EP #26 Segmentation, CRM and subscriber communications.

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Matthew Vernhout (00:42): Welcome to another episode of, for the love of email, a Netcore podcast. I have a very special guest with me today. A fellow Canadian, as well as a client of Netcore, Tali Hasanov, she is the managing director for WSI digital path marketing, as well as the board member with the response marketing association, Tali, welcome to the show. And why don’t you start by giving us a little introduction as to who you are and what you do on a daily basis?

Tali Hasanov (01:11): Absolutely. Matthew, first of all, thank you very much for the invite and, to be your guest here on the podcast, really appreciate it. So just my background, really, really high level. I have been around, digital marketing and email in particular for, more than 15 years, a little bit of a scary number. So, and I do have, quite extensive experience around email deliverability, you know, business rules around emails and, CRM. So all about email. I love.

Matthew Vernhout (01:48): Excellent Yeah. And I know that 15-year number, cause I passed out a few years back. I’m approaching year 21 this October. So I get the whole been in email forever, scenario.

Tali Hasanov (02:00): Hm. But you know what? I, one of the reasons that I love email and some people, I surprisingly don’t look at email channel as such, it’s not a separate channel for marketing. I see the email, basically, it combines all the channels, all your efforts in other channels, paid searches, your social but it comes down to this important channel is email, right? 

Matthew Vernhout (02:26): And it’s a channel that you own. Social is a channel you borrow, right. You borrow from a social network. If they want to turn you off, they can, your email is something that you own. So definitely, focusing on that and keeping that in mind is something that yeah, more people should be focusing on. 

Tali Hasanov (02:43): Absolutely. And just to your point about social boring, I actually saw quite a many clients, the social channels and advertising was turned down and they were kind of, you know, this tied hands, what we do now. Right. So

Matthew Vernhout (03:02): Exactly, I heard lots of stories about social platforms getting turned off from advertising or turned off their account for perceived violations or things like that. But email, you know, as long as you, as long as you stick to a permission-based program, your email service provider is going to let you do your thing. So, we’re going to talk today about segmentation and strategy and how brands should be focusing on communicating with their customers. you know, a lot of people will have different ideas around segmentation, what it is and, and how they should be using it. How do you we’ll start, I guess, right at the beginning, how do you define segmentation when it comes to looking at data and looking at email?

Tali Hasanov (03:42): Yeah, it’s a very good question. So, when I see some brands is they don’t do any segmentation. So basically they just blast everyone. And sometimes, you know, some marketing people saying that the more emails you send, the better result it is just completely neutral. So, to answer your question, what is segmentation, segmentation is basically we separate and we create smaller, chunks of, emails or, leads or subscribers you might say from your list. And this would depend on your, you know, strategy on your business rules, and basically on what you’re trying to achieve with your end goal. So, those will be smaller chunks of your email list.

Matthew Vernhout (04:30): So just different or different target audiences. You want to talk in general. So, you know, for those brands that you work with that have never done any type of segmentation, right. You know, what is your sort of starting process when you want to talk to them about, maybe you should look at the segmentation, is there, like a basic thing that you say let’s start with something or is there, you know, is it a much bigger project if we need to understand everything that you’re doing in regards to email, you know, like for somebody who wants to get started, what’s the thing that they should consider.

Tali Hasanov (05:03): Yeah. And it’s a good question. First I would suggest evaluating what’s going on in the program overall, right? Because many times I hear, oh, our open rates not good, for example, just last week I spoke to a client, and he’s complaining that in Gmail, they have barely any open rates. So, how will you figure out where is the problem, right. And what’s the problem, if you see that open rates, for example, in general, in that case, are low, then maybe segmenting Gmail separately would be the solution. And sending only to those that opened. Again, segments in Gmail and out of Gmail segments, only engaged right. Recently, for example, in the last scenario, 60 days depends on what product or service you’re selling. So, first, and before actually creating any segmentation, I would suggest evaluating the program overall to build, you know, goals and, short and long-term goals. And basically, to be able to measure it because doing anything without being able to measure, it’s, you know, it’s going to fail, right? So you want substance that you actually can measure. Okay. We started segmenting, only engaged. So we see an increase in books by one, two, three, five, 10%, or we saw an increase in engagement. We saw an increase in our revenue in order. So again, it should be all aligned to the business goals and what they’re trying to achieve the bottom line.

Matthew Vernhout (06:47): And, you know, even thinking about, you know, that from the point of view of, like, you mentioned a whole bunch of things, you mentioned ISP or mailbox, provider segmentation, you mentioned engagement segmentation, you mentioned timeframe segmentation. Is it really like the sky’s the limit on the things you can segment on? Or are there key things that maybe people should focus on?

Tali Hasanov (07:06): yeah, so I would suggest first of all, if the business is never segmented, at least just starting with segmentation start simple, don’t try to cover, you know, everything because this, again, it’s a failure for sure. And you know what, speaking about segmentation and big brands, I just personally experienced it quite a few times, really bad mistakes. Right. And how those mistakes would affect you as a customer, you will trust, right? So instead of building trust, you basically don’t trust this brand. And I don’t want to name this particular brand that I want to bring an example. We don’t want to screw them, but let’s say I order it, you know, a stove. Right. So I received the stove three months later. How was your recent purchase experience? Like three months later, right? Or four months? I don’t remember. So this is not relevant anymore.

Tali Hasanov (08:11): So either the segmentation wasn’t done or the trigger didn’t work properly or some timing didn’t, align properly. Right. So this happens, but I mean, people should, whoever create those segments in triggers, should look a little bit closer and pay more attention because when it happened, I already forgot what happens there. Right. That I purchased something, what and when I bought, and when I got the same answer, what did I order? Just, just now I didn’t order anything I already forgot about the purchase, but then I figure out it’s about the purchase. That was done a few months back. So it doesn’t just doesn’t make sense.

Matthew Vernhout (08:54): So, It’s not a matter of what you’re going to send today. It’s a matter of how are you going to target people tomorrow? Like a second segment could be like, you’re saying, it’s that survey follow-up and it’s a time-based from the point of activity. So it’s almost like a trigger or a journey, but that’s still a segmentation piece that you’re looking at. That’s interesting. Now, when you hear people think about personalization versus segmentation, how do you look at those as either the same or similar or related items? Because a lot of people talk about personalization as being the next big thing in email for the last 15 years. but like when you look at segmentation and personalization, how do you look at those separately or together?

Tali Hasanov (09:37): Right. So, and it’s true, very true about personalization. And actually, it’s not just in the email, these days, what I see, consumers almost, you know, expect you to read their mind. Right? So to this extent and on the landing page, on the website, in the email, so personalization for sure should be there. And, it’s again, very often, it’s it doesn’t happen or it doesn’t do properly or, or it’s completely, not related to one another. I actually see quite often, issues between segmentation. there’s some realization and systems are not connected in many businesses, because what happens is often CRM system, internal CRM system of the business, not properly connected with the email system, or sometimes it’s two separate systems that they don’t talk to each other. And then, for example, in CRM, there is a certain update.

Tali Hasanov (10:42): For example, you are looking for a car, a new car, right? So salesperson, Satan in this dealership updates in his CRM, right. But the email system doesn’t know about it. So you may be either purchased or you’re completely not interested. Then you say, I will come back three, three years later, and then maybe a week or two weeks after you receive an email, or we just found the perfect match for you for your new car. And you just say that you don’t want to buy a car, right. Or whatever reason. So again, this, in my opinion, breaks trust in the brand, right? So Brand can’t properly communicate personalized and going back to personalization. So, and I, again, had a bad experience in particular with, auto dealers. I noticed they are really bad in the system to connect and email and CRM. There was a car that was totalled. The insurance, basically, was written down and the car didn’t exist, I kept getting emails. You can trade in your car, which no longer exists. Right. So it’s, it’s in the, I’m sure you experienced a thousand of examples like that. So this is where is personalization, where is segmentation, and how you connect those. Right. So it’s, I think businesses have to think about it on the, you know, holistic way, how you basically treat your customers, how you build a better experience overall. Right?

Matthew Vernhout (12:28): Yeah. I just got a recall notice on a car that I bought 11 years ago that I haven’t owned in three years. So, certainly some segmentation, personalization issues happening there, but, you know, they don’t have to, they don’t have to be separate, right. Personalization, even though they’re two different things they can work together. What about using your thoughts? Like, what are your thoughts on, using AI to help determine segmentation? Do you have any thoughts on sort of either the ways that AI can help you determine the right segments or, you know, even if you should be looking at it from maybe an ethical point of view, like, what are the thoughts on AI and segmentation?

Tali Hasanov (13:11): the thoughts, it could be useful to extend, and in a few cases, some businesses it’s truly as a, they have a very big list. They have a huge send volume. And for me still, logically, it’s very difficult to, you know, to put together in my head, how they can very personal and authentic when they send such high volume. Right. It’s, difficult to build this connection and that’s what, actually, subscribers expect those days. Right. So personalization and you basically understand me, right? My problem. So to this extent, I would believe AI can help in high-level segmentation. When you, you want to put in, let’s say big list, you want to basically sort it out in three big, you know, buckets, for example, but going deeper. I don’t know if I would rely on AI completely. So I would say it could be a combination. It could help, but I wouldn’t rely on this a hundred per cent.

Matthew Vernhout (14:29): Yeah. I think one of the key uses that we always talk about when it comes to AI is determining the send order, right. Who’s going to be the most engaged people. Um, so I think looking at that idea of even using AI to determine what’s the optimal time to send this message, works as a way of segmentation based on time zone or user experience, when are they most likely to be active? So there are some interesting thoughts there around, you know, like you were saying earlier, right. Segmentation can be as simple as time zone segmentation of when should I deliver this message to a person that is a type of segment beyond, should I send this within, you know, the model wearing a blue shirt versus a red shirt, because I think the person’s going to the look, but that even comes back to you, is that personalization or did I segment that the relationship is I always close when it comes to, you know, brands and sort of thinking about targeting based on segments, are their things that, you know, we can use as a retailer as an example.

Matthew Vernhout (15:38): You know, if a retailer was looking at segmentation, one of the things that I experienced as a, as a consumer, beyond being an email marketer, but as a consumer comes down to every time a particular brand sends me an email, the entire message is either women or children in the message, women’s clothing or children’s clothing. And then there’s one little link in the corner that says, take me to go see the men’s clothing. I click on that every time I get that email and still, they don’t segment me into a different type of communication. What are tips would you have for people to look at and their data to create segments like that? So you’re sending messages that are more relevant to people.

Tali Hasanov (16:16): Right Right. So in that case, a segmentation would be really useful to segment by gender, for example, right. In that case. And, obviously to look at the clicks, right? So basically what clicks, obviously, man could shop for a woman as a gift. But overall, the look at the click, especially with you, when you try to still click on this link then, for sure. So the look, again, we are looking here holistically, right? To understand the picture and to see what people are looking for. Right. So, and many platforms, get really, sophisticated, analytics these days. So it’s possible, you know, to pull different clicks by link and basically attribute it back to the user. So it just needs to a little bit more, or, you know, a little analytical work and shuffling around, but it’s, literally, if for example, you have received 10 or 20 emails from the brand and on eight of them, you try to click on man. So probably there should be some, some difference.

Matthew Vernhout (17:34): Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, I think it’s something and I get the predominant shopper personality is probably not me. Right. And, being the target, you know, even flyers, digital hand, like hand flyers to your door predominantly are focused towards a specific shopper in the household, which is not likely the man, I get that. But at the same time, it’s digital, we should be able to at least swap the models and swap the images respectively. And I think segmentation, like that goes a long way. And I think people could test it. You know, if you’re out there listening and you’re in retail, look at what people are clicking on best against that. If people predominantly click kids’ clothing test against more kids’ clothing into what you send them, I think that’s something that you’re right about. People need to pay attention to the details a little closer to the data they already have.

Tali Hasanov (18:30): Especially considering the situation we are facing at the moment, not at the moment almost year and a half retail stores, most of the time out of questions. So we assume that many men would shop online as well. Right? Not that we need so many clothes as before

Matthew Vernhout (18:51): I wear the same thing every day. It seems. No, I’m kidding. But working from home, you certainly don’t need the same type of clothing potentially that you actually, it’s almost like you read my mind because my next question was around sort of the last 18 months. What types of trends have you seen changing with segmentation in the marketplace?

Tali Hasanov (19:12): Actually, since we spoke about, retailers, some did, pretty good, uh, Job, about, trends. And they, you know, I think I got emails from Zara or some others like those new trends for a comfortable, working, you know, working cool. So, they are trying to adjust to whatever, like let people work in at home, obviously, I’m not going to wear heels and skirts. It’s more like sweatpants

Matthew Vernhout (19:47): Leggings and sweatpants and

Tali Hasanov (19:48): Right and top Maybe it could be fancier if it’s a video call. So yeah. So jokes aside, but what I’m getting, for example, and I love this brand of, jewellery Swarovski, right. So I’m getting the emails I’m looking for. Yeah. It’s, cool designs, but you know, with the amount of jewellery I have already where I’m going to wear this now,

Matthew Vernhout (20:13): Especially since you can’t go out.

Tali Hasanov (20:15): Exactly. So this is kind of out of questions. So I would expect them to do something a little bit different, you know, to basically go in visit trends like, uh, retailers of, fashion and clothing, you know, switch to, their lines. Not completely because some people still go in, go into the office. So they, they just hold for an additional and, you know, naming it, differently a little bit. So I would expect, big brands, like this, doing something different as well, which I didn’t see

Matthew Vernhout (20:53): Some brands modified their programs as well. Just kept on going with the same old site.

Tali Hasanov (20:58): Right, right, right. But it’s not so much about segmentation and personalization. I think it’s more on a global brand level. Right there, there wasn’t the decision to go with a different or modified approach. Right. Sure. Kept sending whatever they used to send.

Matthew Vernhout (21:17): Right. Yeah, absolutely. Now I know that you, as a, you know, digital consultant, you’ve done a lot of things. You used to do some deliverability consulting, which is close to my heart. you know, when it comes to segmentation and its impact on email deliverability and email reputation, how do you see those being related concepts?

Tali Hasanov (21:41): Oh, it’s my favourite now, now we are talking, now you’re my friend.

Matthew Vernhout (21:48): That’s it. That’s all we’re going to talk about from here on out. Yeah.

Tali Hasanov (21:50): Yeah. People will leave then. Oh, what are they? So, yeah, it’s actually a very good question. And I’m sure you experienced it more than once, twice or 10 times. It’s related, very much indirectly. So this is where we see deliverability and segmentation are tied together, a lot. And I have actually a recent example of one of my clients that they were sending, on and they still send them on a shared IP, which could be not ideal, but I guess you’re not going to do this technical level of discussion shared and dedicated IP at the moment.

Matthew Vernhout (22:31): We’ll save that for another podcast.

Tali Hasanov (22:33): Yeah. So they have been sending, just without any segmentation on shared IP, their open rates and the deliverability was variable, maybe open rates point something, you know, not even 1%. So after we did the, uh, run audit of their program and what, what would they do?

Tali Hasanov (22:56): And, the segment that was they had the kind of three buckets of users subscribers, and, like from two of them, we took only the engaged, engaged in last open emails in lawsuits based. So this alone, this segment, even that it seems, seems like a really simple, simple way to segment small, change, right? So this alone, the next thing will be sent and a little bit adjusted email copy and subject line, but nothing dramatic. So this alone brought an open rate of a certain per cent, right? certain per cent compared to under 1%. So this is just the difference, right? And now we slowly, after few times basically establishing the reputation of, sending the main, but slowly, slowly, you’ll be all in, 45 days, 60 days. So basically we will increase this period of time or for engagement, what we call, right. But, overall it might even small changes in this example, it might bring, great, great, effect and results.

Matthew Vernhout (24:16): Now, did that change beyond just open rate changing? Did it impact, you know, participation rates like click-through rates sales? And so it’s, it’s holistic because I always liked to look at, you know, open rates are easy to kind of change, right? You want your open rates to go up, you just cut them 20, the bottom 20% off your list, send less open rates magically go up. Right. so it’s, it’s a bit of a vanity metric, but I always like to focus on, did clicks get better? Did purchases get better? Did those types of engagement get better? And that’s always great to hear because I think as you were saying, better segmentation leads to better delivery leads to a better reputation, leads to more engagement, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of better reputation, better delivery, better rank. And then it kind of becomes that full-service cycle. So that’s great to hear. And hopefully the listeners out there, you know, not in the same way that if you segment and target your most active users all the time

Tali Hasanov (25:08): Right. So just a side note around segmentation and open rates. So I always say you can create the most beautiful email dynamic, personalized graphics. I don’t know, whatever dynamic I put there, whatever you want, amazing headline. If nobody opens, it means if it’s getting into the spam folder, oh, it’s just going nowhere to the grey box. Right. Then all this is wasted, right? So it’s no matter what you put in the email, if it’s nobody clicks on it, then nothing will happen. So I think, uh, it depends on what kind of challenges and brand is facing. So even if they, you know, have a lot of opens, nobody clicks, then maybe they have a different problem. Maybe there is a problem with email creative and, offer. Right. But those guys that, in this example, they had barely any opens. So, as a result, there was no action taken on the email, right. So obviously whatever increase we bought from a click perspective, it’s way better than it was before. But judging by open rates, it’s already like a huge difference. Right?

Matthew Vernhout (26:34): Yeah, so talking about segmentation’s great and collecting all the data in the fields is great, but you need to put it somewhere, right. So you put it in your CRM and you kind of look at that, when you look at CRM tools and there are hundreds of them and some ESPs act as a CRM, I mean, ESPs integrate with an external CRM, you know, what types of things do you work with your clients to say, are you in the, uh, the right CRM or, um, how do you get more efficient use of the data in your CRM to manage your contents and build those segments?

Tali Hasanov (27:10): Right. So, it is important, and it’s smart. It’s a good point you brought up that, some, some email, platforms actually do have CRM capability. It might be not enough. Some businesses that I work with, they, CRM, they don’t want to be, for example, on the cloud. They want to be on-premise, right? So that it’s not an option to use all in one. In that case, they will create integration, but the important part to pass enough information to the email system. So you can, segment properly, right. whatever you send. So it will again be going back taking a step back to the goals of the business and the strategy. So what kind of emails they send them. So what information they will need if they’re planning to segment based on a user purchased or never purchased last purchase, or if they not purchasing, if they active, non-active, whatever, I don’t want again, to go too deep into, because we will be digging deeper into this home, but it’s important to understand what information, will be, required in the email system. Many times with clients that I have been working with, CRM system, separate email systems, separate many times, the development team create API integration with, email system in order to pass this, required data. So the emails could be properly segmented and sent to the right segment and personalize the right way. Right.

Matthew Vernhout (29:00): So it’s, partly about the integration, but partly about knowing what you want to use in advance. Okay. So, you know, I can put my privacy hat on for a second, being a privacy person. What do you do with the data that you’re no longer segmenting? Do you get rid of it? Do you just store it somewhere? Do you, you know, at some point you think, well, maybe I need it in the future, but then balancing that with privacy legislation that says, if you’re not using it, don’t keep it. You know, what do you, when you’re working with clients around that segment data you’re not using anymore, like maybe it was, you know, people who attended an event in 2019, well, now you no longer being in 2021, what they did in 2019, do you keep that data or do you get rid of it and say, you know, I only care about what happened in 2020 and 2021. Like, what do you, what is your advice on that type of segmentation to look at, or that type of data that you might be using to do segmentation?

Tali Hasanov (29:59): All right. so, this is, well again, depends on what business trying to accomplish if those that attended in 2019 webinar, if you still communicate with those, people, some of them might have become your clients. Maybe they haven’t, maybe they attended future webinars. So you do need this kind of historical data to understand what was happening back in 2019 compared to 2021. So it, again, I would go back to the basics and, set grounds of, kind of business rules and goals, what kind of information you would need. And again, it would depend obviously on business activity, what kind of product or service they offer, right? for example, CASL going to CASL, since you mentioned privacy, right? So CASL records, if someone gave you consent, you supposed to keep those records, regardless of, what, what happens if they purchased they didn’t purchase. But if you want, if once you are, you basically receive their consent and it should be only a card, right. If you send them emails and they never purchased, right. So it should be there.

Matthew Vernhout (31:23): So just, for our listener’s CASL, meaning the Canadian anti-spam legislation. So, I think we’ll have, probably a whole other podcast on that. but it is the legislation that defines how you market to Canadians, email, it deals with malware, it deals with software installation. So it deals with a number of things and beyond just email as well. So that’s a separate podcast and a separate topic, but definitely very relevant in this case, because you could even look at it as a segment of implied consent that expires express consent that doesn’t expire. you know, is it, it’s a six-month, informational period where someone has asked the question so that in itself legislatively kind of has three or four segments even in the opt-outs. Right, right. So those are things that you can absolutely look at as is segments based on that other segments I like to look at, and maybe you look at them the same way or are opt-in sources segment. So is it coming from website A versus website B versus a call centre? So these are all different things. You may not need them for segmenting outbound, but you may look at them for segmenting on reporting. So how do you deal with that? Like maybe it’s not the segmentation for what I’m going to communicate about, but segmentation based on the information coming back, like geographical segmentation, how important is that from a reporting perspective for businesses?

Tali Hasanov (32:49): Yeah, absolutely. And this is, again good point, statistics, analytics, and everything else. It should be a really, really monitored deeper, I think sometimes, marketers or, you know, analysts, they have too much information. Some of your points from 2019 could be from 2021, it’s too much data. It’s not really, you know, analyzed or presented the right way. And that could be very useful in order to, adjust future communications or future marketing strategies. So, to your point, Matt, about the geographical, source, or different websites, right? So if, you know, for example, working with affiliates, right? Many businesses work with affiliates. So each affiliate brings you the good leads and which one doesn’t right. So to understand where is higher spam complaints. So if this certain affiliate from the X, Y website is not, providing good quality, subscribers, then there should be a conversation, right? Maybe the effects, again, affecting back your deliverability reputation of your sending, the domain and etc. So in that case, you might want to segment it out these particular affiliates, right? So how did it connect to segmentation and analytics right?

Matthew Vernhout (34:27): I’ve had that conversation before where you look at the opt-in source and say, you know, this one performs a hundred per cent better than this one over here. Maybe you stop using source B compared to source A and invest more money in source A, but you may never know if you’re not segmenting your own reporting. So there are lots of ways that we can look at segmentation beyond just what am I going to send and to who, the piece that I always get asked a lot. And it’s sort of those people that are new to segmentation, they’re kind of looking at it and maybe they don’t understand. So they’re a bit intimidated. Does more segments, mean more content needs to be created or is it just the same content that can be reused. You’re just using it in different ways. What are your thoughts on that?

Tali Hasanov (35:10): Hm. So, my thoughts about it, ideally the content should be dynamic, but again, this is probably all a separate, podcast. So more segments. No, not necessarily. We need more content, as I mentioned, ideally, the content should be, dynamically based on the segment, but if not to go this route to go, you know, simplified version of content versus segment, then it could be even, going back to geographic. Right? So, if you, if you would like to send the certain invite to webinar only to a particular state in the United States, right? So only the state of New York will receive these certain emails. So simply segmenting the list based on, state and location of the subscriber. So in that case, going back to CRM and email integration, for sure if you planning to do so, you will need to pass the geographic location of the subscriber from CRM to your email system in order to be able to segment it.

Matthew Vernhout (36:27): Yeah, that’s a that’s an interesting one, too. The geographic by state or by country. My wife often complains that a couple of retailers that are no longer located in Canada due to closing for various reasons, still sign their emails, but they may not ship to Canada, but being that she was a Canadian subscriber before they’re still promoting content to her, but she can’t access it. So, I think, you know, looking at how do you keep your consumers happy? How do you keep them engaged? absolutely looking at segmentation by geographic location, for situations where we’d always shipped to your region or, um, you know, we don’t support services in your region, whatever it happens to be like, you know, think about like when, when Uber was growing, it wasn’t available everywhere and it’s still not available everywhere, but it’s available in like all the big cities if you will. But it was like coming soon to Toronto subscribe now. So we’ll tell you when it gets here, right. Those types of things. So they’re looking for that segmentation, they’re looking for where the audience is, are even like, where should we go next vote based on your city so that we know where to focus. Those types of things, I think are really important for businesses to look at in order to keep customers happy.

Tali Hasanov (37:45): Right? Because in this example that you bought might be, your wife, retailers, she couldn’t basically access those products because it’s not shipped to Canada anymore. This is actually a very bad effect on the brand. Right. So I can imagine how she would feel would she order again, from this brand, if they start shipping to Canada, I don’t know, unless she really in love with the brand, otherwise she might probably not. Right. And it’s, I faced this, problem as well. So this is really bad. It’s another example of breaking the trust with your subscribers, right?

Matthew Vernhout (38:30): Sure, absolutely. I think there’s a, you know, it’s a brand that she loved dealing with when they were available. Now they’re basically online-only, and they’ve said, well, we’re not online where you are. Right. So I think there’s, there are clearly some things there that need to be potentially addressed. Like she could ship it to a friend in the US and have them ship it to us, but then you’re paying double shipping. Right. So there are certainly some things there to learn.

Tali Hasanov (38:57): Yeah. So the minimal segmentation should be done here by this particular brand is whoever is Canadian subscribers to send them an email that they no longer ship to Canada. We appreciate your orders. If you have any, whatever, but this would be, you know, appreciated by subscribers. So the brand actually takes action to notify their, you know, subscribers to let them know that they no longer can ship to Canada. Right. But this situation it’s just,

Matthew Vernhout (39:31):Yeah. Her only option now is to unsubscribe, basically.

Tali Hasanov (39:32): spam complaint as well.

Matthew Vernhout (39:36): I suppose that’s a secondary option, but she did consent to receive the email. So she should unsubscribe as supposed to report it as spam. so, You know, just to, just to wrap up in regards to, you know, someone who’s maybe never done segmentation or someone who’s just getting into segmentation, you know, are there any sort of tips you would give them to say, like, here’s the, you know, beyond the first do the audit figure out your goals. Right. But what are the tips you would say to get someone started, right? Obviously don’t give away the secret sauce. Cause I know this is what you do for a living, but you know, what are the tips or like the things to kind of point them in the right direction of things that they should consider one or two just quick? Yep,

Tali Hasanov (40:18): Sure. So, to analyze the list first and, to obviously, create by just the look, you know, last month, don’t go too far back last month, the performance of the email, if it’s where they like it to be if, from the perspective of clicks or opens or revenue, it’s not there, then obviously, something is not done. Right. So first step I would suggest, again, if the email, you know, not get into the inbox, maybe open rates are very low. So to start sending to the most engaged customers, to establish, you know, sending them a reputation and, to see if that helps, then depends off of the brand, what the business or service they did to your point, the retailer, men or woman, you are a man and you not getting any man email right?. So sometimes it could be age as well, the age, right?

Tali Hasanov (41:24): It’s a big factor. These days, you can’t market to someone who is under 25, the same way as you market for someone over 50, right. It’s just a different, different perspective. So try to do simple segmentation don’t segment on more than one variable, to begin with. So you can analyze the effect. So basically wait to see what the effect, just do one segmentation by one parameter and see how it affects. Right? It’s the same as AB testing. Don’t put too many, you know, variables in the test because you won’t know what affects the change. Right.

Matthew Vernhout (42:03): Great. Thank you very much. So Tali, thank you for being part of the Netcore for the love of emails, podcast, tell our listeners how they can reach out or find you on the internet.

Tali Hasanov (42:12): Okay. So first of all Matthew thank you very much for the invite, I really enjoyed our conversation was a lot of fun. So to reach me, people can either email me. It’s Tali @ WSIdigitalpass.com, Or my website digital pass.com and contact, there or LinkedIn Always there.

Matthew Vernhout (42:38): Definitely watch Tali’s videos on LinkedIn. She’s got a great video series that she runs full of great advice. So if you can find her on LinkedIn, we’ll put your LinkedIn in the show notes so people can find you, but definitely watch Tali’s videos. I always enjoy watching them when they come on. And, occasionally I even leave her a comment or two. So, definitely again, thank you for joining us, to our listeners out there. I hope you had some, you know, valuable insight or a nugget or two that you picked up around segmentation and CRM strategy that maybe you’re going to go and take it away and try out on your own email program. If you do, and you have success, let us know. We want to know that you’ve tried something and how it worked out for you. And remember, you can even learn when you fail.

Matthew Vernhout (43:23): So if you try something and it fails, try something else, you know, you’re going to learn from every experience. So if you have any other questions about email drop by Netcorecloud.com, we’re here to answer your questions. We’d love to talk to you more about our AI-powered email delivery and campaign monitoring platform. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast we’re available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and everywhere else, where you get the podcast do drop by Netcorecloud.com. We’d love to actually have one of you as a guest on our podcast, in the future. So do reach out and everyone stays safe, stay healthy. And thank you once again, Tali for joining us and listeners, we will be back again soon with another episode near you. So take care and thanks again.

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