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Earlier this spring, Kristin schooled us in the basics of market segmentation. If you haven’t read Subscriber Categories:  The Minimum, that’s a great place to start. Now that you know that dividing into at least three categories is an email marketing must, let’s talk about some of the demographics that are commonly used:

Phase of Life
Where are your readers in their life and how does that affect their interaction with you?  Consider age, marital status, whether they have kids, whether they own their home, whether they are working or retired, etc.

Geographic
Location can be a big part of segmenting a list.  Perhaps what you have to offer is different in one part of the country than another, or perhaps your international offers differ from your stateside service.  You might also consider the different lifestyles of individuals in different locations.  You might not create dividing lines across a map but differentiate rural from big-city or coastal from mountains.

Interest Range
No matter what you offer, you are going to have people whose interest level differs.  From the season pro to the newest newbie, there’s always diversity. And depending on what you offer, you may have a range that goes from “what you offer is completely integral to what I do” to “this is interesting to me, and that’s the extent of my involvement.”  Those who are excitedly interested will probably want to hear from you more often, and likely they will want to get more detailed information in their email newsletters.  Of course, you might also be segregating into categories like “hippies,” “professionals” and “local community” and that’s ok too!

Interactivity
We touched on this topic in interest range - the degree to which a person interacts with your company and with your newsletter is a perfectly valid way to segregate them into categories.  You might be separating your long-term steady contacts who rarely change their order but still like to hear what’s new out from the demographic of your readership who is new, still trying out different products and not yet settled into a routine of business.  You can also simply use this as a way to offer different levels of frequency to readers who might not want to receive as much communication.

If you’d like more insight into segmenting and managing your contacts, check out our Managing Contacts Webinar!