The Dilemma of List Segmentation
Week 5 of the Making Time Email Mastery Mini-Series
TLDR: Smart email segmentation turns generic broadcasts into relevant conversations that people actually want to receive. The challenge is knowing when and how to carve up your list without over-doing it.
Read Time: 5 minutes
Hi Timeless Leaders,
My subscriber list contains CEOs and CxOs, solopreneurs and consultants, nonprofit leaders and corporate middle managers, friends and family. My readers are in 35 states and 21 countries. I don’t have complete data on it, but I’m pretty sure the age range spans from early 20s to late 70s, and there’s meaningful racial and gender diversity.
You all have different challenges, different goals, and different definitions of success.
Yet right now, aside from using the Sections feature for different content, I’m mostly sending you all the same emails.
As I grow my list, I know developing more strategic and efficient methods to segment my subscribers into different lists is critical.
That said, I also know that each form of list segmentation requires effort to maintain and craft unique value.
Today’s post explores some of the essential steps for list segmentation that I have on my roadmap. If you’re building or refining your email program, you may want to consider some similar steps—or have better ideas you can share with us!
Let’s dive in.
The Segmentation Imperative
Some kind of list segmentation is essential for a healthy email program, because only by organizing your list can you efficiently deliver value at scale. The good news is that the larger a list becomes, the easier it is to identify the core groupings that your list is made up of. Even without talking to your subscribers (which I would encourage), an active email program provides regular data that reveals which readers respond to certain kinds of content. That data demands action, and continuous use of the data to ensure relevance can lead to:
Increased open rates (people recognize it's for them)
Faster list growth (more referrals, fewer unsubscribes)
Deeper engagement (relevant content drives action)
Higher ROI (offers made to the right people at the right time)
Where to Start
An email program with only a few dozen or hundred subscribers doesn’t need complicated segmentation. Instead, the focus should be on clear expectation setting, high-quality content, and transparency on how subscribers can manage their own settings.
3 Segments for the Smallest Lists
No matter what your business or audience profile, some additional list segments that make sense even at a small scale and are relatively easy to set up include:
1. New Subscribers (0-30 days) These people just discovered you. They need context, not sales pitches.
What they need: Your origin story, key frameworks, how you can help
Email frequency: More frequent initially (welcome series), then streamline into general list
Tone: Educational, foundational, relationship-building
2. Engaged Readers (31+ days, regular openers) This is your core audience. They know you, trust you, and want your insights.
What they need: Advanced content, behind-the-scenes updates, exclusive opportunities
Email frequency: Your regular schedule, plus special features & announcements
Tone: Conversational, insider, assumption of shared context
3. Customers/Clients (Past or current) They've paid you. Different relationship, different expectations.
What they need: Implementation support, exclusive insights, renewal/upsell opportunities
Email frequency: Regular updates plus transactional/support emails
Tone: Partnership-focused, results-oriented, exclusive access
Great, so a few simple segments make sense do you. How do you actually pull it off?
You Also Need The Right Tools
Substack is interesting for email list management because it’s not possible to add tags or build sub-lists of subscribers, and there are few automation options. What you can do for segmentation is manage a paid tier, create sections, or maintain entirely separate newsletters. You can also filter your list of subscribers and send one-off emails to that sub-list.
What Substack lacks in email automation it makes up for in the social discovery, ease of use, and multi-media integration.
Therefore, if you’re really serious about your email marketing program you might choose a platform other than Substack, or opt to use Substack concurrently with a dedicated marketing automation tools (some with full-fledged CRM) like Hubspot, GHL, Active Campaign, Mailchimp, etc.
Moving Beyond the Basics
Once your list is a few thousand subscribers and you’re emailing them regularly, you may be ready to explore more advanced segmentation. You’ve got the data, you’ve got the practice, and you’ve got the latent potential.
Strategy before Segmentation
With all of the above, it can be tempting to segment because you can. Wait. Be sure before chopping up the list, adding tags and triggers, and building custom campaigns, you should know what your email and marketing strategy is trying to achieve, so you analyze it through that lens. Are you trying to grow a particular market segment? Product line? These questions are just as important as which subscribers open your emails and which kind of emails perform best.
With clarity on the kind of growth you want to achieve with email, possible further segmentation includes:
Geographic: Local events, regulations, time zones, cultural/linguistic needs
Business lines: Different products/services require different conversation tracks
Customer journey stage: Prospects, new customers, and long-term clients have different needs
Contact persona: Role-specific lists and other personal traits can aid relevance
The key principle: Look for the right balance of driving your business needs, strengthening the relevance of your value to each reader on the list, and maintaining efficiency and consistency over time.
Cold Email is Different
Importantly, when we talk about segmentation, we're discussing your opted-in subscriber list. Cold email operates differently: you don’t have their permission to market to them on an on-going basis. This means you’re typically only going to reach out to a contact a few times, to inform them of your service and gauge interest.
We don’t talk about list segmentation much in cold email, but we do talk about market segments and may build target lists for various segments. These lists ought to be comprised of validated prospects who fit specific criteria.
Cold email "segmentation" is really about list hygiene and targeting precision before you ever send the first email, and if you do it well, some of those contacts will make it onto your marketing list.
Unsubscribes Aren’t All Bad
You could solve list churn with perfect segmentation: since every person is a snowflake, you could only send personalized emails.
Of course, this is impractical — a list is a list for reason — and this means at a certain point some humans on your list will decide that your emails aren’t for them anymore.
An important lesson I’ve had to learn from email marketing, much as I’ve had to learn from sales, is that you can’t try to please everyone.
There’s always some kind of segmentation that would work for any subscriber, but when a particular segment doesn’t exist, the unsubscribe button is how your readers help you segment. They're telling you they weren't the right audience, at least right now. Maybe they’ll come back, but in the meantime, focus on serving the readers who are still there.
Your Next Move
This week, identify ONE way you could use segmentation to better serve your audience.
Maybe you need to create a new segment. Maybe you need to nurture an existing segment. Or maybe you need to stop over-thinking, start delivering more value in your emails, and then look at the data to see where to go next.
Or, maybe you’d like even more Advanced Segmentation Strategies?
Click the button above and fill out the form—I’ll share 5 Advanced Strategies for Email Pros (like the Handraiser technique happening here).
Talk (Email) soon,
-Joe
PS. There are 3 more posts I have planned for this mini-series on Email. What do you think? Leave a ❤️ if this is helpful, or send me a message with any questions you have or with ideas of what I should focus on next.