The Importance of List Segmentation in All Your Marketing Campaigns – Online And Offline
October 17th, 2012 by Diane Conklin under Direct Mail, Information Marketing, Marketing. No Comments.
List segmentation is a very smart marketing strategy. When you look at segments of your list and categorize based on dollars spent, courses purchased, date of purchase, geographic location, or whether they have attended any of your live events or not, you can make some very specific strategic marketing decisions as well as know a lot more about your business.
The concept of list segmentation is overlooked in today’s business world more and more, because so many business owners think of email as free, so they just send every message to their entire list. This is a big mistake.
One of the biggest things you want to remember in marketing is when people open your message, or when people receive your message, no matter whether it’s sent via video, audio, email, or direct mail – it doesn’t matter.
However they receive your message, you want one of two thoughts to happen in their head. You want them to say WOW she’s talking to me, or this is for me, or preferably both.
So, when you work with your list and segment your list you want to be very specific depending on what you’re doing in that particular campaign, and know that the parameters you use for one campaign may not be the same as what you use for the next one. That’s why it’s so important to get as much information from your clients and prospects as you possibly can and to always track your numbers.
For example, let’s say you’re going to do an event in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s a low cost event, and you’re only marketing to people who live in the local area. You’re going to do a one day or half day event. One strategy you could use here would be to look at your list and market to everyone who lives within a three hour driving radius, or 250 miles, of Atlanta.
You could send your message out to everyone on your list and people overseas, people in Los Angeles might be thinking why would I come to Atlanta for just a one day, because it’s such a long trip. Now it might happen that somebody from far away might be in town at that time or something, but the point is if you segment your list, your marketing is more specific.
Using this same example, what if you went even further with your segmenting? If you now take the driving radius and add to that people who have bought from you in the last 12-18 months, and people who have been to a live event with you already, because we know they are more apt to come to another event. Now, you’re looking at your buyers. They have spent money with you in the last 12-18 months, so if you took those two parameters and added it to your Atlanta list, it significantly reduces the number of people you are marketing to. And, that’s exactly what you want.
You want to send your message to people who are predisposed to hearing it, to receiving your message, and to investing with you. You don’t want to be sending your marketing messages to big numbers of people who have no chance of doing business with you.
Certainly if you are using direct mail as one of your marketing media, list segmentation is going to save you a lot of money.
List segmentation is a great marketing concept in of with itself, but when you’re talking specifically about direct mail this goes against what a lot of small business owners wrongly think of when they think of direct mail…which is that it’s mass marketing to thousands of people. In fact, list segmentation allow you to market to much smaller lists of highly targeted clients and prospects who are predisposed to do business with you – and that’s smart business and marketing whether you’re using online or offline media (or both, which is what you should be using).
Now, you’re talking about mailing to only 500 or 1,000 people, not 10,000.
When you integrate your marketing with social media, with your email messages, and with follow up phone calls, just to name a few, that strengthens your marketing message even more.
So, think really seriously, when you do your marketing, about how you can segment your list. How can you look at your list in such a way when people get your message they say, “WOW, they’re talking to me, or how did they know I needed this right now?”
That’s really the key to list segmentation, whether you’re online or offline. List segmentation is a marketing strategy you really need to be using.
