The Top 25 Tools Every Successful Blogger Needs

If you’re trying to make money by blogging, you need to promote and drive traffic to your website through an online marketing strategy. Add these 25 tools to your blogging arsenal to create quality content and accomplish your marketing goals.

Blogging Tools

First and foremost, you need to craft content your audience will enjoy and share. These tools will help you create, edit, and analyze your content.

Google Drive

As a blogger, you’ll have several files, drafts, and ideas floating around your computer. Keep all of your media, documents, and content in one place with Google Drive. If you work with other bloggers or colleagues, this is an excellent tool for collaborating and organizing campaigns, as well.

Grammarly

No one is perfect, not even top bloggers. We all make mistakes, but we don’t want to publish our errors online. Before you hit the looming “Publish” button, run your content through Grammarly. This free grammar checker will catch glaring spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes and also offer suggestions to improve your work.

Hemingway App

In the world of blogging, you want your writing to stand out from the crowd. The Hemingway App helps you fine-tune your content and cut out the fluff. Those who want to improve their writing chops derive a great deal of value from using Hemingway.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

Arguably one of the hardest parts of blogging is finding the perfect headline. A headline must be catchy, SEO-friendly, and intriguing enough to drive traffic to your blog. Rely on CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to discover headlines that work for your audience and search engines alike.

BuzzSumo

Understanding what topics and types of content generate top social media engagement is vital information for bloggers. BuzzSumo is an in-depth blogging tool designed to help writers discover relevant topics, top influencers, and other key data including social media insights. Bloggers also use this tool for content inspiration by researching competitors and trends.

Canva

Everyone knows blog content must also be intriguing to the eye. Canva allows bloggers to easily create stunning visuals for blog posts, social media, and other content. The tool also provides simple tutorials for those who need help along the way.

SEO Tools

Once you’ve created your content, you must optimize it to rank well on search engines. These SEO toolsare used by blogging professionals to increase website traffic, improve search rankings, and analyze their content’s performance.

Google Analytics

Every blogger must have a Google Analytics account. This versatile tool offers insight into your website’s performance, traffic acquisition, and audience. Bloggers use Google Analytics to discover what channels their traffic is coming from, how long people stay on their website, and where their readers are located.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin used to optimize a website and blog content for search engines. Everything from the technical aspects of SEO to improving the readability of a page can be accomplished using this handy plugin.

Google Keyword Planner

If you want to rank on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, you need to know what your audience is searching for. Google Keyword Planner provides expansive information about keywords, search trends, and more to amplify your content marketing efforts.

Keywordtool.io

Another popular keyword research tool is Keywordtool.io. Using Google’s autocomplete feature, this tool assists bloggers in identifying potential keywords for their blog content. Best of all, this tool is completely free!

Moz Open Site Explorer

To generate a wealth of traffic to a blog, you must have quality backlinks directing people to your website. However, some of these links may also be malicious or damaging. Moz Open Site Explorer shows bloggers what links are pointing to their website along with other crucial link information.  

SEMRush

Bloggers looking to advance their search engine optimization efforts should subscribe to SEMRush. As one of the leading SEO tools, SEMRush provides in-depth analytics, competitor research, display advertising information, and so much more. Bloggers will have an abundance of search marketing information at their disposal with this tool.

Social Media Tools

Bloggers are especially active on social media platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. To maximize their audience engagement and content distribution on these platforms, bloggers rely on these tools:

Social Sharing Bars

With the goal of offering readers a simple way to share content, the majority of blogs use a social sharing bar or buttons embedded in or near their content. If you look to the left of this article, you’ll notice a social sharing toolbar on our blog. These widgets entice readers to share the content with their friends and followers online.

To add this capability to your blog, use one of these social sharing tools and WordPress plugins:

• AddtoAny
• Social Warfare
• SumoShare
• Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress

Once you install any of these social sharing tools on your blog, remind readers to use it!

Social Media Scheduling Tools

Bloggers are also responsible for distributing their own blog content and engaging with fans on various social media platforms. As you might imagine, this can be quite cumbersome. To speed up the process, bloggers schedule their social media posts in advance using a variety of tools. These social media scheduling tools allow you to create posts for specific platforms and assign when you’d like it to publish.

Top social media scheduling tools include:

• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• SproutSocial
• Everypost
• Crowdfire
• Tailwind

Take advantage of these tools by scheduling as much content in advance as possible. This leaves you with ample time to create more content and interact with your followers.

Email Marketing Tools

Another way to drive readers to your blog content is through email marketing. From regular newsletters to announcements, email marketing keeps your audience informed and engaged.

To start your email marketing campaigns, you must collect email addresses from interested readers. WP Subscribe and Optin Forms are both excellent choices for creating subscriber forms for your blog. These forms should be strategically placed throughout your website to entice readers to sign-up.

Once you’ve collected enough subscribers, you can create and send emails through tools like Constant Contact. Remember to only send your subscribers top quality content—never spam!

Bonus Tool: WordPress

We recommend that all bloggers use WordPress to create and manage their blog. WordPress is a versatile content management system that gives bloggers complete control over their content, tools, and website design.

Over to you! What blogging tools do you use? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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How to Use Instagram Analytics to Grow Your Following

Did you know Instagram has more than 500 million active users and counting? Are you using Instagram to build a following for your personal brand, blog, or company? If so, you might be wondering how you can grow your follower count without engaging in odd tactics such as buying followers.

The best approach lies in Instagram’s native analytics platform, known as Instagram Insights. This platform is only accessible to users with an Instagram business account.

Here, you can find information about your followers, content, and Stories. By knowing how to interpret and implement this data, you can develop a quality growth strategy for your profile.

To find Instagram Insights, navigate to your Instagram profile on your smartphone – this feature is not available in the browser version of Instagram. In the top right-hand corner of your screen, you will see 4 vertical bars of varying sizes. Click this icon to access Instagram Insights.

Navigating Instagram Insights

Instagram Insights offers surface-level analytics about your followers, posts, Instagram stories, and promotions. This data is communicated through metrics including:

• Impressions: The total number of times your posts have been seen
• Reach: The number of unique accounts that have seen your posts
• Engagement: The number of times a post was liked, saved, and/or commented on by users

Additional metrics include profile views, website clicks, email clicks, and directions clicks.

When you first open Instagram Insights, you will be presented with a 7-day view of your account. Here you will find the number of impressions, reach, profile views, website clicks, and email/call clicks for the most recent week.

Under this section is Followers. This is where you can find information about your followers, such as:

• Gender
• Age
• Location
• Activity (Categorized by hours and day of the week)

Directly below Followers, you will find a section full of your Posts. In this area, you can look at various metrics for your content, including reach, impressions, and engagement. You can also organize the posts by date range, metric, and type of content.

Following the Posts section is Instagram Stories. If you post regularly to Instagram Stories, you will find details about their engagement here. In addition to impressions and reach, this section provides insight into the following metrics:

• Taps Forward: The number of taps to see the next photo or video
• Taps Back: The number of taps to see the previous photo
• Exits: The number of times someone exited your story
• Replies: The number of replies (to your Inbox) a photo or video in a story received
• Swipes Away: The number of swipes away from this photo or video to skip to the next account’s story

Lastly, Instagram Insights also shows information about any promotions you may have launched on the platform.

Play around with the various sections of Instagram Insights. Once you know how and where to find specific information within the tool, it’s time to utilize the data and grow your Instagram following.

4 Ways to Leverage Instagram Analytics and Grow       Your Following

After becoming comfortable with the built-in analytics platform, use the data to test out the following growth ideas.

1. Determine When Your Audience is Active

Instagram does not serve content to users in chronological order, meaning there is no true “best time to post.” However, you can discover when your audience is most active. You can find this information in the Followers section of Instagram Insights organized by day of the week and time of day.

Using this insight, plan to post your Instagram content within these time frames. Be sure to track the success of each post and time and adjust your schedule if necessary.

2. Appeal to Your Target Audience

When reviewing the Followers section in Instagram Insights, does the age, gender, and location information align with your target audience? If so, you’re doing something right! If not, you need to examine your posts and identify why you’re appealing to a different market than initially intended. Adjust your content accordingly to attract attention from the right audience.

On the other hand, if you’re unsure about who your audience is, Instagram Insights will tell you. With the audience demographic and geographic information in mind, you can craft relevant and timely content to appeal directly to this particular segment of your market.

3. Understand the Type of Content Your Audience Engages With

Users won’t want to follow your account if you don’t post content they are interested in. Using the Posts section, look at the engagement, impressions, and reach data for your Instagram Stories, photos, and videos. Out of the three content types, which tends to generate the best results? You can also organize your content by certain metrics and time periods. This is beneficial in determining what type of content your followers tend to interact with most.

For instance, use the tool to organize your posts by engagement over the past year. What do you notice? Did you do something similar in the copy? Did you use a specific hashtag that generated a lot of likes? Perhaps your image was stunning. Or, maybe your video asked viewers to comment below. Identify the commonalities between your top posts and implement them throughout your upcoming content.

By having a consistent and engaging presence on Instagram, you’ll attract more followers within your target market as time goes on.

4. Analyze Your Call-to-Action

Data from Instagram Insights is an excellent way to determine if your call-to-action (CTA) is working or failing. For instance, many accounts tell users to “click the link in their bio” for more information. In addition to the traffic acquisition data from Google Analytics for that particular webpage, Instagram Insights can tell you how many people clicked on the link in your bio over the last seven days. This information can help you test which calls to action work best to drive a specific action, such as website or call clicks on your profile.

Another commonly used call-to-action asks people to comment or tag a friend. By organizing your content by comments in Instagram Insights, you can see how many followers completed that action.

However, since you’re interested in growing your followers, asking people to follow your account (if they don’t already) is a beneficial call-to-action to use. Monitor your follower account to see if this CTA works well with your particular audience. If not, use the information from Instagram’s analytics to pivot accordingly!

How to Calculate Growth Rate

While Instagram provides basic metrics, such as follower count, it does not offer in-depth insight such as growth or engagement rate. You must calculate this information on your own. Alfred Lua of Buffer provides excellent insight on how to calculate growth rate and engagement rate using data from your Instagram Analytics account.

To find out how much follower growth your profile has experienced, perform the following equation:

[(Followers Then – Followers Now) / Followers Then] x 100

This results in the percentage change in growth over a particular period of time.

After adjusting your Instagram content strategy using the tips provided above, use the Growth Rate calculation to determine how well these tactics have performed in increasing your overall follower count.

How do you use Instagram Insights and metrics to grow your following? Share your thoughts and experiences with us by commenting below.

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The Benefits of Using Instagram for Business

I know what you’re thinking already. Another social media site I want you to look into. Between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, your blog and all the other sites out there, how are you supposed to incorporate Instagram into your social media strategy? And, more importantly, why should you bother? You’re doing just fine without it, right…

Here’s why you should consider using Instagram for business – it’s the future of social media marketing.

Instagram isn’t going anywhere.

In just three years, they have grown to 150 million users. This is a faster growth trajectory than Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. And with 60% of users outside of the US, the global reach of Instagram is growing.
Beyond just the popularity and rapid expansion of Instagram, there are a number of reasons why it is beneficial to use this platform as a part of your social media strategy.

Visual Marketing

Instagram, and other visual content sites like Pinterest, are gaining popularity for a reason. We’ve heard the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” countless times since we were children. As marketers and content creators, why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of images as part of your content marketing strategy? Just think how much less typing you’d have to do!
“Visual marketing” is one of the latest buzz words, and for good reason. Consumers want images and content marketers need to provide them. Think about your Facebook feed, do you read every post? Likely not. What about photos? You may not stop on every one, but you stop and look at a good majority of them. And what about Pinterest? Think about how much more content you consume when each post is a well crafted image.
Instagram is just the same. It’s an entire feed of visual stimulation encouraging interaction at its highest levels. If you’re seeing any success with visual marketing on the other platforms you use, imagine the capabilities you have on a site dedicated solely to visual marketing.

High Levels of Engagement

While I don’t have scientific studies from Pew or Mashable to substantiate this claim, I have read other blogs and I ran my own studies that validate Instagram engagement is typically higher than any other site. The ratio and number of likes and comments on Instagram posts significantly surpasses the ratio and number of likes and comments on any other social media site.

High Visibility of Posts

One of the reasons Instagram posts receive such high levels of engagement is that posts are highly visible. There’s no Edgerank or other algorithm that selectively showcases your posts. Every single one of your posts will appear in the feeds of every single one of your followers!
Strategic use of hashtags can also significantly boost the exposure of your posts to new users who will like and comment on your posts and who may even follow you as a result.
Your posts also live on forever. They don’t disappear or get archived like old tweets. And they don’t get buried so far down your stream, like Facebook, that they get lost. A quick scroll through your profile showcases every single post you have ever shared. This is a great way for new followers to connect with your brand!

Connect With a Targeted Audience

I promise that your audience is using Instagram. With 150 million users and growing, your customers are on there. There may be a smaller number of your customers and it may take a while to grow your community to significant levels. But take advantage of the smaller community now to cultivate real brand advocates and loyal customers. Instagram users are passionate and active – they want to interact with you and get to know you.

Emotional Connection

Photos immediately convey emotional responses. You can easily use your posts to evoke powerful emotions in your audience in order to produce the reactions you desire. If you want people to donate to your non-profit, use images that elicit the desire to participate and donate. If you want to celebrate a milestone or achievement with your audience, use posts that stimulate those emotions. Using the right emotional connection through your posts will drastically increase your engagement and help you reach your goals.

Drive Traffic to your Site

One of the most important things we all want is more traffic to our websites. And, yes, you can drive traffic from Instagram! Make sure you post a link to your site in your bio – this is the only place you can put an active hyperlink on Instagram. Mentioning your website or using calls to action (CTA’s) in your post comments are great ways to generate traffic to your site. I also recommend using a specific landing page from your website as the link in your bio in order to capitalize on visitors coming from Instagram.

It’s fun!

One of the best things about Instagram is that it’s just plain fun! The posts make you laugh, you get to stage awesome photo shoots, and you see the beauty in the simplest things. Instagram will change the way you think of content marketing – because when you’re having fun creating your content, it really isn’t all that much “work”!

The growth and expansion that we’re seeing on Instagram is only the beginning for this powerful site. Instagram is the latest site to grow into a permanent position within the big social media giants. As this site gains more traction and more users, the more powerful it will become for businesses and marketers. The solutions and long term benefits that are provided by Instagram for business are inescapable. Be prepared – if you’re not on Instagram now, you will be in the near future.


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The #1 reason ToysRus is bankrupt

Why all business owners or want to be business owners need to constantly innovate or die. Differentiate your business because the future will not look like the past. 

Start today. ✅ FREE 90-minute web class, how to leverage social media to start, grow and scale your online business. Click the link to view ➡️ http://tiny.cc/POMOBM-F ⬅️

How to Increase Audience Engagement on YouTube using Content Marketing Tools

YouTube is an indispensable platform for social media and content marketers, especially now that audience members are consuming YouTube content like never before. People are spending as much as 72 minutes a day watching video content, and marketers are keen to make the most of this trend to increase audience engagement. However, engaging an audience on a highly competitive platform such as YouTube can be tough. But with the help of the right strategies and content marketing tools, you can have the impact your desire on the social media platform. Here’s a 3-step process to increasing audience engagement on YouTube using content marketing tools or content curation apps such as DrumUp.
 

1. Create channel(s) on YouTube for your types of content

Many people do a great job on this first step. They create excellent content that’s on-point, timely and entertaining. Some brands choose to have one central YouTube channel where they publish all of their content, while others split their content based on categories across multiple YouTube channels.
Irrespective of what you choose to do, it’s critical to first have a channel that contains your content. This is your home-base using which you will attract and engage your target audience. Marie Folio’s YouTube channel is a great example. Her brand focuses on start-up advice and inspiration.


 

2. Create visually-enticing design

Apart from having a channel for relevant content, it’s also critical to have great design, so you can attract your target groups’ attention.
Great design is a combination of having great video titles and alluring thumbnails. Clickbait still works, but how much of clickbait you apply depends on the tone of your brand and your personal preferences. It’s also important to consider displaying your most interesting stills as thumbnails on videos. To do so, you can use photo editor and graphic design tools such as Canva, which allow you to alter already-existing templates for your use.


 

3. Promote YouTube videos to your social media followers on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

YouTube by itself is difficult to run, if you’re not already viral or popular. But you can use your existing following on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to increase audience engagement on YouTube.
Here’s an effortless way to do it using DrumUp’s RSS feed reader & content library.

Path 1 – Automatically share YouTube videos to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as soon as they are published.

• Go to your YouTube channel and get the channel ID.

 

• Insert the channel ID to this URL https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<channelIDHERE>.
• Add the complete URL to your DrumUp feed reader.

 

• Choose between custom/1-click/auto scheduling to share content on your attached social media (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter) accounts. DrumUp will automatically take you to the screen below once you have added your RSS feed.

 

Path 2 – Share evergreen videos automatically every once a while to your audience to keep them engaged.

• Follow Path 1 from Step 1 to Step 3.
• Once your YouTube posts appear in the feed channel, choose the videos qualify as “evergreen videos” and add them to a content library by clicking on the Star icon.

 

• Once you have filled your library, choose automatic publishing and set a frequency to keep your audience engaged.

 
You can apply Path 1 and Path 2 to your own YouTube channel, and/or any other channels that publish content relevant to your target audience.

Video content can be powerful to engaging your audience and convincing them to eventually convert into paying customers. All you need is the right set of content marketing tools and strategies.


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10 Pro Tips for B2B Marketing on Pinterest

We think of Pinterest as a lifestyle social network, chock full of party ideas, crafts, home decor inspiration, recipes, and fitness routines. But Pinterest is so much more than that. It’s become an asset to marketers who want to show off their visual content and drive traffic to their sites.
And here’s a notable benefit of Pinterest marketing. According to this infographic, the half-life of a Pin is a whopping 3.5 months. That’s 1,680 times longer than the half-life of a Facebook post. And don’t even get me started on the 24-minute half-life of a Tweet. Which means that the effort you put into your Pinterest presence will pay dividends for a long time.
And the value of Pinterest marketing isn’t limited to B2C businesses. Pinterest can supply fresh traffic and leads to B2B businesses as well. In this post, I’ll share 10 tips for B2B Marketing on Pinterest.

1. Pin a Variety of Visual Content

Pinterest is for visual content. That’s why so many B2B businesses often think Pinterest isn’t for them. They feel like they don’t have enough—or in fact any—visual content to share.
So, first of all, if you don’t have any visual content, it’s time to get cracking. Content marketing is the future of marketing, and the sexiness of visual content is undeniable.
But don’t wait until you have a fresh bank of visual assets before you dip your feet into the Pinterest pool. Trust me, you have more visual content than you realize. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Product images. Post your product images and link back to your site’s product pages.
• Quotes. Create graphic quotes that would inspire your target audience. Canva makes the job quick and easy.
• Blog posts. Pin your blog posts to drive people back to your site.
• Events. Pin photos of company and industry events.
• Employees. Show off photos of team members. Let your unique company culture shine through pinned photos of your inter-company social events.
• Marketing materials. Pin the covers of your e-books, white papers, and brochures—with links to where the materials can be downloaded.
• Presentations. Put your decks to work for you. Create a board for each presentation and pin key slides to the board.
• Industry-related topics. Share infographics and other pieces that are relevant to your industry.
• Tips and recommendations. Be helpful to your prospects and clients. Curate tips and recommendations to make their lives easier. Create boards on books you recommend, great blogs for them to follow, podcasts, and apps.
• Targeted boards. Create specific boards that cater to the needs and interests of individual industries and your different personas.

2. Balance Quality and Personality

When you create a new board, aim to make it the best board on that topic, and include a wide variety of quality pins. But while you target quality, don’t be afraid to show your personality. Quirkiness and humour can be very effective at making you stand out on Pinterest.

3. Use Pinterest to Find Great Content

Don’t limit your Pinterest presence to your own content. Round out your boards with content that your audience will enjoy, from other sources.
Don’t have time to scour the Web for that content? Follow relevant Pinners to fill your feed with quality Pins that you can conveniently re-Pin to your boards.

4. Use Great Images

Attention-grabbing imagery is key on Pinterest. Make sure you’re using the optimal image size for your Pins, board images, and profile images.
Use stunning photography, beautiful fonts and place subtle branding in the corners of your images. And make it easy for your site visitors to pin your content right from your site. Make sure that all your posts and pages contain at least one Pinnable image.

5. Write Quality Copy

Of course, great imagery that your Pinterest audience wants to click is key. But don’t forget to make your copy work for you too. Think of your descriptions as ad copy. Make them engaging enough to earn a click. And add compelling calls to action to help convert visitors to your site.

6. SEO Your Boards and Pins

Pinterest can be an asset in your SEO efforts. The more people re-pin your site content, the more backlinks your site earns. And social signals can improve your rankings.
To help people find your Pins on both Pinterest and Google, optimize your profile, boards, and pins. Search Engine Watch offers up some great advice here on how to do that.
But how about the Pins that are created directly from your site? You can’t always count on Pinners to enter a keyword-rich description on those pins. Many won’t enter a description at all. Give Pinners a hand by enabling Rich Pins, which automatically pull some of the post content into the description.

7. Get the Data

To help you decide what new content to create and post to Pinterest, you need to understand how your current content is performing. And for that, you’re going to need to get the data. Here are three great sources of analytics data for Pinterest.
To start with, access the analytics data for your Pinterest business page here. You’ll find a variety of engagement insights about your pins.
Next, remember that not everyone pins from Pinterest. Find out what content people are pinning directly from your site by visiting pinterest.com/source/example.com. (Substitute example.com for your domain.)
Finally, use Google Analytics to monitor engagement and conversion metrics for your Pinterest traffic.

8. Research Your Ideal Client

Are you trying to get a better understand of who your ideal client is as a person? Pinterest can provide a wealth of data. Just check out the boards of your clients and people who have repinned your pins. What else are they pinning? What insights can you glean from their boards?

9. Research Content Ideas

If content creation is a priority for you, you’ll hit occasional droughts in content ideas. (It happens to the best of us, believe me.) Pinterest’s guided search is effective for unearthing content ideas and curation opportunities around a topic.

10. Get Inspired by the Greats

Why reinvent the wheel when you can follow the lead of other great brands? Check out these great Pinterest business pages to see how it’s done:

• Hootsuite
• Intel
• General Electric
• IBM
• Fedex
• Marketo
• Hubspot

11. Bonus tip: Collaborate with Clients and Partners

Ok so this isn’t really a marketing, so consider it a bonus. Pinterest is a fantastic tool for collaborating with clients.
I use it whenever I build a visual asset for a new client – whether it’s a video, presentation, infographic or Website. So that I don’t waste time building a piece my client won’t like, I strive to get into my client’s head before I begin. I try to get a sense of the design styles that resonate with them.
Sure, I could have them fill out a client brief. But that exercise feels too esoteric to some of my clients. What’s worked brilliantly for me instead is to create a secret board on Pinterest, and add my client as a contributor. My client then spends time Pinning images, photos, colour palettes, fonts, and websites they love. Before long, I know exactly what they’re after and can deliver on their vision.

Over To You

Have you been using Pinterest in your B2B marketing? If not, why? If so, have I missed any key points? I’d love to hear from you. Please share in the comments.



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6 Ways to Segment Your Email List to Improve Your Success

When you create emails, do you send them out to everyone on your list? If so, you’re suffering from “bulk email disease.” This very common digital illness occurs when small business owners send every email to every single contact on their list.

Common symptoms include low open rates, poor conversions, and confusion about what to do next.
Well, If you’re ready to conquer this condition once and for all, you’ll need a healthy dose of segmentation. This includes dividing your larger list into small, targeted subgroups and coming up with a content strategy for how and when you’ll send emails to each list.

A method with proven results, as illustrated in the chart below, segmentation can increase your open rates by nearly 39 percent. It can also help boost your leads by 24 percent which is much higher than average growth statistics.



Here are six ways you can segment your list and get it back on the mend:

1. Geographic area
Segmenting lists by geographic area is one of the most popular methods and can be helpful for many reasons. This method gives you the opportunity to communicate with and talk to your customers where they are, increasing their ability to relate to your business.

Remember though, there are some businesses like cleaning or meal delivery services, which are limited to a geographical region. For these businesses, splitting contacts into even smaller segments, such as cities or towns, is useful.

2. Demographics
Similar to location, segmenting your list by demographics may work well for a single email or future email campaign series.

Let’s say you run a retail business that caters to women ages 30-60. When you release a new item that appeals more to the under 35 crowd, you can increase your chance of creating buzz with an email specifically for the people on your under 35 list.

The standard business demographics that are frequently used include age, gender, and income level.You can collect this information from customers by including it on a signup form and embedding it on your website or blog.

3. Loyal customers
Everyone likes to be rewarded for their loyalty. You’ll find that your customers are no different.  With a marketplace overflowing with options, repeat buyers are a much smaller segment than they once were.

Use this to your advantage through emails that show your frequent customers you appreciate their business. Consider making a ‘Loyal Customer Promo’ or send out an email inviting 15 of your most loyal customers to a sneak peek of a product. You can make the deal even sweeter by giving them a chance to buy it with a select percentage off the final cost.

4. Brand advocates
Every business has a group of customers that advocate for their business without being asked to do so. This is also known as benefiting from the power of word of mouth marketing. Create a segment in your email list for this group. Much like your loyal customers, it’s important to reward those who spread the word about your business.

How do you identify a brand advocate? Look for customers that sing your praises on social media. Customers that have referred friends to your business, or reached out with positive feedback should also make the list.

5. Inactive customers
From those who champion your brand to the group that is nowhere to be found, you’ll need another segment of your list that’s dedicated strictly to inactive customers.

You shouldn’t let inactive customers go without a fight. Okay, maybe “fight” is a strong word, but you shouldn’t let them go without making a targeted effort to bring them back into your sales fold.
Consider sending a promo email to those inactive customers. Use a message titled, “We miss you!”
or “It’s been a while, how have you been?” to reestablish contact and attempt to connect with them again. You can also send a survey asking for insight on why these customers have strayed away from your business. Through the survey results, you could make improvements to keep others from straying.

6. Role or position of contact
It goes without saying that to be effective, an email has to land in the right inbox. If an office supply store, for example, sends a promotional email to a CEO rather than the office manager, it’s probably going to be ignored. For this reason, it’s important to break up your list by positions, if possible. By doing so, the right person gets the right email, which leads to increased sales.

A few words on implementation
Curing bulk email disease can take some time. In fact, we suggest starting with only two or three segments listed above. If you overdose on segmentation, you could get frustrated and make your email marketing strategy more complicated than it needs to be.

Need extra guidance? Luckily, we have a resource guide to help you segment your list in your VerticalResponse account. Check out the step-by-step segment instructions to get started.


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