A proven Precision Marketing method for increasing email marketing results, while also reducing unsubscribes and spam complaints is proper use of list segmentation techniques and sub-lists.  This powerful technique will also boost customer and subscriber satisfaction, and your email open and action rates.

A lot has been written about email marketing and permission marketing, but I continue to see many who ignore one of the cardinal rules – staying on topic with opt-in subscribers.

For example, a customer buys a product and joins the “customer list” to stay on top of product updates and “related information.”  So, does this customer expect to receive:

• A customer newsletter?  (yes)
• Product update notices?  (yes, only as needed)
• A notice about new product releases of the product they bought?  (yes)
• Invitations to attend free webinars related to the product?  (yes)
• Complementary reports that are relevant to the product’s usage?  (yes, occassionally)
• Customer surveys?  (yes, but only rarely)
• Offers for the company’s other products?  (not exactly)
• Offers for 3rd party products by partners of the company?  (no)
• Invitations to join other email-based conversations that may be of interest?  (yes, occassionally)

In reality, what the customer expects to receive is determined by the “reason why” they chose to opt-in in the first place – and what they were told to expect as a result of joining the “customer list”.

Too often, marketers seem to (conveniently) forget why their subscribers joined each mailing list in the first place.  We get so caught up in what we want to say and do that we neglect the rights and interests of our most important subscribers of all – our customers.

Instead of respecting the customer’s rights, we begin “broadcasting” to them – about anything and everything we want to.  The operative term is “we want”.  We sometimes ignore what the customers want, and selfishly prioritize what we want higher, and then justify it in various ways (we need the revenue, they’re “our customers”, they need to know about this, etc.)

So what happens as a result?  Many of “our customers” choose to unsubscribe… and many others simply stop opening just about all of our emails, looking at the email subject line to pick out the ones that are relevant.  Worse, some of them start pressing their “Spam” button, which begins to train the spam filtering systems to re-route our emails into the junk mail folder!

Clearly, there has to be a better way.  As marketers we have a legitimate need to communicate with our customers and subscribers about a broad range of topics, but how can we do this without offending them?

The answer:  Sub-lists.

Instead of continuing to “broadcast” to your opt-in lists, create more topic-focused sub-lists, or “email list interest groups“.  A sub-list is a new list that customers and subscribers choose to subscribe to in order to access the kind of information we’re offering.  For example, we could create sub-lists for (using the examples above):

• A customer newsletter sub-list
• Product update sub-list
• Free webinars sub-list
• Complementary reports sub-list
• Customer survey sub-list
• New product announcement sub-list
• Third-party product announcement sub-list

We use sub-lists as a means of segmenting our audience, by letting them choose which kinds of communications they are actually interested in receiving from us.

Seems simple enough. So why don’t more companies do it?

Good question.  Perhaps it’s out of ignorance, or lack of concern, or even laziness… there are lots of excuses, but few legitimate reasons.  It’s definitely more work to get subscribers to opt-in to these sub-lists, but there are enormous benefits for taking this approach:

1. Virtually eliminates unsubscribes from the main mailing lists
2. We can communicate more frequently to members of these sub-lists about their topics of interest
3. It’s much less likely it’ll be considered as spam (since they asked for it)
4. The audience on each sub-list is much more receptive to what we have to say

There are many practical uses for sub-lists.  One of my favorites is setting up a sub-list around a new product launch, where a series of “pre-launch” emails is sent to those who have expressed a genuine interest in the new product that’s coming soon.

So how do we set up these sub-lists and entice people to subscribe to them?  There’s several methods I’ve found to work:

1. Offer these various lists at the time the customer or subscriber joins originally (where applicable)
2. Provide subscribers a convenient place to update their subscription choices (on a web page)
3. Use a landing page and offer to provide incentives to subscribe (as with any list)
4. Send a one-time email to your main lists, make them aware of the opportunity (e.g., new product or “hot topic” area associated with a new product), soliciting customers and prospects to learn more

There are many ways to segment your email list audience.  Whatever the actual mechanisms you choose to use, give careful consideration to your communications strategy and develop a “sub-list taxonomy” that’s right for your business.  Then you’ll know who is actually interested in your various sub-topics, and can feel free to communicate with them regularly with confidence – and target the best audiences with each message you send.

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