AP 0078: How Do You Segment Your Various Email Lists?

AskPat 78 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 78 of AskPat. So happy you're here, and I'm also happy because a lot of amazing questions are coming in every single day from those of you that are listening. So, thank you so much for that.

If you have a question you would like featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. Now, today's question comes from Andrea, and it's about segmenting your email list. And speaking of email lists, I want to mention today's sponsor, which is AWeber. AWeber is the company that I use to help me build an email list, and also send emails out to all of those subscribers, and to also send those out automatically using their autoresponder. I also use them to segment my lists, which I will get into on this episode, or in this answer after you hear from Andrea's question. And seriously, it's very easy to use, easy to set up, and they have wonderful customer service. So, why would you use anybody else? So, head on over to AWeber.com/askpat, and you can get set up and started with just $1. You can try it out, and check them out.

All right, so now onto Andrea's question for today.

Andrea: Hi, Pat. It's Andrea. And I have a question about email lists and how you have them set up. I was curious: do you set up lists for specific products you offer? Which—you don't really offer products, so probably not that way. Or is it specific areas such as affiliate marketing, as opposed to list building? Or, what other way do you have it set up? I'm just a little curious, and I know that you have multiple lists, and I'm just curious how you determine when you set up a new list, as opposed to when you do something specific to, say, your main list, which may be your newsletter. Thanks so much. I really appreciate all that you do, and I would love to have your guidance, 'cause it's super confusing to me. Thank you!

Pat Flynn: Andrea, thank you so much for your question. And actually, to be honest, and to just be completely upfront with everybody, I do segment my lists. However, I probably don't do as good of a job as I should. And there is a lot of ninja things you could do to segment your list, and there's some things you could do in terms of if people sign up for this list, they get signed off the other list and put onto a new list. And especially if you have each of those lists with their own set of auto responder emails. So, when people sign up for a list for example, or get automatically put into another one after doing some certain task, they get another set of emails. So, you're able to really craft the customer and subscriber experience based on what they do, which is the really cool part. And I know a lot of people who do this very, very well, and I'm still trying to learn as best as I can from them.

So, I'm just going to be honest; I'm going to share how I segment my list. And most of the segmentation is done from where those people come from. And so, I could do it better in terms of that. So, for example, I have a main list, which is about 75,000 people. Those are the people who subscribe to my list just on my website. And I could get even more ninja and say, okay, people who subscribe on blog posts that have to do with blogging can get put onto one list. I can have it set up so that people that subscribed on pages that deal with podcasting get put into one. People who subscribed on pages that deal with email marketing get put into one. And then, for example, in each of those email lists, I can have a different set of autoresponders, or autoresponder emails that get sent out sequentially over time, prewritten so I don't have to do it anymore, that are specifically targeted to people who have signed up on those lists. For example, people signed up for the podcasting list, or through those pages on my site that were about podcasting, I can send emails that are about podcasting, I could perhaps even give a giveaway that is about podcasting. And then, if I wanted to recommend products down the road in that autoresponder sequence, or in real time through a broadcast email, I could send that group of people stuff that deals with podcasting. And I would know that because those people came in through something that dealt with podcasting, I would probably get a much higher return that way, and have something much more specific and relevant to those people. Same thing with the blogging list, email marketing, affiliate marketing. You should try to think of all the different types of people or markets within the market you are serving. And you'd also want to hopefully survey your list, or people on your site to see what those people are, so that you know for sure. And I just happen to know what they are over time, just through connecting with people and also doing smaller surveys and reach out to my audience. And I haven't done a major survey in a long time, which is another mistake. So anyway, I make a lot of mistakes, but that doesn't mean you can't be successful, I think success comes with a lot of mistakes.

Anyway, going back to your question, Andrea, a lot of my emails are coming from the main website. And I don't know exactly what pages those people are coming into. It's hard for me to find that out, and that is something I could probably do a lot better on. But, I do have some other things going on that are very helpful. I have a list that I'm building from people who read my book, for example. My book is called Let Go, and at the end of Let Go, there is a prompt to join my book club. And so I know that all the people on that list are coming from people who have read my book. And so I can email them about future books, and know that they are going to be more than likely to purchase those books when they come out. I can perhaps give those people special deals or something cool as a result of being on that list. I also give those people books that I read as well. So, it's sort of like a book club, I guess you could say. I also have a list that are segmented for specific webinars that I've done. I have a whole list that is just for the webinar that I did with Clay Collins about Leadpages, which is a company that I am an advisor for, which tells me a few things about those people. Those people were interested in webinars, and they were also interested in higher conversions. So, anything that deals with that, or perhaps any tips or giveaways or any products in the future that deal with that, I have a list that's just for that. I also have a list of people who signed up to be a part of the niche site tools. So, I have that list, so whenever I talk about niche sites or share something that involves that, then I have a list that I can send that specifically to. So, I have to pick and choose where I send my emails out. Most of them go to my entire list. However, I do send specific emails to different parts of my email list as well.

Now, the question is, are people signed up for multiple lists? And they are on my email list. So, for example, some people that have viewed those webinars are also on my main list, who are also on my book club list. And the sad thing about that—well, not necessarily sad, I mean, the thing about that is that I'm paying for three subscribers when it's really just one person. The best tip I can give you is to make sure that if people are on multiple lists, that those are lists that you're going to be using. I do have a couple lists that were created a long time ago, that I just recently deleted because I was not reaching out to them. They were pretty much dead lists—not because those people weren't active anymore; a lot of those people were on other lists—but because I wasn't really using that particular segment anymore.

Now, there are other ways to segment your list, and you could do this after people have subscribed. You can use AWeber's tool, and there is a lot of tools within other email platforms as well, to segment based on, for example, location. So, IP address, and you'll have to find the IP address range if you want to email people in a specific location. For example, if you're going to be speaking in a certain area, or traveling somewhere, you can email those people based on IP. And that's a little bit more difficult, but I'm not going to get into that right now. You can also email people who are, depending on actually what data you collect upfront, typically just name and email, but if you were to collect age, for example, you could target people within a specific age range. If you were to target, whatever the case may be, maybe you have people actually select a dropdown when they subscribe, or maybe sometime after they subscribe they select something that puts another sort of tag onto their name, that allows you to email those people with that specific tag. So, maybe it's a tag or a sort of survey-like thing that you submit to your audience and say, “What are you most interested in?” And based on that, you'd be able to segment them out using this tool that, again, you can use after people have subscribed to just create a certain portion of your email list that you could send to. It's a little bit more advanced that way, but you could, for example, a quick, easy version is I can go in there and find out everybody who has subscribed in 2013. You can select date ranges, and that is really helpful. And there's actually a way that you could do that on specific pages on your site. So, I actually have a landing page for Ebooks the Smart Way, which is my giveaway, at EbookstheSmartWay.com, and I can email everybody who has signed up on that page, because you can segment based on the URL that they subscribed on. So, that's a little bit sort of like what pages they subscribed on, but you'd have to know that specific page, instead of having a list where you would know already.

So, again, there's a lot of interesting ninja ways that you can go about it. The best advice that I can give you if you're just starting out is have your main list, and also try to figure out where people are subscribing from. And, for example, you have a landing page for your podcast, I would make that a separate list. And if you wanted to email everybody, you could—you could just simply select the different email lists that you want to send an email to and just select them all if you want to send a broadcast to everybody. But then you would know, for example, people who came from your podcast, if you had something to say or email them, you could do it very easily because you've already segmented that list from the start.

So, doing your best from the get-go to separate your lists is the best advice I can give you. Something that I sort of didn't even know was possible until a year, or two years down the road when “it was too late,” even though it's not too late. But I had already gathered a large number of people on my list, and so I just felt kind of out of place. So, start early segmenting your list, and best of luck to you.

So, Andrea, I hope that answers your question. I hope that gives you some ideas of ways you could segment your list, and an AskPat t-shirt's going to be headed your way. So, again, thank you for your question. If you have a question, again, head on over to AskPat.com. And remember, if you haven't signed up for AWeber yet, and you haven't started building your email list, or even if you have and you just aren't happy with it, again, switch to AWeber. AWeber is a great service that I have been using for over four years now, and I'm just completely happy with it. AWeber.com/askpat is the referral link. You can give it a try for $1. Check it out, start building your list, put email opt-in forms on all of your highest-traffic pages. That's my best advice to you, and again, AWeber will make it very easy for you to do that. So, again, AWeber.com/askpat.

And, as always, I want to end with a quote. And today's quote is from Arthur Ashe, and that quote is, “From what we get, we make a living. From what we give, however, makes a life.” And as I always say, your earnings are a byproduct of how helpful you are to your audience. So give, as much as you can, and it will come back to repay you. Maybe not right away, maybe it's not even obvious, but I feel like that's how we should live. Give, with purpose, and give opportunities for people to pay you back as well. Take care, and I will see you in the next episode of AskPat.