Digital Marketing Madmen Style

June 6, 2017 by John McDougall

John McDougall: Hi, I am John McDougall. Welcome to the Authority Marketing Roadmap. Today, I’m here with my father Dan McDougall, founder of McDougall Associates and McDougall Fine Arts. We’re going to be talking about sales and marketing madmen style. Welcome, Dan.

Dan McDougall: Well, I’m glad to be here John. Also, I’m very excited about your business and where you’ve taken the digital marketing company. Starting out in marketing, I went to school for marketing at Boston University and took a job as a marketing director.

After that and through my experience in marketing, they asked me to take on the sales responsibility too, which I did, which taught me an awful lot in terms of what it is to build sales and what will do that.

What I’ve learned, primarily, is that you’d better build a relationship with people in order to get business, because if you do that and you have a strong relationship, it will not only maintain your business, but if you go through a period that’s difficult for some reason, they will trust you and hold you and keep you as their marketing person. From that, I’ve learned a little bit about developing a business.

On the side, I started a business called McDougall Ship Models and Nautical Antiques with high-quality museum quality pieces. It developed as a casual thing that actually overtook my marketing director job. I resigned that, sold my McDougall Ship Model business, and my brother and I founded McDougall Associates, which was an advertising agency. We started basically from scratch and built it to a point where we sold it to Interpublic in New York 30 years later, but we had quite a long experience.

One of the things I learned in terms of developing a business like that is, as I said, relationships are very important. We hired a lot of people with MBAs. One of the things I used to notice when we’d be pitching an account is that they would be showing off their expertise in terms of marketing and everything else. Afterwards, I’d tell them, “The one thing you forgot is to ask to look at their baby pictures”, because what you’ve neglected to do is incorporate the things that are important to them and those things are their business or their personal relationships, their family. How many kids they have? Do they like golf or sailing? Because these are clues that are going to give you leverage in the future, in terms of developing that relationship, which is going to be important to you in keeping that business in the future.

As a matter of fact, one client I had at the time asked me one day, he said, “I just got a new helicopter. Would you like a ride in it?” I said, “Yes, I would”. He said, “I can’t fly it yet because I don’t have my license, but I’ll have my pilot take you up for a ride”. I went up for the ride, and when I came down he said, “What do you think of that?” I said, “I loved it”. Well, unbeknownst to me, he signed me up for a ground school both for fixed wing and then for helicopter. He asked his pilot to teach me how to fly. Well, when I saw the commitment was going to be about 25 hours a week.

John: For how long?

Dan: For over a year.

John: I remember you studying. It was quite a challenge.

Dan: I came back, and said to my wife, “Do you think this is something I should do?” And then I said to myself, “Why not?” Because it did two things. One, it just increased my interest in something new, but also it developed a stronger bond with my important client. You have to be open-minded, and follow the directions as they come into view. They’re not always planned.

John: You can’t just jam people with, like you said, the MBA-level smarts that you have. And if you push that you’re the smartest person in the room, that doesn’t always go over well.

Dan: Right. I had of a lot of experiences. People say to me, “Well, do you watch Mad Men?” I said, “No, I lived it”.

To cite a few examples, they talk about “three martini” lunches. Well, I never really did that, but clients wanted that. I remember one day I said to one of my creative directors on the way out the door, I said, “Gee, I just got a call from the Salem Chamber of Commerce”. This is when we were smaller. “They’d like to have a slogan for the City of Salem”. Instantly, he looked at me and said, “Stop by for a spell”. That made the Reader’s Digest and has been a bond for the city ever since. So there was that type of experience that you have.

John McDougall: As a 1970s ultra-creative zone, just right in the spur of the moment, you’re going to lunch and you get the tagline of the century.

Dan: Right. It was that way. These people, the way they thought was a very good experience. He was going out. He probably did have three martinis for lunch. But the important thing is when they’d come back, they would be working till eight or nine at night developing new programs, and always amazed me how they did that.

John: What are some of the larger clients that you sold and worked on?

Dan: Well, I think one of the largest was Tyco International which we went from handling one of their divisions to handling all of their companies worldwide which was a $100 million budget. We did all the Marriott Hotels from Canada down to the islands. We did all of Dunkin Donuts nationally for a while.

John: I remember, I was in a few commercials as a kid.

Dan: We did TD Bank. Also, one of the other big ones we landed was monster.com – also in the $100 million range.

John: Nice. What about in terms of retaining customers, you mentioned a little about how having that relationship can help you as an agency when times get tough. Can you just elaborate on that a little more?

Dan: Well, I think that’s one thing that I’ve always advocated to the account executives that I have, that you better reinforce and build the relationship you have with a client and build his or her trust, because without that you won’t have a client. When you do that and you get into a problem for some reason, the client will stand by you instead of saying goodbye to you. It’s very important to continue that relationship. It can be built on a lot of different things; whether it’s family matters, whether they have children that are similar to yours, they go to the same schools, whether they’re golfers, or whether they like sailing.

One of the things I found which was quite interesting when I would pitch a lot of new business is that in trying to develop a relationship I’d win the business. And I’d say to this client, “Well, how about if you go sailing with me?” They’d look at me strange and say, “Well, how about golf?”

Well, the problem is if they played golf with me, I would’ve lost the client. However, my brother was a good golfer, so he ended up going to the golf of course. I went back to the desk. However, I did sail on weekends.

John: You had a few clients who liked sailing here and there, but if golf was one of the more common bonding things, Mike would take them out a lot.

Dan: Yes, he would.

John: What do you think in terms of how much advertising has changed over the years with digital? It’s quite a shift.

Dan: Well, I think it’s very significant. I think that back in the latter part of the ’80s, we saw that web was coming in, and we developed the web division. We were the first agency locally to get on to computers with our art directors, and people thought we were nuts.

John: I think you had the first Mac network in New England or something along those lines. I think Mike said something along the lines of you had the first Mac network so…

Dan: Yes, we did. As a matter of fact, when Mac first came out, we were the first ones to put that throughout the whole agency. It worked out very well. From there, we got into the computers for design and other things.

John: I remember as a little kid in the ’70s, there were magic markers and paint brushes and poster boards. That was really the agency experience at the time.

Dan: What we’re seeing now too is as we went through this beginning of the digital age and had to develop that. We also saw we peaked with the media and everything else that was changing. It hurt the agencies for a while until they started getting into the digital age too. Now, we see within the digital age that things are evolving and changing and going through a metamorphosis that you have to quickly grasp and change from a moth into a butterfly if you can.

John: Well, banking, for example, a lot of the banks are somewhat timid and maybe moth-like, if you will, but I think they’re starting to realize that whether it’s a digital branch or an online only bank, they’re realizing they have to get with the times and agencies need to be prepared to take them through that experience.

Dan: Well, I think it’s been a double-edged sword for banks because with the last eight years where things were pretty strong, in terms of adding more and more restrictions to what they could do and also reporting, it not only held back their profits, but held back their ability to market.

I sense, going forward, we’re going to see a much better environment for these banks to develop new clients and new ways to market. I think that the online banking is the way to go, and there are a number of things that are driving that. First of all, to develop a new branch and look at the overhead involved in terms of building or renting a facility and maintaining it where you can – I know McDougall Interactive had a lot of experience in this, in terms of digital marketing for banks. I think that you’re going to see more and more banks gravitating towards this.

Just as you’re seeing Macy’s, Filene’s or these other stores that are finding tremendous pressures with the way the people react today, in terms of how they do business. Whether it’s paying bills, making deposits, savings accounts, all this is changing and the banks have to recognize that and be as quick as they can to get on the track, so that they can keep and develop new and better market share.

John: The easing of regulations that may be coming down the pipe here could really help.

Dan: Well, it looks like that will be the case. I’m just hoping that the banks will recognize that sooner than later.

John: Yes, me too.

Dan: But I think that you’ve had – I know McDougall Interactive had experience in [creating] the second best internet bank in the nation.

John: Yes. Right after Ally Bank, the Bank Five project. That all started back from 1995 or ’94, when I was a media planner at McDougall Associates, and then starting to sell websites in ’95. We’ve come a long way.

Dan: You certainly have. I’m very proud of that.

John: All right, Dan. Great talking to you today. This has been the Authority Marketing Roadmap. Stay tuned next time for another edition of Internet Marketing madman style.

6 Strategies to Avoid the Notorious Instagram Shadow Ban

May 19, 2017 by John McDougall

A few weeks ago I wrote about the controversial ‘glitch’ (or algorithm update) that’s pestering Instagram users everywhere –the Shadow ban.

It’s hard to build your authority and reach out to new markets online if your marketing efforts are crippled by an update.

So now I’ll write about the different strategies Instagrammers use to avoid the Instagram shadow ban.

Escape Instagram Shadow Ban

1. Stop Using Apps that Automate Instagram Activity

Any app, website, or bot that automates posting, liking, commenting, and following is prohibited on Instagram. The social platform’s Developer’s Policy statement is clear on this. The restrictions are stated from points 18 to 23, and they’re pretty straightforward.

If you think you can get away with using these shady apps, you’re sorely mistaken. Instagram can easily track suspicious behavior, including fake accounts and follow-unfollow activities. Bots and automated posting apps also have recognizable patterns that can trigger a shadow ban.

Instagram shutdown third-party app Instagress last April to prove their resolve in shutting down suspicious activity and fake popularity. Instagress was a popular service where people could pay in exchange for followers and likes.

Why are they discouraging the use of third-party apps?

Instagram, like Facebook, is in the advertising business now. They now have ‘business accounts,’ which allows users to pay in exchange for getting more views and publishing ads. They want you to pay them, not a third-party app.

Also, any app or bot that artificially drives up followers and likes ruins the reputation of legitimate influencers on the platform, which in turn ruins Instagram’s reputation as a good social media network for connecting with businesses and consumers.

2. Check Your Hashtags

Innocent sounding hashtags have been banned and blocked because other users are abusing them. Hashtags like #Asia, #date, #shower, #beauty, #snapchat, and a whole lot more have been run over with racist posts, nudity, and other inappropriate images.

So check your hashtag list for banned hashtags and try to find new ones instead. Check this list for a compilation of banned hashtags.

Also, using these hashtags on any of your pictures means they won’t be searchable using the banned hashtags. What’s worse, your image won’t be searchable even on the legitimate hashtags because one wrong hashtag affects all the hashtags used in your image.

Of course, more hashtags are getting banned everyday so it’s still possible to get banned because you accidentally used the wrong one.

Avoid the Instagram Shadow ban with these hashtag tricks:

Use combined-word hashtags such as:
- #healthyslowcookrecipes
- #throwbackthursday
- #TravelResponsibly
Be specific and avoid vague hashtags that could be construed to mean something else. If possible, use branded or location-specific hashtags:
- #LegalMarketingPodcast
- #TravelCebu
Mix and match
- Don’t use the same set of hashtags again and again. I get it, you want your pictures to appear on the hashtags most popular for your niche. But like keywords, I’m sure you can easily find similar hashtags to spice things up.
Use only hashtags related to the image you’re posting.
Avoid using too many high-traffic hashtags, as many of them are either already blocked or overrun with spam.

3. Don’t Follow to Unfollow

I’ve read about a lot of mom and fashion bloggers complain about this. One day they log-in to their accounts to find two new follows, so to build a relationship, they follow the user back. Next day, the same user unfollows them.

You might think it’s rude and such a waste of time. People don’t do it on Facebook and LinkedIn, right? But a lot of Instagrammers gunning for more followers do it.

Read this article if you want to learn how to increase your Instagram engagement rate naturally.

4. Obey the Usage Restrictions

Instagram, like other social media platforms, has usage and activity limits to prevent artificial engagement, spamming, and perhaps overloading the network.

The usage limits are a bit confusing because there are no one set of restrictions. Instead, the limits depend on a couple of factors, such as but not limited to:

Number of followers
Age of your account
Ratio of active and inactive followers: having more inactive followers suggests you paid for them.
Overall engagement rate

There is, however, a universal follow limit of 7500. Anyone who tries to follow more than 7500 users, regardless of their engagement rate and followers will receive a warning that they can’t follow any more people. But if you’ve already followed more than 7500 people before they implemented the restriction, that’s okay. You just can’t follow any more users until you hit the set limit.

On the flipside, there’s no limit with the followers you get according to Instagram user’s reports. To curb fake followers and engagement, many users report getting suspended after 20 follows or unfollows.

Just keep in mind that in general, the usage limits of new accounts are smaller compared to more tenured accounts that Instagram already ‘trusts.’

Users who exceed the usage limit will get a warning message that warns them to stop using the app for a set period of time.

5. Switch to a Personal Account

According to reports, it looks like business accounts are affected more compared to personal accounts. Again, that’s probably because Instagram wants them to use the platform’s own promotional services and not a third-party’s.

6. Delete Censored and Blocked Hashtags from Old Posts

You can still get shadow banned if some of your old image uploads contains hashtags that were just blocked or censored by Instagram.

Sift through all your posts and delete the banned hashtags by editing your post’s caption or deleting the comment.

The Wild West of Instagram

You have to remember that Instagram didn’t confirm the existence of a shadow ban. But it’s definitely happening according to many users’ complaints. Because of that, all the tips here are also based on other user’s experience so I can’t guarantee they will work for you like it did for them.

If you were a victim of the Instagram shadow ban, and successfully lifted your ban, please share what you did in the comments.

Instagram Shadow Ban: The so-called Glitch, The Controversy and the Triggers

May 5, 2017 by John McDougall

Shadow ban is a hot topic among Instagram users now as more and more people claim they’re a victim of the said ban.

But what is ‘shadow ban’?

Shadow ban (also goes by shadowban) is when a post uploaded into your account using a specific hashtag is visible to yourself and your followers, but not to others searching the hashtags used. You won’t know your account is shadow banned unless you check it yourself.

It’s not a big deal for casual users. But the sudden drop in engagement is worrying for businesses that rely on Instagram to get new leads. If you use Instagram to promote your products and services, for instance, you won’t be able to reach new audiences through hashtags.

Are You Really Experiencing a Shadow Ban?

Before you panic and assume that you’re a shadow ban victim, you should know that Instagram has been implementing algorithm changes since June of last year. Of course, like Facebook’s algorithm changes, this caused a decrease in many users’ engagement rate.

If your account has been shadow banned, everything will look normal to you. Pictures you upload using selected hashtags will appear in your own feed. You’ll also see the image if you search for it under the hashtag’s feed. But when someone else searches that feed, they won’t see your image at all.

Instagram’s algorithm change last year didn’t mention anything about a shadow ban. Instead, the announcement was about the platform’s change into an algorithmic feed from a linear feed, so that users only see the best content. That means you might notice a drop in engagement, but that doesn’t automatically mean your posts are shadow banned.

What Triggers a Shadow Ban? How are Users Affected?

Since I haven’t experienced this ban myself, I compiled comments from other users on how the ban affected them, and what they thought triggered it.

Some users say this only happens to Instagram accounts for business use, but with all the complaints surfacing, it’s hard to tell if there are any personal user accounts affected.

Here’s a comment from two users saying they got shadow banned after adding hashtags in the first comment of their image upload. Note that another user (last comment), says he didn’t get banned despite posting hashtags on the first comment.

Instagram has usage limits, such as:

You can only follow 20 users per hour
You can only use 30 hashtags per post

But one user says he’s been shadow banned for 3 months despite not violating these limits. Granted, there’s no way to know for sure if he violated any of those limits.

This user says he’s experiencing a typical shadow ban and one where even he can’t see his own posts. Unfortunately, Instagram’s template reply to most of these complaints gives users no hope that this hashtag ‘glitch’ will get fixed anytime soon. They admitted, “We don’t have available resources to fix the hashtag issue”.

Another user says his original account got shadow banned, then the new account he created got banned after one post.

The Official Statement from Instagram

The official statement Instagram released from their Facebook page isn’t reassuring.

Instagram admits there’s a hashtag glitch, but they didn’t mention anything about the shadow ban. So this could be their way of telling people that something’s happening without openly admitting to it, like how Google implemented an algorithm update months before they made an official announcement.

Some users claim they got hit by the shadow ban before news got out, others complained as early as January. There are users that claim to have ‘fixed’ the shadow ban issue by switching to a personal account, logging with a different IP, or using a different device. But it looks like these are only short term fixes.

How to Check if Your Posts are Shadow Banned

There are two ways to check if your posts are shadow banned.

Online

You can do it online by plugging your username and one of your posts’ URL to this website. The shadow ban analyzer will crawl through the hashtags you used in that image, and then compare it with the list of publicly available images for those hashtags. If your image doesn’t show up in the public hashtag feed, it’s banned.

Manual

Some users doubt the effectiveness of the website above. If you’re having second thoughts, you can check your Instagram posts manually.

Here’s how:

Choose two to three of your Instagram posts with few hashtags (less than 10). Make sure the hashtags aren’t so popular so it’s not impossible to find your post in the hashtag feed.
Ask three to five users that don’t follow you to check the hashtag feeds used in your images. Can they see your post on those hashtag feeds? Remember, if they search a hashtag with 100,000 posts associated with it, it might be impossible to find your image. So choose posts with less popular hashtags.
If everyone who checked your posts didn’t see any of them in at least one of the hashtags used, that means your post may be shadow banned. If some of your posts appear on one hashtag, but not on another, you’re either experiencing the hashtag glitch or algorithm update.

Getting the Shadow Ban Lifted on Your Posts

Shadow ban affects users on a per post level, so it won’t affect your account as a whole. Unfortunately, it seems like Instagram isn’t in a hurry to fix this issue so don’t expect your engagement rate to get better anytime soon.

If you want to continue building your authority and engagement rate online, you need to find a way around these changes. For now, one thing you can do is to double up your efforts on other social media accounts. But that doesn’t mean you should abandon Instagram all together.

Next week, I’ll share a couple of best practices to avoid getting shadow banned.

8 Expensive Email Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid them

April 21, 2017 by John McDougall

Everyone makes mistakes while running and promoting their business. Some of these mistakes are trivial, others are brand damaging and expensive. Marketing and business mistakes, big and small, have one thing in common—most of them are avoidable.

In online marketing alone, there’s an endless possibility of email marketing mistakes an uninitiated business owner can commit. So in this post, I’ll only list the biggest mistakes that have the power to ruin your chances of selling your products and building your authority through email.

Money-Draining Email Marketing Mistakes

1. Not A/B Testing

What is your email marketing strategy based on?

Instinct?

Tips from a fellow business owner?

Maybe you routinely send discounts because you think it works, based on the number of discount coupons you’ve received and used. Perhaps you chose an email layout based on what your friends thought looked good.

What works for other businesses, may not work for yours. What looks good for your friends may not bring you more subscribers or sales.

A/B testing, also called as split testing, is the process of testing your marketing assumptions and then making a decision based on the available data. For instance, your friends chose a blue themed newsletter layout because they taught the colors made you look trustworthy. You can check if that assumption is correct by A/B testing two layouts.

Send one email with the same message using the suggested layout and a different one for control, so that half of your email list gets the blue-themed layout while the rest get a different one. Whichever layout gets a higher open rate wins.

You can test every aspect of your email marketing campaigns, such as:

Email subject line
Images
Call to action buttons
Pricing
Anchor text
Email frequency

2. Not Testing on Different Platforms

Email looks differently on Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook. Even email read on Gmail’s website looks a tad different if read on their app. Layout can vary depending on a user’s browser too.

Different email platforms show HTML coding differently, that’s why you need to check how your email looks on different devices and browsers before blasting it to everyone.

This is one of the most avoidable email marketing mistakes, yet I keep receiving emails with funny formatting and bad links.

Most email marketing tools, such as Hubspot, have a preview feature that allows users to check how their email will behave on different screens and devices. Don’t take this feature for granted. You can also use free email testing tools like Litmus.

3. Not Using a Mobile-Friendly or Responsive Design

Do you know how many people check emails on their phones every day?

According to Litmus’ State of Email report, 54% of emails are opened on mobile while only 16% are opened on desktop.

If that usage statistic isn’t enough for you, here are the top complaints of people with mobile email, according to LiveClicker and The Relevancy Group:

Too small to read: 32%
Landing page and website isn’t optimized for mobile viewing: 26%
Email not formatted for mobile phones: 21%

More and more people are relying on their smartphones to read their email. It’s time your email format gets mobile-friendly. If your readers get impatient pinching and squinting just to read your email, they’ll stop reading your messages.

4. Too Much Self-Promotion

Email marketing is an effective sales tool, but you can only get to that point if you take the time to build a relationship with your readers first.

Yes, your main goal is to sell your products and services. But you have to put your readers first. Think about their problems, goals, hesitations, and see what you can do to help them.

Sure, some of your products might be helpful in a given situation but you don’t have to mention it in all of your emails. In fact, some of your emails should have no mention of your products at all.

5. Sending Everything to Everyone

The average person receives 500 marketing emails a month, but only opens less than 1 in 15 emails received. How can your email rise up above that much noise?

The only effective way to do that is to personalize and segment your emails based on data. Send your subscribers only the emails they’re interested in based on their reading behavior, age, job, purchase history, location, reading habits, and other data.

6. Sending Image-only Emails

Only 33% of readers turned on the ‘display image’ option on their inbox. What does that mean for you?

Majority of your readers won’t see the images you send them. All they’ll see is a big blank box, or the alt-text description of the image, like the example below.

If images are crucial to your email, combine it with some text to describe what’s in the picture. Don’t rely on the images to convey your message. You can also include a link to the web version of the email, so subscribers can click it to see the images and original formatting you intended.

Email marketing platforms allow users to create an HTML and text-only version of their email, so use both options to make sure all of your readers will receive something readable.

7. No Call to Action

All your efforts writing a compelling email will be wasted if you forget to include a call to action (CTA). The bottom line of any email is to get your subscribers to take action, whether that’s to read your blog post or to check out your new product.

If your readers made it to the end of your email, that means they’re interested in what you have to say. Not including a call to action wastes the attention they gave you.

Below is an example email from Zapier with several CTAs.

8. Not Cleaning Your Email List Regularly

Bad email list hygiene can cost you a lot of money, as explained in this post about deleting subscribers. A poorly maintained email list leads to more unopened emails and bad conversions.

Below are some tips to keep your email list healthy:

Remove purchased email leads
Remove emails not tied to a specific contact, such as info@domain, admin@domain, or hello@domain.
Run a re-engagement campaign to determine if some of your recently cold-leads are still worth contacting.

Do Better in Email Marketing

Are you guilty of any of these email marketing blunders? There’s still time to correct course and save the day.

Implementing all of this might be overwhelming, so just take it one step at a time. Eventually, you’ll have a healthy email list and better engagement rate.

Email Segmentation Part 2: 9 Proven List Segmentation Strategies for Better Conversion

April 17, 2017 by John McDougall

You have a new subscriber.

But you can’t celebrate yet. You only have a name and email address, and whether that info leads to a conversion depends on the emails you’ll send this new subscriber.

In email marketing, they say you should write as if you’re speaking to the individual, not the crowd on your subscribers list.

How can you ‘speak to the individual’ without spending hours emailing your subscribers one by one? It’s easy if you segment your email list.

With email list segmentation, you have unlimited ways to divide your email list so there’s no excuse to keep sending mass emails.

Creative Email List Segmentation Strategies

1. Survey Results

Less is more is the popular mantra when it comes to opt-in boxes. Asking readers to answer lots of questions will send them bouncing off to another site.

So how can you get information to personalize your emails and offers to them? How can you even segment your readers if you don’t know anything aside from their name and email?

Send them a survey!

Ask why they signed up and what kind of content they’d like to get from you. Don’t just create a list of questions and send it off straight away. Make sure the questions are tied to a specific marketing goal, such as leading your subscriber into a sales funnel, or figuring out what kind of product to offer them.

You’ll also get more responses if you offer an incentive to answer the survey, such as a raffle entry or a discount.

2. Job Title

Your subscriber’s job title can tell you whether he’s just researching information for a task, or has the power to make purchasing decisions for his company. This should affect the type of emails you’re sending them.

3. Shopping Cart Abandonment

A customer is about to purchase, and then for some reason, they don’t push through. Abandoned shopping carts are a huge challenge for e-Commerce stores.

With email segmentation, you can send targeted emails to these shoppers to nudge them into continuing their purchase. Your email can also include a survey link to find out why they didn’t go through with the purchase.

Maybe the customer found a better deal elsewhere, or they experienced a glitch in your online store—whatever the reason, fixing it will help you avoid future losses.

4. Previous Engagement Rate

A subscriber’s engagement and open rate will clue you in on who’s more interested—or have more time—to read your content.

With this data, you can convert more engaged subscribers with exclusive deals like discounts and early access to your programs. Less active subscribers can be further segmented to identify if they’re just busy, or just a few weeks from turning into a cold lead.

5. Past Purchases

Use a subscriber’s past purchases to determine the topics and products that him. For instance, if a subscriber previously purchased your book about investing in stocks, that signals he might be interested in your articles about other high-risk, high-profit investment options, like P2P lending or Forex trading.

6. New Subscribers

Don’t just send new subscribers the freebie they asked for. Send them a welcome email—or a welcome sequence if you’re up for it.

If you have an online store, you can send subscribers a discount or bonus like what Shopback did.

If you have an SaaS or an online app, you can send a welcome email and invite new subscribers to it. Here’s how Buffer encouraged new subscribers to use their browser extension.

7. Reading History

Ask your readers how they like to read their emails, and how often they want to hear from you. Budget airline Cebu Pacific, for example, gives readers a way to manage their subscription, so they’re not forced to unsubscribe if some of the emails aren’t relevant to them.

8. Location

Segmenting emails based on location helps business owners avoid marketing in locations where they don’t do business, or stepping on their colleague’s territory in the case of national franchises.

Meetup, an international website where users can post about events and gatherings, segments users based on their location. They only send users emails about meetup groups within their location and the groups they’ve joined, if any.

9. Lead Magnet or Opt-in Freebie

Do you have several magnets to entice readers to subscribe? You can use that to segment your email list.

For instance, Noah Kagan at OkDork offers different freebies at the end of his blog posts. There’s one about getting more traffic, another on getting more subscribers, and a bunch more on different topics. These lead magnets can be used to segment subscribers, so he can send them content related to what they’re interested in, which he probably already does.

Get Creative with Email List Segmentation

Use these ideas as a stepping stone for more in-depth and creative segmentation strategies. Experiment with different segmenting techniques to see which works best for you. Granted, you might lose a couple of subscribers because of this. But once you get it right, you’ll convert more subscribers and earn more leads than what you lost before.

You need a content marketing plan, we can help