To the chagrin of Dallas Cowboys fans everywhere, the Minnesota Vikings recently advanced in the NFL playoffs. A friend of mine is a diehard Vikings fan and received the email below just as the game ended. (For the record, I verified that my friend is not a bandwagon jumper or Favre follower – but is a 100% certified and valid Vikings fan.)

NFL shop.com did a great job with not only the creative, but the subject line, the time they sent the email, and the segmentation. As far as I can tell only those with a preference set as being a Viking fan received this email.

The subject line was: Your Minnesota Vikings Just Won – Order Now & Get Free Shipping Over $75

As any seasoned email marketer knows, there are almost an unlimited amount of ways to segment email marketing subscriber data. In the second installment of this three-part overview, Jordan Lane provides a summary of some common email segmentation sources, tips, and best practices.

Part II – Demographic segmentation

Gender, age, ethnicity, interests, education level, occupation, location, marital status, number of children, and income are all examples of demographic attributes that can be used to effectively segment your email subscribers. Depending on the nature of your business and industry, you can combine such attributes to create highly targeted audiences that really zero-in on your best customers. So why would you target females with your email marketing messages when your best customers are more specifically hispanic females aged 45-60 with a college degree and adult-aged children?

The reason why many fail to use sophisticated demographic segmentation is because they have difficulty gathering all the demographic information they desire from the initial registration page. As a general rule, the more information you require at sign-up, the likelier a prospect will abandon the registration process or provide false information.

To help email marketers gather the info they need for sophisticated demographic information, I’ve compiled a list of techniques to improve the data collection process:

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As any seasoned email marketer knows, there are almost an unlimited amount of ways to segment email marketing subscriber data. In this three-part overview, Jordan Lane provides a summary of some common email segmentation sources, tips, and best practices.

Part I – Behavioral segmentation

Behavioral segmentation relies exclusively on subscriber actions, and does not take into account gender, location, age, or other demographic factors. Behavioral segmentation data is based 100% on email activity and can be customized based on a marketer’s needs and how they define certain types of customers. Because this type of segmentation is usually easy to start and update, behavioral slicing represents an easy win for most email marketers.

Here are some common behavioral categorizations that email marketers use to chop up their master subscriber list:

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