An easy guide to segmenting and tagging your email list for profit
Hey friend,
I’ve been working on writing my upcoming book, Own Your Table and I’ve come to the point of talking about segments and tags.
I know they can be mega confusing especially if you’re a service provider. That’s why I wanted to share this brief portion from my working manuscript with you! I figured instead of simply giving you a basic list that I could help you make sure you have the right ones for YOUR business. Hence making your email more profitable along the way.
If you have any questions, gimme a shout. Always here for you!
Your friend,
Ashley
@ashleykdeluca
Let’s start with segments first, shall we?
When it comes to segments, there are a lot of options when it comes to organizing your subscribers. With all the different business models, the options are truly endless. I’m going to walk you through my thought process when it comes to deciding what segments to create.
Simply put, segments are fueled by tags. Without tags, your segments would be empty houses with no people inside of them. So when you’re mapping out your segments, you first need to understand your tagging strategy.
When it comes to tagging, there are two approaches most commonly used. Tag everyone and everything for each and every action possible. And those who don’t use tags are at all because they don’t know what they should be tagging.
Tags for my clients are considered milestone markers to their next customer. We track specific markers that will then give us information to help us better understand them.
This is intentionally set-up and designed with the customer journey I create for them. In order for us to set-up the tags to create the segments, we need to create the customer journey first.
The way I like to look at a customer journey is as if you were intentionally providing a tour of your home to your guest. You’ll most likely show them the bathroom, maybe the backyard, or introduce them to your dog as a way to make them feel at home.
How can we make your subscribers feel more at home? We have to be a good hostess and lead them where they need to go. We will dive deeper into this, but the first thing I want to start with is what actions would make sense for you to track?
Just start by listing what actions someone would take to raise their hand as interested. Here’s some examples…
- If you have different content buckets to fit different offers, you will want to tag any piece of content that talks about that content bucket. You can then put them into a segement for that offer.
- You can ask specific questions then have them click to answer. You can then tag them based on the answer. For an example, you can ask… “what’s your favorite social platform?” then you can tag them for that platform and put them under a segment for your Facebook training.
- If you link to an offer, application, or book a call link, you can tag them as interested for that item and create a segement for interested in that offer.
- If you link to a product, you can tag them as interested in that specific product or category.
When we link this together with the idea of customer milestones, we’re linking back to the idea of the customer journey. Let’s provide some tangible actions in emails you can link that would be an example journey.
Let’s say the grab your freebie through a form. This is trackable through your forms and should already be considered a segement in your EMS.
There is a link for them to download the freebie. You could easily track those who clicked the link and send an email specific to them asking them if they implemented what they learned inside of the freebie.
You may ask them specific questions and have them click to be assigned into your content buckets. Which would allow you to then personalize the offer you send them in the rest of their sequence.
If you have a community, you may want to track those who join your free community. This will allow you to ask those who are not to join and target those in your community with specific notifications and emails.
After a couple of emails, you mention your offer and from there you can tag to track those who click on over. Regardless of the first step...it could be a link to an application, call, or sales page, you’ll want to tag that as they just raised their hand.
Once they have purchased your offer, you’ll want to tag them to then move them into your buyer segment. This will ensure you’re tracking who is in what offer and from there, you can send that sequence fulfillment sequence.
These are just a few ideas that can be expanded upon based on your business set-up. The goal is to use our data to help us better personalize their email content. Some even send specific emails to do this too -- I prefer to just weave it in with my content.
I prefer to track where they come from, content buckets, and actions that help me understand what offer is best for them. Tracking those who click to your Instagram to follow you is something I wouldn’t track. It simply doesn’t add to my bottom line or make a difference in the long run.
Until your list becomes mega huge, it’s okay not to have a bunch of tags and segements. Simple is always better. I always want you to be able to understand your data and not be overwhelmed.
Just focus on what helps you understand your audience and that’s it. You can always add more later if needed. It’s totally okay to start with just a simple non-buyer/buyer segments and that’s it.
Simple is totally fine because you’re segmenting for profit.
To be continued...