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Talk to your audience effectively, using segmentation

If your audience is larger than 10k people, not all have likely purchased the same product or have the same interest in your offerings. 

So how do you communicate with them in a relevant way? 

Say you want to send follow up emails for a course they got. Or you want to market a related product. Or ask for feedback or testimonials. You don’t want to send the same message to everyone.

Splitting the audience into groups like these is called segmentation.

When you create these segments, you can have different conversations with each group. 

You can segment your list manually, but here we are big fans of automation.

The best way to automate segmentation and conversations with your customers is by using “tags.” 

When a prospect buys a product, you tag that action with a specific keyword. When they click a link, you can also tag that action. 

Adding or removing a tag can then be used inside your newsletter provider to trigger an automated campaign. 

For example, the “purchased_product_x” tag can trigger a newsletter series that will be a tutorial for that product. 

Or for the visitor tagged with “landing_page_offer_1,” you can trigger a series of emails that will market to them a specific offer.

Later, you can send a special discount to all the customers tagged with the “purchased_product_y” tag. 

I hope you can now see the power of segmentation and tagging when it comes to automatic your conversations with your leads and customers. 

For this process to work, your newsletter provider needs to support tags and automation around tags. You will need providers like MailChimp or AWeber.

Is your website really helping your business?

I know this seems like a silly question to ask in 2020, but I still see examples of websites that do not actually help (or not as much as they could).

For a website to be helpful, it needs to have a well-defined goal. And if you can track that, all the better!

Here are some examples:

  • it helps sell your products or services
  • it showcases your experience and expertise
  • builds a community
  • makes a bold statement about a cause you believe in and support

Website vs. Social Media

Social media gets a lot of attention today. It is tempting to focus on building a following there. We all know and follow “influencers” on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. 

But who really owns that audience and that space? Hint: It is not the influencer. It is the social media company. 

On a social media platform, even if you create content, you are still the guest. You are still a product that gets attention back to the social media company. You and your business can be kicked out at any time with no explanation given or a way to get back. And everything you have built can fall like a house of cards. 

This is where your website can help in a big way.

At the very least, your website should build a mailing list as a way for you to be able to contact your audience directly and not depend on “the algorithm” or “boosting” your content. 

Unlike your social media page, the website is yours, and so is the mailing list. You may be forced to change hosting or email providers, but you don’t lose your audience or content, provided you are disciplined with your backups.

A website can be supplemented with a podcast. The podcast shows will also be distributed directly to your subscribers at no extra cost to you. There is no algorithm involved and no need to “boost” your content. A podcast has the added advantage that your distributing content cost does not increase with the number of subscribers, as it happens with your mailing list. You should, however, still invite your listeners to subscribe to your newsletter from time to time. 

The Take-Away

The take-away is that your website should do something, not just take up Internet space.

It should at least:

  1. build trust
  2. invite the user to subscribe to your newsletter or podcast
  3. have a clear value proposition and a call to action on the home page

How is your website doing? Let me know about your challenges in the comment section.