By now it’s conventional wisdom: your audience is not a monolith, and you shouldn’t communicate with them that way. Online communications are particularly well suited to segmentation – thinking about your audience in terms of subgroups – but all communications can benefit from a bit of strategic thinking about what makes different subgroups of your list more and less open to different messages, approaches, asks, and channels.

If you’re among the lucky communicators with access to data from past communications campaigns, you can analyze past results by different groups and establish a segmentation approach based on the hard work you’ve already done.

If you’re building your segmentation approach from the beginning, here are three things you can take a look into for opportunities to better target your communications:

1. Level of Engagement: People who have volunteered for you could receive different communications than those who have just signed up for information; advocates who donate could be approached differently than advocates who haven’t donated yet; people who always read your emails could be approached differently than those who never read them (as determined by your handy dandy software). What different levels of engagement do subsets of your audience have with your organization, and are there ways you can communicate with them better to acknowledge their current commitment and inspire them to commit more?

2. Demographics: 20-somethings and 60-somethings not only get their information from different channels, but they interact with those channels in different ways. There’s evidence that men and women utilize online communications differently, and mounting evidence that age and geography have an impact on how people respond to direct mail. Does it make sense for you to think further about the demographics of your audiences?

3. Content: The Humane Society of the United States is famous (at least in certain circles) for effectively targeting dog lovers separately from cat lovers to inspire ever-higher levels of activism and contributions. Is there anything in your content — training versus job board programs, international versus domestic policy focus, child-related services versus senior services — that might make a difference to different subsets of your audience?

Segmentation is a complex science as well as an art, and is always a work in progress, but these days, as options for targeting messages grow ever-more sophisticated, you can’t afford not to give it a try.

Health care, midterms, stimulus, oh my! There’s a lot going on these days and maybe you’re asking a lot of your organization’s volunteers, donors, and activists.  Maybe asking so much that you’re worried about “list fatigue”.

“List fatigue” is the notion that the people on your email, direct mail, phone, and other lists are tired of hearing from you and tired of being asked to participate. They’re still supportive, but they’re “fatigued.” It’s a common explanation for everything from declining response rates to bottomed-out website traffic.

Three things to consider if you’re worried your lists are suffering from fatigue:

1. Prove it. How do you know your list is tired? What does that mean to you and your organization? Define the indicators, measure them, and make sure it’s not just you who’s exhausted.

2. Give it a rest. While we’re proponents of consistent communication with supporters and activists, we know that sometimes list fatigue is real. Maybe your organization is just on the flip side of a major fundraising push or grassroots campaign aimed at the Hill; you’ve asked a lot of your people, and they’ve delivered. It’s OK to take a break. Halve the frequency of your outbound emails, shift from a direct ask to a softer ask, and stay off the phones for a couple of weeks. Give your supporters a chance to miss you.

3. Mix it up. Maybe your list isn’t tired generally, just tired of the specific thing you’ve been hammering them with of late. Veer a little bit: talk about something new, make a completely different ask, tell the story in a completely new way.

Be sure to set your evaluation criteria, time frame, and measurement protocols in advance so you can be certain about when your lists are fired up and ready to go again on your behalf.

One of the biggest mistakes we see our clients make is not taking the time to really understand, and then take action on the knowledge, of who exactly is “in” their email list.  We hesitate to even call this a “mistake” because it’s both extremely understandable, and changing it requires a not insignificant new workload for your team.

That said, smart list segmentation can have a tremendous return on investment in the form of more action, dollars and engagement from your email list.  Below are three of the first ways to rethink how you’re using your list.  You probably have already done this once – is it time to do it again?

1)  Very Active vs. Active vs. Passive Subscribers. One relatively easy, but highly useful list segmentation comes in the form of slicing by activity levels and then tailoring the difficulty of your information and ask to suit each list.

Let’s say 1% of your list is very active subscribers who open nearly every email you send and take action most of the time.  These individuals could be getting emails that contain slightly more complicated information, along with more time consuming asks – because they’ve proven they both want and can handle the information and tasks.

Then, let’s say another 10% of your list sometimes opens your emails and occasionally takes the action asked of them.  These individuals could be getting messages that are more direct, easier to read and have quick & simple action asks.  As they become more informed and more engaged, those would then be moved into the “very active” list.

Then you have the other 89% of your list.  This group rarely (if ever) opens your emails, and thus rarely (if ever) takes action.  It’s often a good idea to step back a bit with this segment and put together a series of brief, education-oriented messages and reiterate the importance and value of your issue, with the goal of reminding them why they bothered to sign up with your group in the first place.  Since we are big believers in asking someone to do something as the best way to get and keep them interested with an issue, you should always have something for these individuals to “do” – even if it’s “Click Here to Learn More.”  Then, after a few months, take those that have opened several of the emails and move them into the “Active” list so they begin getting the slightly bigger asks.

2)  New registrants vs. long-time subscribers. It can often be helpful to keep your “new” folks separate from your “old” folks for up to 3-6 months and tailor your messages a bit.  The new folks can get value from messages that contain a little bit more background information (beware of the weeds however – carefully edit here!) in order to get more up to speed on your issue.  Those who have been on your list for a while we can assume already know a little something and so can get slightly more direct messages with less background data.  The asks can usually be the same – especially if they are the quick & easy tasks – but packaging them a bit differently can often yield much greater results.

Once an individual has been on your list for a predetermined period of time, you can move them into the “long-time” segment and just keep them there.

3)  Opt-In Source. Often, knowing where an individual came from can help you decide how to begin communicating with them via email.  Did they google your issue, find your website and spontaneously sign-up or did they randomly get one of your action alerts from a friend and decide to just sign the petition?  One of the best ways to turn a moderately interested person into an uninterested person right quick is to overwhelm them with too much information and difficult asks too soon.  And, that engaged person will be turned off if their interest and willingness to help isn’t being put to good use up front.  Thus, separating those who came to exist in your list “more casually” from those who were more proactive – and then talking to them differently, at least to start with – is an excellent way to turn that casual person into an active person and keep that eager person involved for the long term.

Utilizing all of the above segments simultaneously would be impossible – or at least more complicated than it might be worth.  So, you should think about your goals for your email list and choose one way to segment – whether it’s one of the above suggestions, or a different way altogether – and then run with it.  Test your segmenting for a few months and see if it’s having an impact on your open rates and completion rates.  If not, it might be worth trying a different approach.  The bottom line is your list is comprised of many different individuals who all want, need and are able to do different things.  Treating your list like one, amorphous blob is simply not the best way to take advantage of their talents and potential.

We hope this helps!  As always, we are available to help, so please be in touch if we can be of use to your project or organization!

The article includes a long list of basic principles, and a few really struck a chord:

“Email activism is really relationship management, since people vote, volunteer and donate because of the feelings they have toward a candidate or cause.”

I’ve seen the confused expression on people’s faces when I tell them that they need to build a ‘relationship’ with those on their email list.  Not that they don’t value the people who want to help their cause, but that it’s hard to think about an excel file with multiple thousands of names and email addresses as something tangible enough to get a beer with.  Well you may not need to have a beer with them, but learning to entertain (engage) them is very important.

As has been said often, your emails should be timely and relevant.  The more you feel like you are really writing to one person or a group of 10 people who are very similar, the more people will respond as if they are being communicated with personally, rather than as part of a giant mass.  The Obama campaign found many ways to segment their list – not just by demographics but by how users signed up and responded to previous messages.  If the Obama campaign can segment a giant of 10 million into 10,000 lists of 10,000 folks, surely you can find a way to segment your list of 15,000 into 3 lists of 5,000.

“The email initiation sequence was critical to starting the relationship-building process, with new list members receiving a pre-set series of messages after they signed up. The sequence steadily “scaled the ask,” encouraging newbies to step deeper and deeper into the Obama waters — first they show up to phone-bank, and the next thing they know they’re devoting 30 hours per week to managing a volunteer team.”

How many messages do new registrants on your email list get before they are included in the ‘general population?’ Are there ways to slowly step up their level of engagement over the first 2-3 months, learn more about them and gradually transition them to the best of your list segments?  I bet there is and there are rewards to reap in doing so.

“When possible, staff mapped out email narrative arcs in advance. For best effect, each message had to stand alone but also be a part of the stream.”

Your organization may not send 10% or even 1% of the messages that the Obama campaign sent in just a few short months.  But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t (or shouldn’t) develop longer narratives for your email campaigns. Presumably, you have a set of goals for the quarter, or year, that your members should know about and be engaged with.

In the context of your goals for the year (or any time period you’re planning for), develop a story for how you could ideally communicate your progress to your members.  Then map that story out on your message calendar for emails, direct mail and in other media.  While you may need to tailor messages to the particulars of a given month, you’ll have an outline to help your members follow your organization’s developing story of success.

Much is still being learned from the Obama campaign’s success in 2008.  Not all of it is applicable outside the context of a hotly contested national election featuring a rock star, but much of it can be adapted.  I highly recommend checking out the full list of principles and the rest of the post at e.politics. We’ll certainly be referring back to these principles in future posts.

-Stephen

Most organizations have been in a position where they have been approached by other groups about sharing their list or list-swapping.  It can be a way that your organization can make some extra revenue (by renting) or build your list (by list-swapping).   

Renting your list or trading with another organization can both be controversial, they are opportunities that could be beneficial to your organization.  This is especially the case when you find or are approached by a like minded organization and you could both grow from communication with each others’ lists.

While acknowledging that every organization is different and has different rules, norms and history with how they use their lists (members, donors, etc.), here are three things to remember when making the decision:

1. Identify what you want to accomplish in this process.  Are you trying to find another source of revenue?  Are you trying to increase the size of your list?  Build awareness of your organization or brand within other similar communities? Earn favor with like-minded allies for the future?  Any of these could be good reasons, and there are probably others.  Make sure you identified before hand which one it is and use that to help you when measuring results.

   1a.  Measure results - Never heard that before, right?

2. Follow you current policy or publicly change it.  You should not be sharing your lists if your subscribers have no idea that their information could be shared.  Make sure you have a privacy policy that is public on your web site and available in any place where subscribers would sign up for the list.  If you’re revising your policy, make a special effort to notify all subscribers of the change and what it means to them.

   Even better – have subscribers opt-in to any list sharing. This can be achieved by adding a check box at signup (or on a donation/membership form) saying “I would like occasionally receive information from like minded organizations and partners.”

3. Put your agreement in writing.  This protects your organization and your new partnering organization.  Be sure to include the following in the agreement:

   • Number of communications each organization will get to the others’ list and how they will be scheduled.  
   • The process for reporting the results – it’s important for both organizations to know how successful the communications were.
   • Who will be responsible for handling the list(s) and  sending the communications. Avoid physically giving the list away.  Whther you’re renting or trading the list, then send the mailing or email from within your system or from a third party vendor that you trust.  This way you maintain control of the data and can ensure that your list is not abused.

List sharing and renting can be beneficial to your organization when done appropriately and with a specific goal in mind.  These three things with help you start thinking through what you need to do.  Do you have other thoughts or advice?  Share them in the comments below.

and that’s the Three Things for this week! Do you have Three Things you’d like to get off your chest? Shoot us an email - we’d love to feature your ideas in this space!

Adam Singer over at The Future Buzz continues the argument with his post As Your Content Expands, Things Get Easier.  He makes the point that once you have quality content, then there are tons of tools that make it easier for your content to spread and your audience to grow.  They include :

• RSS Feeds make it possible for users to not only subscribe conveniently, but also share with friends through their reader, Digg, Facebook or other social media
• The more content you have, the more likely Google overlords will help your content be found.
• You become the expert on the subject and thus people seek you out with questions and others send visitors your way by linking back to you
• The more content you have, the easier it is to remix, mash-up and highlight things you said two weeks or even two years ago to help your audience in  more, new and interesting ways.

But how do you get to that point?  As Singer points out, “Most people quit too soon because they see the internet as an avenue of instant returns…”  You can’t just write a few posts, or even a few months of posts and really begin to see a return.  

Whether you are a non-profit looking to engage your members or provide quality online resources, a candidate who wants to blog (or twitter) about what’s happening from day to day, or a business trying to increase recognition of your brand or product, the real return comes from a consistent, long term production of quality and relevant content.

Nothing new there, right?

True again.  But as Shayna mentioned it’s hard and as Singer pointed out, many quit or slow down before the get anywhere close to a tipping point.

I guess the real question is how do you persist and push through to see the promised land (AKA an active, engaged audience that can help you accomplish your goal – because you do have one, right)?  Once again, the answer isn’t a secret and is far from stunning:

1. Make sure you actually enjoy what you’re doing.  If the exercise isn’t inherently valuable to you, then it probably isn’t going to be valuable to those whose attention you seek.  Put another way, if you’re not learning, then you’re probably not helping others learn.
2. Remember, unless you find that one crazy idea, you’re idea or post isn’t going viral overnight.   Identify achievable benchmarks along the way to the larger goal – for traffic to your site, new members, followers on twitter – or some other metric to demonstrate your progress.  Aim for those.  Maybe you get lucky, but plan for the slow long haul process of building an audience suited to your longer term goals.  (starting from scratch: 25 visitors or subscribers a day this month, 50 next month, 1000 next year is achievable with work.  500 who are willing to do what you ask in three weeks – probably not.)
3. Build a plan, execute, then evaluate.  Repeat as often as necessary.
4. Don’t stop when it gets hard.   

I didn’t say it was rocket science.  But then again even rocket scientists probably have a similar list to follow when doing work that is difficult.

-Stephen

It doesn’t matter how well you execute your email communications: from time to time people are going to opt-out.  Your messages can always be timely, relevant and personal, but users may not want them anymore.  Assuming it has nothing to do with your organization (how could it?), sometimes it is important to just help them move on.  But it can be done in a positive, and possibly useful way.

ReturnPath recently released a study “Keeping the Subscriber Experience Positive After ‘Unsubscribe Me.’” Although geared towards business, I think the recommendations apply very well to all organizations that communicate with their constituents via email (if you don’t, you should – get in touch and we’ll help you):

1. Make it easy and painless: Include a link all email messages.  If necessary, make sure an automated message is sent that provides confirmation to the user but asks for nothing in return (unless it was a mistake).  Then – stop sending messages.
2. Email Confirmation: When users click on the unsubscribe link, they should be directed to a landing page on your web site.  The unsubscribe form should be auto-populated with their email address.  They should be able to change their email address, just in case they clicked through a forwarded message.
3. Email Change of Address: Occasionally users just want to get the email at a different address.  They may use an alternative address for all of the email subscriptions as a way to filter them from their personal or work messages.  Make it easy for them to change their address.  Include an option on the landing page to change their email instead of unsubscribing.
4. Stop sending messages: I know, this is repitive, but important.  Sometimes you have messages qued up and ready to go.  Someone may unsubscribe on Tuesday and get a message on Thursday, especially if your email service doesn’t automatically remove them.  If at all possible, create a way to stop this practice.  If not, then your unsubscribe confirmation email and webpage should mention this with the sincerest apologies.
5. Offer alternatives: Make it easy to unsubscribe.  Provide a link to an unsubscribe landing page that autopopulates their email address.  Then, give them options:
   • Change of Email Address
   • Frequency of future emails (once per month/quarter/year) – better one annual message that they’ve asked for than none at all
   • Types of future emails – only event announcements, surveys, etc.
6. Learn: Keep the process simple, but learn something about the user before they unsubscribe.  Add a quick survey of 1-3 questions.  Are they less interested in your organization now for some reason?  Were the messages never relevant to them?  Or do they just get too many emails?  All can help you better understand your users in the future.

Lots of helpful information.  I recommend downloading the full study.

-Stephen

H/t: Email Insider

I was wading through my “get back to this eventually” file today and  across this article about the growth of Peter Shankman’s HARO (Help a Reporter Out) email list.  The HARO email list grew from 3,000 subscribers to more than 40,000 in less than a year.

You might think he did it by launching a fancy website with video and polls and whatnot.  Or maybe you’d think he sunk a fortune into online ads.  You’d be wrong in both assumptions.  The HARO list goes out three times a day, it’s a plain-text email and Peter runs HARO via a very simple webform, in which you see nothing more than the list rules and provide nothing more than your name and contact information.  It started out as a Facebook group.

The HARO is huge because it fills a critical need – connecting would-be sources to journalists.  The interface could be more elegant, the process could be more slick, but it doesn’t need to be because it provides value.

As is so often true, delivering true value is a secret of communications success that is easy to recognize, but hard to deliver.

-Shayna