Subscriber Categories: The Minimum

You know you have to have or subscriber groups. You know that categorizing your readers is important. But how many groups should you create? At least three; more is preferable.

There is no business that can’t divide their target audience down into at least three distinct categories. The third category cannot be categories one and two combined, either - that’s cheating. Here’s an example: If you run a furniture store, you might divide your categories based on demographics.

You’ll have people shopping for their first apartment, new families, empty-nesters, antique-lovers, and so on. Or, if you are a service industry, you can create categories for the different services you offer and divide your attention as such. We offer email marketing services and free webinars, so we have created unique categories for each of these, as well as one for our new free trial sign-ups.

The point of this exercise is to stretch your imagination and creativity. What kind of content can you send groups 1, 2, and 3? What differences in your target audience can you hone in on?

Once you start to see the result of having three different groups and three different campaigns, you will start to shift your perspective of email marketing. When in doubt, check out what people are clicking on for more insight into your different reader groups.