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10 Ways of Email List Segmentation

Email marketing is the bread and butter of most event marketers. Yet, segmentation is a word that does not exist in the dictionary of lots of event marketers that I have spoken to.

So I thought that I can help my fellow marketers by coming up with this list of 10 possible ways of segmenting your email marketing audience:

1) People who open the email

Generally, the first email that goes out relating to your event is for raising the awareness of your event. People who are opened this email would most likely be aware of your event so the next step is to drive interest in the event.

2) People who do not open the email

This group would generally not be aware of your event at all (unless you are running an above-the-line advertisement or direct mail campaign). It’s always good to remarket to this group, using the same email but with a different subject title. From a campaign that we’ve done for our client, we’ve seen an uplift of as high as more than 30% just by remarketing to the segment who did not open a previous email campaign.r

3) People who have visited your event website

You may ask, how do I know if someone in my database have visited my event website? The short answer is link tracking. Typically, most of us would use the first event email that went out to promote your event website, where there is a link embedded within your email to the landing page. By tracking on who click on the link, you can track who is aware of your event page, and thus, possible to send a related follow-up email based on the click-behavior of a past campaign.

4) Attendees from past events

If you have run more than one event, there is a strong chance that the attendee profile of your other events fit into some of the current events that you are planning for. Targeting attendees from past events will be a clever way of segmentation.

5) Contacts based on Geography

If you are running a local or regional event, it makes sense for you to segment by geography, especially if it’s just a seminar. Sending an invite to someone in the US for a 2-hour seminar in Australia will just put off some of your audience who may just unsubscribe from all future event communications.

6) Contacts based on job title

If you are running a conference with multiple tracks, chances are that your audience for the various tracks will differ based on job title.  Segmentation based on job title would be a good way of email list segmentation where you have a clear persona in mind.

7) Contacts based on competitor email domain

Do you have an exclusion list for your email campaigns? It might be good to start coming out with one, especially if you might unwittingly disclose your competitive strengths and client base to your competitors during the process of inviting people to your event.

8) Registered attendees using promotional codes

Attendees who register using promotional codes are a unique group of people who respond better to promotions. This same group of people could potentially be your referral buddies as well. Offering them an incentive to refer friends and colleagues to register for an event might help with creating a viral effect for your event.

9) Registered attendees with outstanding payment

People who registered but have not paid for the event are those leads whom you have not closed. Having the ability to segment them easily and run a campaign to chase for payment is as important as attracting new attendees, as this group could ultimately end up as lost customers if payment is not made.

10) Interest-based email audience

Tracking the links that your audience click would provide interesting segmentation data for your events. For example, if you find that there are significant click-throughs on a specific track, a follow-up campaign on those click-throughs to provide more specific information on that track could provide better ROI than your average mass email.

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