by Want to stop sending generic emails that get ignored? Wondering how to make your email marketing more profitable with less effort?
In this article, you'll discover how to use email segmentation to increase revenue by sending smaller, more targeted messages to the right people.
Why Email List Segmentation Is Critical for Revenue Growth
Many marketers rely heavily on platforms like Meta for targeting because their algorithms are incredibly efficient at finding buyers. However, when those leads move from social platforms to your email list, that rich data doesn't come with them. You are often left with just a first name and an email address, knowing nothing about their pain points, interests, or what they are looking for.
While you can build a business using one-size-fits-all marketing, you hit a ceiling. To scale effectively, you must understand that your total addressable market for a specific offer is likely a small sliver of your total list.
Chris Orzechowski says every email list contains minnows and whales. Minnows might buy a low-cost eBook and never purchase again, whereas whales buy high-ticket offers, purchase often, and are a pleasure to work with. To grow your business, you need to identify the whales, understand where they came from, and tailor your marketing to them.
Follow these steps to put email segmentation to work for your business.
#1: Tips to Segment Your Email List
Gather Customer Data With Surveys
The first step to effective segmentation is asking your subscribers questions. You need to determine the criteria that qualify someone as a good lead for your specific business.
For example, if you are in the B2B space, you might ask new subscribers about their business size, the tools they use, or their specific challenges. Crucially, you should ask about their timeline. A subscriber who wants to solve a problem ASAP is a very different lead than someone looking to solve it sometime in the future.
When you identify a subscriber with urgent needs, you can automate a pitch immediately rather than waiting for a scheduled campaign. If you fail to offer a solution when they are ready to buy, they will likely go to a competitor.
Tools like RightMessage allow you to integrate these survey questions directly into your email flow and sync the data back to your email service provider (such as Kit or Drip) as custom fields. This data allows you to create segments and build automations based on specific subscriber answers.
Use Trigger Links to Gauge Intent
Surveys are powerful, but trigger links offer a behavioral way to segment your audience based on interest. A trigger link is a link in your email that, when clicked, tags the subscriber in your database.
You can use this strategy to identify interest in specific topics without requiring a purchase. For example, you might send an email saying, “By the way, if you are interested in [Topic X], check out this program of mine”.
Even if the subscriber doesn't buy immediately, the click tells you they have intent. You can then place them into an automated “intent sequence” that follows up with more information, stories, and teaching about that specific topic. This ensures you are putting the right offer in front of the right person, which significantly increases conversion rates compared to blasting your entire list.
#2: 4 Core Email List Segments You Can Build Now
While the possibilities for segmentation are endless, you should avoid overcomplicating the process. Work backward from your products and offers to determine the data you actually need.
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GET THE DETAILSHere are the four most valuable segment types to implement immediately:
- Identity Segments (Who They Are): Group subscribers based on their business model or role. For example, if you have a list of marketers, segment them into “Agency Owners” versus “E-Commerce Brand Owners”. An agency owner needs to know how to train their team, while a brand owner focuses on profit margins, so they require different messaging.
- Interest Segments (What They Want): Bucket subscribers based on the specific problem they are trying to solve. If you sell multiple courses, you might find that 46% of your audience is interested in list growth, while a smaller 4% only cares about email deliverability. Knowing this allows you to send the list growth segment into a sales sequence for that specific course while sparing the others.
- Timeline Segments (When They Need It): Identify who is ready to buy immediately versus who is browsing. Ask subscribers if they want to solve their problem “sometime in the future” or “ASAP”. You can then prioritize aggressive follow-up for the “ASAP” leads to close them quickly.
- Exclusionary Segments (Who to Avoid): Use segmentation to stop selling to the wrong people. For instance, if you have a small group of SaaS founders on your list, you should exclude them from emails about getting copywriting clients. Exclusionary criteria ensure you don't annoy subscribers with irrelevant offers that cause them to tune out.
#3: Build Automated Intent Sequences
Creating email sequences can feel overwhelming, but you often don't need to write them from scratch. If you have been emailing your list for a while, you likely have a “greatest hits” collection of emails that performed well in the past.
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GET YOUR TICKETS—SAVE $300You can organize your past emails by product or topic and assemble them into a new automated sequence. A subscriber who joined your list yesterday has never seen an email you sent 4 years ago, so it is fresh content to them.
When structuring these sequences, follow a logical sales argument—similar to a sideways sales letter. Start with high-engagement stories and problem-focused emails, then move into the mechanism, features, and overcoming objections.
Finally, ensure every single email in the sequence contains a link to buy. Do not make the mistake of “nurturing” without offering a solution. If someone is ready to solve their problem, they want the ability to purchase immediately. Furthermore, without a link, you cannot track which emails are driving the best response.
#4: Tips to Optimize Segmented Emails for Conversion
Personalize the Customer Journey
True personalization goes beyond inserting a subscriber's first name into the subject line. It involves reflecting the subscriber's specific situation back to them in your copy.
If you sell a course on email marketing, an agency owner will have different motivations than an e-commerce brand owner. The agency owner wants to train their team, while the e-commerce owner wants to increase profit margins.
By using the data collected from surveys and trigger links, you can dynamically change the headlines, testimonials, and copy on your sales pages and emails to match the subscriber's profile. When a prospect sees their specific dominant desire reflected on the page, they are far more likely to buy.
Dimensionalize Benefits and Using Stories
To convert these segments effectively, your email copy must shift beliefs and clearly explain the value of your offer. Many marketers stop at listing features or basic benefits. You need to go further and dimensionalize the benefit.
Dimensionalizing means explaining how the user's life will change once they experience the benefit. For example:
- Feature: All-natural ingredients in soap.
- Benefit: Nourishes the skin.
- Dimensionalized Benefit: You will glow all winter, look amazing, and feel confident because your skin is radiant despite the cold wind.
You should also utilize stories as dramatic demonstrations of your product's proof. A story allows you to walk a prospect through a hero's journey where a character (like a past client) experiences a problem, finds a solution (your product), and achieves a result. This is a non-confrontational way to sell that helps the reader see themselves achieving the same outcome.
To make stories compelling, move beyond simple action (“Susie did this”). Include thoughts, feelings, and dialogue to create small moments that make the reader feel like a fly on the wall.
Chris Orzechowski is an email marketing strategist and founder of The Email Copywriter, where he helps businesses generate predictable revenue through strategic email marketing. He's the author of Make It Rain: The Secret to Generating Massive Paydays from Your Email List. Sign up for his newsletter and follow him on X and YouTube.
Other Notes From This Episode
- Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
- Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.
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