So who do you want to send your marketing campaigns to?

The simple answer would be “Everyone!” but that would not lead to very positive results and wouldn't score you very well in terms of spam email. Obviously, if you are sending out a general newsletter or a weekly digest then sending the campaign to everyone might have its merits.

The ability to create different pots of people using Groups, Custom Fields as well as Reports is key to you seeing the best possible results. It is through these tools that you can start to segment your contacts into manageable chunks which you can then target relevant campaigns towards

So how do you decide how to split people up?

How you segment your data is up to you. It really comes down to the campaign you are sending and what the aim is. Contact data can be split in any way, shape or form – for instance: -

1. Location – split the data into geographical areas, from Towns/Cities, Counties, Post Codes, Country, etc. The ideal scenario for this are local events, for example.

2. Age – depending on your offering, you could target different age groups with messages that will resonate with them. This would then come through in the language that you use within the email content and the subject line, to really connect with your audience.

3. Gender – Like above, you could split your data in the basic way of communicating with just Males or Females. Again this is based on your overall aims of the campaign and the message you want to send out.

4. How you met them/Events – Putting people into groups based upon the events/locations where you met them would be a simple and easy way of grouping people to target them with relevant, engaging content based upon your initial meeting.

5. Products/Services – Splitting people into relevant groups based upon the products and/or services that they have purchased from you, or even enquired about, would allow you to target them with offers and information on that product/service to help draw them through the buying process.

There are other ways to segment your contact data, but the ones listed here will hopefully give you some ideas of how you can quickly and effectively become very targeted in your communications.

Once you have started to send out your emails, you can take it all a step further as the email stats that come back will open more doors to you: from grouping people who have opened the emails to people who have clicked on particular links.