll be sure to pass along your feedback to our development team to consider increasing this limit in the future. In the meantime, you might try using sub-categories within each list where possible, as a way to streamline and organize them more effectively, even if it's within the existing constraints.
Elevate your marketing with Constant Contact's Professional Design Services! From eye-catching email templates to custom branding and social media graphics, our professional design services are tailored to boost your business's impact and engagement. |
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Awesome @KCSL! Looks like you have some great segmentation going on. How do you feel it's working for you?
Abigail St Jean Community Program ManagerHelp others find this post by giving it kudos. |
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This was, by far, the hardest challenge for me. We deal in resale clothing and accessories. Everything is regularly unique. We put on a bunch of sales and events and thought guests could be segmented into which events they like or don't. We have been in business over 20 years and our email list is large. I'm not aware how it could be retroactively segmented or if I'd have to start from scratch. This is definitely something I will have to continue to think about and decide how to implement. Week 6, done.
Use Click Segmentation! - that will start to automatically create lists for you. I do not think you can automatically retroactively sort them based on previous campaign clicks - however, you can look at your HEAT MAP of previous campaigns and add those contacts specifically based on where they clicked.
For example, you can create an email ad that features jewelry, men's apparel, and dresses.
Create a click segmentation for each of those three things.
Then in the future, when you run a special jewelry sale, you can target that automatically created segmentation specifically. Maybe they get the information before everyone, are invited to a pre-sale, or get a discount code.
Hello Again -
I LIED, sorta! (I'm still learning)
So you can TOTALLY use OLD campaigns to create your NEW segmented lists! Its probably better for campaigns with only one thing mentioned, but here is how.
Lets say you sent (5) campaigns in the past year specifically for jewelry. You can create a segmentation list for anyone who clicked on those email. You will have to create a new criteria (e.g. one for each email), but Constant Contact will automatically go back and add them to your new segmentation! - that is so neat.
You'd essentially tack on as many criteria - in this case using the "+OR"
"Clicked - a specific email - "**choose specific camping here**
+ OR
"Clicked - a specific email - "**choose specific camping here**
Here is the page with a video for more help: Custom Segmentation
We have LOTS of lists (close to 100?) - I know the ones I frequently use are combed through.
I look forward to seeing how segmentation works and tags. We have Google Forms for interests, but having it on CC will be a nice one-stop-shop where we can edit/verify the lists instead of *constantly* asking each program year - I feel most peoples interests are pretty consistent. It also will be helpful to be able to share those names with event leaders looking for volunteers going forward.
I HOPE I STILL GET MY BADGE! - I had a very jam packed week.
Ask and you shall receive 😉
Elevate your marketing with Constant Contact's Professional Design Services! From eye-catching email templates to custom branding and social media graphics, our professional design services are tailored to boost your business's impact and engagement. |
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