What is an Email Segment?

New to email? Let’s break it down into simple parts and learn what makes up a marketing email. Today we will be discussing segments.

Everyone has sent an email at one point in their life. A basic standard email is who, what and the message. Who, is the person you are sending it to. In marketing, that is your subscribers. All of your subscribers make up your list. That’s everybody, like replying all to everyone in your family, not only your immediate family, but extended family, cousins, grandparents, the whole shebang. Family reunion style, but they ALL show up, even that guy who married your great aunt.

A group of subscribers is your segment. For example, everyone in your immediate family aka your household. Various groups, or segments are part of the larger group list. For example, one segment is your immediate family, and another segment is your aunt’s family.

A single person can be in multiple segments at the same time. In this example, everyone in your family that lives in the same state. That could be your immediate family, your aunt’s family, and Grandma June. Oh and that one cousin who moved here after college. A segment includes everyone on the list with a common trait, a thing that they all share.

Another segment could be everyone in your extended family that loves water-skiing. That may only be you in your household, but the segment would also include every individual person across your whole family. Uncle Bob, Grandma June and a couple cousins and that guy that married your great aunt.

A segment is simply a way to group people.

A segment can only have one person in it or it could have everyone in it. The size of the segment does not define it. Its common traits or behaviors does.

In marketing, it’s basically the same. Your extended family, aka everyone, is your subscriber list. Your segments are based on things they all share:

A segment of subscribers in your city, that you would target for local events or popups.

Another segment of people who have made a purchase in the last 90 days.

The possibilities are endless. There are no limits to how many segments you can create with your subscriber list and you can segment the list any way that is beneficial or helpful to your business. Segmenting helps you focus your emails to those who would be interested in the message or content of the email.

It’s important to remember you don’t need to rush out and segment everything you can think of.

Just focus on what your business goals are and start with that.

You can always add new segments later on.

Some of these blog posts might feel like they are being over explained, that everyone knows this. I wanted to do a small series for those who are new to email. Remembering that at one point, I did not know this. While it might come intuitively to some people reading this email, this post is written to help educate those that have a different background that might not include anything business related. If even one person finds this helpful, I have done my job, as cliche as that sounds. I think sometimes when we are trying to teach someone something, we forget square one. So with this series, we are going down to the basics and starting from scratch. I don’t want anyone to feel discouraged on any of my posts and provide this resource as a tool for their success.

Are you more advanced? Check out our other posts (coming soon) for intermediate and advanced email hacks. I hope that you will find those helpful.