Email Segmentation & Target Marketing for Non-Profits

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Our non-profit German American Business Association (GABA-CA) Women in Business Industry Group has implemented a number of online marketing initiatives, including:targeted email marketing to promote quarterly events, an email-based discussion group, social networking, testing and measurement, and online video. We've especially had success with email segmentation and targeted email marketing.

Two years ago we conducted a one-time targeted email marketing campaign of the larger GABA-CA member list with great success - resulting in what's now the GABA Women in Business Industry Group email list.

More recently we conducted another targeted email campaign for which we employed a similar strategy of designing a relevant email message specific to a segment of the Women in Business list. This list segment was defined by the following data sets: member role, company title, and a previously high email-response rate.

The email message itself was mostly text, using a personal From line to ensure high inbox delivery - a crucial piece of our winning email design. Because GABA-CA had recently abandoned Constant Contact for 123Signup (a less-expensive online registration-focused software that does not provide tracking information), this email was composed by me and delivered directly from my personal Yahoo! account instead.

Evaluating our success

To determine the success of our targeted email message strategy, I asked the following questions:

1. Did the personalized email approach work? Our response rate was 75% - about four-and-a-half times the national average of 17 percent. We believe this was due to the fact that the email was relevant to the audience segment, informative, intriguing, and utilized a personal From line.

2. Did the call to action work? Along with the 75% response rate, there was a 50% success rate based on those who followed through on the CTA and attended the event.

3. Did the message accomplish the goal? The goal was to engage this segment of the greater GABA Women in Business audience to attend a specific and targeted thank-you event for sponsors and volunteers, as well as to gauge their interest in continuing this as a smaller event series, resulting in a 30 percent success rate.

As our results indicate, members of non-profit organizations are often "stressed prospects", therefore it is especially important to segment such a list and ensure you are sending them a relevant and tailored message, just as any other corporation interested in boosting open and click-through rates would do. (For more information on this topic, go to the Lyris Email Marketing Resources section and check out the white paper entitled: Getting Better Results with Segmenting.)

Do you have any useful tips or stories about targeted email marketing and email segmentation? Whether you work in a corporate or non-profit environment, please share your successes, challenges and ideas in the "Comments" section below … we'd love to hear them!