W07.04 Making More Lists Within Your Lists – Segmentation

My blog is niched to a rather select group of people – Alexander Technique teachers and trainees who want to build a successful teaching career. A healthy niche will result in an email list in the thousands, but my list will never reach that size. So as much as I love you all, you could never support me earning a full-time living – there just aren’t enough of you! Yet, you are still quite a diverse bunch…

Any niche is going to be like this, no matter how much you drill down. For example, because I am writing about fundamental business, marketing and sales principles, there are a number of other people – neither Alexander Technique teachers or trainees – who still find value in following my blog, and joining my list. Perhaps you are practitioners of another modality or discipline: if you replace “Alexander Technique” with “What You Do” most of what I write still makes sense. I also have teachers of many years experience, and trainees who have just started to learn. There are also people who know way more than I, but appreciate my comprehensive career success framework.

So start thinking how you can make your list work for all the different people who will join it: will you need to make sense of all these different groups?

Avatars and Segmentation of Your List

First it helps to “image” who you are writing to. In my case – the trainee, the starting out teacher, the experienced teacher, the Alexander Technique devotee, the associated practitioner and even some marketing and business types. In my mind, I have avatars of each of these types – either real or imagined people who represent my core audience. I always talk to my core audience, but as my list grows in size, I can also address different needs with different solutions.

This is called “segmenting” your list, and it is an important second stage developmental step. There are only two companies that can accommodate this segmenting easily: Infusionsoft and Aweber (just recently). Those of you who already have built lists (1,000+) should consider utilizing one of these companies, Aweber being the cheaper and simpler option.

What happens is that you can start building a more detailed picture of the interests of your list. For example – you may announce that you have developed a (genius Alexander) exercise to help with mouse arm fatigue, and offer a link to download your free pdf file. The email list software can then automatically tag anyone who clicked on the link in your email, giving you a “segment” of people you know are really interested in “workstation” issues.

This may lead you to introduce a special workshop for people on this subject – but instead of pushing this event to all your list – many of whom may not be interested - you just tell those that downloaded the pdf file. You can enthusiastically email every day for a week before your workshop to just these people, while your main list is not bothered by a lot of emails they have already indicated they are not interested in receiving.

Get the picture?

Slowly you start to find out the interests of your list by offering free gifts, getting them to fill out surveys, offering links to other interesting blogs and information, telling them about other workshops – every time you do, adding another tag to their profile so you start to appreciate the different needs and interests of the people you serve.

Admittedly this is advanced stuff, and some of you are not ready for this. I am just sorry you had to read it, but I haven’t done my segmentation yet! Go join my list now – because I will be offering links to special stuff like this that some of you will be really, really interested in. Sign up in the box at the top…

TOMORROW: Annie Turner is next in the growing line of courageous teachers willing to expose their careers for analysis using my 12 Steps That Lead To Financial Success.

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