How to Segment New Email Subscribers in Your Welcome Sequence

I’m a big tech person, as you may have gathered by now.

I’m all about tagging email subscribers with relevant information to help you:

• Know how to better create content that appeals to your list

• Develop related offers

• Set up automations that make welcoming and nurturing your subscribers a straight-up breeze.

One of my favorite ways to segment my clients’ lists is by using a self-segmentation email (well, usually two, because I’m all about the follow-up) in their welcome sequence.

Self-segment, whaaaat, Allea?

Grab a seat, class is starting!

*I hereby welcome you to an email full of flashback references to one of the greatest “Don’t underestimate a woman with a motive” movies of all time, Legally Blonde, featuring Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods — where she upgraded our confidence and our wardrobe in one fell swoop.*

How to allow email subscribers to self-segment by their preferences

When you provide a self-segmentation option early in your welcome and nurture sequences, this allows your audience to lend their voice — in one click — to say what they want, who they are or how you can best help them.

And just like *that* your list is segmented in a super simple way.

Why does this matter?

Segmentation matters for soooo many reasons, but to name a few:

• You keep readers happy by sending them content that’s relevant to their needs. Happy readers stick around longer, which means fewer unsubscribers.

• Subscribers are more likely to engage with your content or click through to your site (in fact, according to a report from Lyris, 39% of marketers who segmented their email lists had higher open rates).

• Segmented, personalized offers, could lead to an increase in sales (the Lyris report had email marketers see a 24% increased in sales)

In the case of Duett subscribers, I want to know what field of work my readers (that’s you!) are in, because I know that eventually I may create content specific to one industry and not another, and I want to make sure I don’t simply send emails to one segment of my list that it wouldn’t apply to.

It’s like manners, but for your email list. It also boosts open and click through rates.

I don’t have specific nurture sequences set up for different segments of my list YET, but I may in the future, and these subscriber tags will help me know who makes up most of my audience, their stage in business, or what interests them. That will be invaluable when I decide to dedicate the time and energy into creating new, topical nurture sequences.

Here’s how I have it set up in my Welcome Sequence right now:

Choose your nurture sequence segments

Of course you want to ask your readers all about themselves, but first, you have to decide what kind of nurture content you’ll be sending them — the blog posts, products or offers, training, etc. — or how having this information might be most helpful for the future.

If you’re ready to dive in and create nurture sequences, you don’t need to have a dozen emails queued up in order for it to be valuable. Trust me. Start with a sequence of 3-4 emails each.

Consider what you can provide readers of each sequence if you choose to segment your audience by…

• Topic or interest

• Skill level

• Industry or line of work

Once you have this lined up, you’re ready to start segmenting!

The technical side of things

Inside of your self-segmentation email, set up your “answers” by using “link triggers,” so that way your email service platform can add a new tag to a subscriber when they click an option.

Here’s a video on how to do this inside of Kit.

If you want subscribers to only pick ONE, then make it very clear. If you want to know about all of their interests, be sure to tell them to click as many as they want.

Inform your subscribers that you’ll be sending them relevant content that lines up with what they are interested in. Not only does this give them an opportunity, essentially, to give you “permission” to keep emailing them — but they’ll also love that you asked!

So, are you ready to incorporate this kind of email into your welcome sequence, so you can start learning about your new subscribers?

Exactly, I know you can do it.

For more strategies on how to use subscriber tags to boost subscriber engagement and brand loyalty, click here to purchase 7 Ways Email Tags Can Improve Your Engagement and Build Brand Loyalty.

Want to know how you can use segmentation to your fullest advantage?

There’s an endless list of possibilities… but here’s the gist of it:

• Use this kind of valuable subscriber data to do magical things like sending conditional content in your ongoing email automations or weekly newsletter.

And… for a behind-the-scenes look at how to set this up in Kit, watch my short tutorial here.