You will be able to name the segments that usually matter most for a small business and the data each needs.
Mei Ling's monthly email goes to everyone on her list. That includes a mother who has ordered four birthday cakes in two years, a wedding planner who ordered once for a client, and a hundred people who downloaded her ordering guide and have never bought anything. All three get the same message: "Two Saturdays left in December, book now." The regular is mildly helped. The planner does not care about birthdays. The browsers have no idea why they should trust her with a celebration yet.
Sending the same email to everyone is where most small lists start, and it is fine at first. As the list grows, splitting it lets each group get something that fits. This lesson is about which splits are worth making.
A segment is a group of subscribers defined by a rule, such as everyone who has bought in the last year, or everyone who clicked a link about wedding cakes. Your email tool builds the group from the rule and updates it as people's data changes.
There are two broad kinds of rule. Demographic rules sort by who people are: age, gender, location, job. Behaviour rules sort by what people did: bought, clicked a topic, booked, went quiet.
For a small business, behaviour usually tells you more. A 35-year-old in Punggol could be a regular customer or someone who has never heard of Mei Ling. Someone who clicked the wedding cake link twice in a month is telling her exactly what they are thinking about. What people do with your emails and your business is a better guide to what they want next than a category they belong to.
Three behaviour segments come up again and again. People who bought before. People who clicked a particular topic. People who have gone quiet, which you met in lesson 3.4 as the group that gets a re-permission email.
The single most useful split for most businesses is between people who have bought and people who have not. They may sit on the same newsletter, but they are in very different places.
Non-customers still need reasons to trust you: proof, examples, how the process works, what it costs. Customers already know all that. They need things that help them use what they bought, reminders when they might need you again, early news, and sometimes a request for a review or a referral.
Priya sees this clearly. Parents who have never sent their child to her centre want to know what a trial class is like. Parents whose children are already enrolled want to know about holiday programmes, exam preparation sessions and schedule changes. Sending trial class invitations to enrolled families looks careless. Sending holiday programme details to strangers is premature.
Some of the best segment data comes straight from subscribers. You can ask.
One way is a single question on the signup form. Priya's form asks: "Which level is your child in?" with options for P4, P5 and P6. It adds one click to the form, and it lets her send level-specific tips later. Lesson 2.2 warned that every field costs signups, so add a question only if you will actually use the answer.
Another way is a preference page, a page linked from the footer of every email where subscribers choose the topics they want and how often. Most email tools offer one. Mei Ling's lets people choose between birthday cakes, wedding and event cakes, and baking class dates. A subscriber who only wants class dates can say so, instead of unsubscribing from everything.
Stated interests are honest data. People rarely tick a box for a topic they do not care about, and they appreciate being asked.
It is easy to get carried away. Email tools let you build segments from any combination of data, and the idea of twenty perfectly tailored groups is appealing. In practice, every segment you create is a promise to write something different for it. A segment you never send to is just clutter.
Start with two or three segments you will actually use in the next month. For Mei Ling, those are customers, non-customers, and subscribers who chose wedding and event cakes. For Priya, they are enrolled families, non-enrolled parents, and parents of P6 children in the run-up to the PSLE. Each has an obvious email that the others should not get.
Add more segments only when you have a specific email in mind for them. The rule that defines each one should be simple enough to explain in a sentence.
In the activity below you will list three segments for your own business, write the rule that defines each, and note one email each segment should get that the others should not.
List three segments for your business, with the rule that defines each and one email each segment should get that the others should not.
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