You will be able to name the segments that usually matter most for a small business, and the data each one needs.
Mei Ling runs a cake business: birthday cakes, wedding and event cakes, and baking classes. Once a month she sends one email to her whole list, and everyone on it gets the same message.
Most small lists start this way, and while the list is small that is fine. As a list grows, splitting it lets each group receive something that fits them. Mei Ling's list 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. Her email tells all of them there are two Saturdays left in December, so book now. The regular is mildly helped, the planner does not care about birthdays, and the guide downloaders have no reason yet to trust her with a celebration.
A segment is a group of subscribers defined by a rule. You write the rule, and your email tool builds the group from it and updates it automatically as subscriber data changes. "Everyone who bought in the last year" is a segment rule. So is "everyone who clicked a link about wedding cakes".
Segment rules come in two broad kinds. Demographic rules sort people by who they are: age, gender, location, job. Behaviour rules sort people by what they did: bought, clicked a topic, booked, went quiet.
For a small business, behaviour rules usually tell you more. A 35-year-old in Punggol could be Mei Ling's most regular customer or someone who has never heard of her, and the label can't tell you which. Someone who clicked her wedding cake link twice in a month has shown you exactly what they are thinking about right now. 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 have bought before, people who clicked a particular topic, and people who have gone quiet. The quiet group is the one that gets a re-permission email, which Lesson 3.4 covers.
For most businesses, the single most useful split is between customers, who have bought, and non-customers, who have not. They may be on the same newsletter, but they are in very different places.
Non-customers need reasons to trust you: proof, examples, how the process works and what it costs. Customers already know those things. They need help using what they bought, reminders when they may need you again, early news, and sometimes a request for a review or a referral. Sending customer-type emails to non-customers is premature, and sending non-customer-type emails to customers looks careless.
Priya runs a tuition and enrichment centre for primary school children. Parents who haven't enrolled want to know what a trial class is like. Enrolled parents want to hear about holiday programmes, exam preparation sessions and schedule changes. A trial class invitation sent to an enrolled family looks careless, and holiday programme details sent to parents who don't know her yet are premature.
Some of the best segment data comes straight from subscribers when you ask them. There are two ways to do it.
The first is a single question on your signup form. Priya's form asks which level the child is in: P4, P5 or P6. It adds one click, and it lets her send level-specific tips later. Lesson 2.2 warned that every field on a signup form costs signups, so add a question only if you will actually use the answer.
The second is a preference page, linked from the footer of every email, where subscribers choose their topics and how often they hear from you. Most email tools offer one. On Mei Ling's page, subscribers choose between birthday cakes, wedding and event cakes, and baking class dates. Someone who only wants class dates can choose that instead of unsubscribing from everything.
Stated interests are honest data. People rarely tick a box for a topic they don't care about, and they appreciate being asked.
Email tools let you build segments from any combination of data, which makes it tempting to set up twenty perfectly tailored groups. Every segment you create is a promise to write something different for it, and a segment you never send to is just clutter.
Start with two or three segments you will actually use in the next month. Each one should have an obvious email that the other segments should not get, and the rule that defines it should be simple enough to explain in one sentence. Add more segments later, and only when you have a specific email in mind for them.
For Mei Ling, a sensible start is customers, non-customers, and subscribers who chose wedding and event cakes on her preference page. For Priya, it is enrolled families, non-enrolled parents, and parents of P6 children in the run-up to the PSLE.
In the activity below, 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. For each one, write the rule that defines it and one email that segment should get and the others should not.
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