E-mail Segmentation Still the Next Big Thing

For the last several years, I've attended the Marketing Sherpa annual conference on e-mail marketing, and last year I spoke at it. I decided not to go this year, partly in favor of attending other conferences, and partly because the coverage of the event is getting better and better each year. I just looked at this year's summary which you can read for yourself here.

There's a lot to learn from just reading this summary, and I encourage you to do so. Meanwhile, I'd like to excerpt just one take-away:

The issues of segmentation and relevancy were -- by hook or by crook -- party to nearly every discussion heard during the three days. And an increasing number of marketers are splintering their lists into up to 12 or 14 different files.

"The focus has shifted to relevancy and the importance of segmentation," says Jayne Lytel, Executive Director, The Early Intervention Network. "It's almost more important to have a smaller list than to have a huge list that is not performing as well. I plan to go back and clean our lists and segment it better, while not taking the one-size-fits-all approach."

Now, your lists may be too small to segment into 12 files, but again, the conference highlights something I've been saying for a long time - that a "one-size-fits-all" e-mail strategy should eventually give way to much more targeted messaging to your patrons and donors.