“The money is always in the list!”
We’ve heard this preached for well over a decade and a half in the digital realm and it has been true in other forms of marketing for over a century. But, this statement is only a partial truth. You see, buyers have evolved over the past several years and we are dealing with marketplaces whose ADD borders on levels of a hyperactive three year old jacked up on juice boxes and Oreos. (If you have kids, you know exactly what I’m talking about!)
So, how do we maintain the value of a list in this digitally distracted and hyper-passive economy that we are forced to exist in?
Segmentation is a solid starting point….
Below, I give you three reasons why segmenting your list is the key to thriving in a world that could normally couldn’t care less about the emails you have been sending them every week for the past year.
If you have questions when you reach the end, leave me a comment! I will be checking in regularly and will respond ASAP.
1. People only pay attention when the content is relevant to them.
Let’s face it. There are more distractions on the world wide web than you could ever compete with on a large scale. Between Facebook, email, Instagram, Twitter and everything else we are addicted to in our digital lives, there is just too much going on to expect someone to pay attention to every word that we have to say.
It’s a widely known fact that we only pay attention to things that are relevant to us. If we are shopping for a new red Camaro, suddenly, that is the only car on the road. It’s a survival instinct that helps us combat our natural tendency to become distracted and it kept our ancestors alive when things were, should we say, less convenient than they are in modern society.
So, when it comes to marketing to someone through their email inbox, we have to be relevant to their immediate preoccupations and pain points. It is the only way to keep our open rates high and our quality score where we want them to be.
2. Lists burn out just like any audience eventually will.
The beauty of segmentation is it allows us to adapt to and grow with our audience. If we see that a section of our list is no longer clicking on links for Widget XYZ, but are opening every webpage we have on Doodad ABC, then we know it’s time to migrate them to a new segment of our campaign list.
Keeping content relevant keeps your audience from burning out. If they always seeing an email from you about something they are no longer interested in, then they will start to ignore you and eventually unsubscribe. While we don’t want to broadcast our marketing message to someone who doesn’t care anymore, many prospects and list members aren’t necessarily no longer a good fit when they opt out of your list. They are more likely just no longer interested in your current message. Unless you offer only one product or service, there is a good chance that you can recycle that prospect into a new campaign and continue to generate revenue through your relationship with them.
3. Something about list health just drives ROI.
List health is a thing we all scan past when we study email marketing, but it is such a critical component to getting your ROI maximized. The health of your list determines your overall quality score that email clients use to determine the deliverability and SPAM score for your broadcasts. If you have a list that is always getting opted out of or marked as SPAM, then you will quickly see your deliverable numbers start to drop. Before long, only a small segment will be opening your emails because they are the only ones seeing them in the first place.
In order to keep your list heathy, you have to make sure your message is relevant, purge inactive contacts and ensure that your emails are not getting marked as SPAM by doing things right from the start.
