Earlier this week, I read an article in the July 2008 issue of Internet Retailer. The article focused on the future of e-mail marketing and concluded that the bet way to survive low response rates and high unsubscribe rates of e-mail lists is to use market segmentation.

Below are a couple of quotes from the article:

“To combat these problems, e-mail marketing experts and vendors point to the need for greater segmentation of e-mail lists to target distinct groups of customers with messages they’re more likely to want and reduce the number of e-mails sent to customers.” Scott Olrich , chief marketing officer at Responsys, Inc.

“… the effectiveness of broadly written and sent e-mails has weakened. … This is where segmentation comes into play, where you can target groups of people more relevantly, like with a subject line that speaks to them. … This requires lots and lots of testing, and thinking very specifically for different customer groups.

“Showing different customers different subject lines, images, products or calls to action can make e-mail messages more applicable and thus more effective.” Julie M. Katz, e-mail marketing analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

These two top-notch marketing experts recognize the value of market segmentation and using it in e-mail marketing. Yet I’ve found that many of the emails I receive are totally ineffective.

Do Your E-mails Use Your List Members’ Language?

Do you get e-mails that are broadcast to 1000s of people on an Internet or retail marketers list? I surely do. Yet, I often find that they don’t speak to me at all. Part of that is surely because I’m a Boomer while most Internet business people are in Generation X. But the e-mails would be far more effective for me if the marketers used market segmentation to separate their lists by generation.

I know that requires gathering some information from list members, but I agree with the marketing experts quoted above, that the effort would pay off with a better return on e-mail marketing investment.

Do You Separate Your List By Their Actions?

Another part of the reason that many e-mails don’t speak to me is that the marketers don’t bother to do even basic list separation. I was on one Internet marketer’s list because I opted in for some freebie. I almost immediately bought one of his e-books. Yet I continued to get e-mails marketing that e-book. I eventually unsubscribed from his list and haven’t bought anything from him since.

If you want to avoid turning off your list members, you need to start using at least basic market segmentation like list separation. If you really want to be successful with your e-mail marketing, you need to learn more advanced market segmentation methods.

Do You Know How To Use Market Segmentation To Improve Your E-Mail Marketing?

To get information on a quick and easy market segmentation process that you can use, see my Market Segmentation E-book.

Or you can get a free report on my market segmentation process by completing the form below:

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Posted 7-23-08: Market Segmentation And E-Mail Marketing

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Why Is This Entrecard and Sezwho Partnership Important?

At one time just blogging brought you traffic. Today more than one million blogs make it hard for even the best blogs to get noticed. I’ve been blogging for about 3.5 months. I’ve posted more than 100 posts. Yet few people visit my blog and even fewer people comment on my blog or go to my Web site from my blog.

I post five days a week, do keyword research, and write posts relevant to marketing, market segmentation and target markets. These are topics that should interest all small business owners. Yet, I’ve had trouble getting people to visit my blog.

How Can Entrecard Help?

An Internet marketing friend recently recommended Entrecard, and I’ve been pleased with it. The traffic hasn’t been great, but two of my Entrecard new acquaintances have joined my affiliate program, and several have visited my site multiple times.

When I visit Entrecard blogs, I always read enough of the post to determine if I can contribute to the information. When I believe I can, I leave a comment. Otherwise, I just drop and go to another site.

What Does Sezwho Add To The Entrecard Experience?

With the partnership between Entrecard and Sezwho, I will now get credit for leaving relevant comments that contribute to a post. I’m excited about that and about the potential of more people actually reading my posts and commenting on them.

If you’re a blogger who came here from Entrecard, I hope you share this excitement and will also join Sezwho. If you just somehow found my blog without coming through Entrecard, welcome. If you’re also a blogger, I recommend that you check out Entrecard and Sezwho for yourself.

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Posted: 7-22-08: Blogs Get a Boost With Entrecard and Sezwho Partnership

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Human resource managers (hrm) recognize differences in people through all management phases. Some people will fit in a particular organization better than other people. Some people will be more motivated by a certain organizational culture, while others will find that same culture inhibiting or demotevating.

Some people love playing office politics and thrive in environments where playing office politics well earns rewards like promotions and raises. Other people hate office politics, refuse to more than passively participate, keep their noises to the grindstone, and never get rewards for their productivity in highly political environments. Thus, they aren’t happy and usually take their productivity and accomplishments to a different organization.

How Does Market Segmentation Improve HRM Employee & Service Marketing?

Market segmentation can help human resource managers assure that only people who will thrive within an organizations are hired. Market segmentation can also help to assure that employee’s and clients’ personal goals mesh well with the organization’s.

Thus, employee & service marketing & hrm requires doing the same type of target marketing that business marketers do for consumers.

Employee & Service Marketing & HRM Step 1: Recruiting

So the first step in blending employee & service marketing & hrm is to determine the type of person:

who will thrive in the organizational culture,

whose personal goals align with the organization’s goals, and

whose work habits will make a contribution without attracting negative attention from colleagues.

Market segmentation aids human resource managers to select demographic and psychographic characteristics that will most likely include best employee and client prospects, who will be successful and satisfied within and with the organization.

Employee & Service Marketing & HRM Step 2: Retention

The second step in blending employee & service marketing & hrm is to increase retention. Market segmentation can also help identify those in danger of leaving the organization and determine how to bring them back into the fold, if that is in the organization’s best interest.

Employee & Service Marketing & HRM Step 3: Marketing

The third step in blending employee & service marketing & hrm is to determine how to get happy employees and clients to spread word-of-mouth marketing about the organization. Market segmentation helps by determining what people most value, and assuring that they get their needs met in a way that makes them feel positive about the organization.

There is no better marketing than positive statements made to friends and acquaintances by happy employees and clients. Similarly, there is nothing more damaging to an organization than having unhappy employees and clients making detrimental statements about the organization to others.

Employee & Service Marketing & HRM: Conclusion

Market segmentation aids employee & service marketing & hrm through all three major steps: recruiting employees and clients, keeping them happy, and turning them into marketing agents.

But to do all these successfully requires understanding the relationship of demographic characteristics to personality and behavior characteristics. You can do just that with Know ‘em Sell ‘em: How To Discover The Best Appeals For Your Target Market. To learn more click on the book title above.

Or you can get a free report to see how easy my matrix market segmentation process is to use by completing the form below:

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Posted 7-21-08: Employee & Service Marketing & HRM Need Market Segmentation

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From the time that I started in the Internet business, I’ve heard that Internet marketing is a level playing field. That your race, gender, age, economic status, and business size don’t matter. After 18 months in the business, I disagree with that statement.

From what I’ve experienced and witnessed, Internet marketing is as gender biased as most businesses and professions.

Now before you decide if I’m right or wrong, or just another woman complaining, ask yourself these questions:

Of all the email lists that you are on, what percentage are from women?

Of all the products that you’ve purchased, what percentage of them were created by women?

Of the email promotions that you receive, what percentage of them are for products by women?

Of the sites that you frequently visit, what percentage of them are owned and operated by women?

How did you learn about the sites that you visit? Was it from an email recommendation by a man for another man? Was it from a site owned by a man recommending another site owned by a man?

Is Internet Marketing Just Another “Good Ole Boy Network”?

It appears to me that the “good ole boy network” is alive and well on the Internet. In fact, the only women that seem to be doing well are women who are “one of the boys” or who have a male mentor, and they are few and far between.

Now by mentor, I don’t mean someone you pay to give you advice and aid. I mean someone who believes in your abilities enough to want to take you under a wing and guide you to success.

I’m always reading about some man, who attracted a successful man Internet marketer as a mentor, and achieved almost instant Internet marketing success. I can’t think of one instance of reading of a man who mentored a women Internet marketer just because he recognized her abilities and potential for success.

When I was young and just starting my academic career, a man told me that every person should hire or help people they are most comfortable with. “I’m most comfortable with men,” he said. “So that makes a man better qualified for the job.”

That seems to be the philosophy of successful Internet marketing men. They help other men because they are comfortable with them. They are chums.

So where does that leave the women? Are we not as smart? Are we not as capable? Are we not as teachable? Or is it that we are just not as “chumable” for men?

Is Internet Marketing Gender Bias Deliberate or Inadvertent?

Now I’m not accusing the men Internet marketers of deliberating discriminating against women. Most gender bias in the business and professional world has not been a deliberate attempt to block women from success. Instead, it’s been men choosing to “chum” and help other men, not even noticing the potential of the women.

It’s not the deliberate discrimination that’s so damaging because most people recognize that kind of gender bias as wrong. Instead it’s the choice to work only with people like yourself, which usually means a man helping another man, without ever recognizing that women are even there, working just as hard, bringing just as much skill and talent to their work, and just as willing to build relationships.

What Can You Do About Internet Marketing Gender Bias?

The next time you read your emails, or a recommendation for a site or a product, think about whose recommending whom and why? Consider the effect of those emails and recommendations on Internet marketing as a level playing field. Is it really level or just another business in which women don’t get an equal opportunity?

If you are a successful Internet marketer, look around for talented, hard-working women. You probably won’t have to look beyond your own list. Consider mentoring or just chumming with one or more of them. Bring women into your network.

If you still lack that kind of power but object to gender bias in Internet marketing, there’s still plenty that you can do. Sign up for free products by women. Subscribe to their lists. Read their emails, and buy their products. Judge for yourself if products by women are just as good as those by men.

If you want to start this minute, you can get my free report by completing the form below:

And you can get my dvd, my clicking the link in the upper left corner. You may even want to check out my Profiles and E-books for sale.

And don’t stop with me, there are many capable women Internet marketers with free reports, email lists that offer good information, and great products for sale. Who knows, in your fight against gender bias, you may learn to be a better business person and a better Internet marketer!

If you think others should read this article please digg it.

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Posted 7-22-08: Internet Marketing Is Gender Biased

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Intentional marketing can be brand marketing. This means that it promotes the business, but not with a specific purpose in mind, other than building the business brand.

Most small business owners like you can’t afford that kind of marketing. Instead you need each marketing activity to encourage target market members to take a specified action. Such actions include:

providing their contact information,

visiting a Web site, to return a post card,

making a phone call, or

buying a product or service.

As a small business owner, you need immediate results from your marketing. With intentional marketing you decide what results you need and when you need it to meet your short-term objectives and long-term goal. Then you plan marketing tactics to get those specific results.

This element works hand in hand with the first two elements of intentional marketing. Once you’ve set a goal and determined what it will take to reach that goal, you determine the steps or objectives for your journey toward your goal.

Each step requires that you get target market members to do something to complete one objective. This requires that you learn as much as possible about your target market members. You need to know:

their wants and needs,

their buying habits,

the type of information that interest them,

the best appeals to incorporate in your marketing messages, and

the best media to reach them with those messages.

You can get this information with Free Target Market Analysis, customized for your target market.

Once you have all three elements of intentional marketing working together, you’ll experience great improvement in the return on your marketing investments.

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Posted 7-07-08: Elements of Intentional Marketing 3:
Specified Actions

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Intentional marketing requires determining the target market and designing marketing efforts to reach and serve target market members.

One of the biggest mistakes that small business owners make in their marketing is trying to market to everyone. They think that is the way to reach the most people and make the most sales. But it just isn’t so. Because marketing to everyone amounts to marketing to no one.

Intentional marketing considers the target market from the design of a product, through all marketing activities, distribution, and customer service. Every decision throughout the process considers:

target market members,

what they want and need,

how to best reach them, and

how to best serve them.

In other words, intentional marketing is also relationship marketing. Maintaining a positive relationship with target market members should be the primary objective of all intentional marketing activities.

Unfortunately, the target market element of intentional marketing is also what makes intentional marketing controversial. Some marketers target children, a particular race, or some disadvantaged market, to persuade them to make or influence decisions that are not in their best interest.

Of course such “intentional marketing” is controversial because its intention is to benefit the business with no regard for the welfare of target market members. It’s manipulative. The business may make short-term gains with such “intentional marketing.” But in the long run, it hurts more than it helps.

The more positive approach to intentional marketing, relationship marketing, helps both the business and customers. It’s mutually beneficial. The business makes money and the customers get their needs and wants met with good products and services.

The first step for this second element of intentional marketing, is to identify your target market. The second step is to learn everything that you can about your target market members.

If you’ve identified your target market and know its members’ demographics, you can get a Free Target Market Analysis by clicking on the link in this sentence.

Read more about the Elements of Intentional Marketing.
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Posted 7-16-08: Elements of Intentional Marketing 2:
Target Market

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]]> http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/elements-of-intentional-marketing-2-target-market/feed/ http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/elements-of-intentional-marketing-1-goals-and-objectives/ http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/elements-of-intentional-marketing-1-goals-and-objectives/#comments Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:52:26 +0000 Linda http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/?p=267 This post on the elements of intentional marketing covers the first major element and is the second in a series of posts on intentional marketing. If you’re a small business owner and interested in improving your marketing, you should find it interesting.

The three major elements of intentional marketing include:

Planning marketing to meet goals and objectives,

Marketing to a specific, identifiable and known target market,

Marketing to create a specific action.

The post covers the first element of intentional marketing.

Intentional marketing requires that you know the purpose of all your marketing efforts. In other words, intentional marketing is strategic marketing. All marketing activities combine to reach an overall goal, and each individual marketing effort meets an objective that leads to that goal.

Although, all marketing should be intentional and designed to meet specified goals and objectives sometimes small business owners fail to plan their marketing to evolve in a systematic way to meet goals and objectives.

Some small business owners just move haphazardly from one marketing effort to another without a plan or a specific goal beyond making sales. As a result, they fall prey to advertising and marketing sales people. They make their products or services sound like they will solve all of the small business owners’ problems. At best their solutions provide a small surge in sales that quickly fades.

Intentional marketing avoids such hit-and-miss methods and bases every marketing decision on short-term objectives and longer-term goals. So your marketing efforts will build on one another and have long-term, as well as short-term effects, on your small business.

If your not planning all your marketing activities to grow you business toward a specified goal, then you are not getting the best return on your marketing investments. You can improve your ROI by using all three elements of intentional marketing, starting with this first one.

My next two posts will cover the second and third elements of intentional marketing. So come back tomorrow and read how targeting a market can make or break your marketing program. If you arrive after they are published, you can link to the next Elements of Intentional Marketing post in this sentence.

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Posted 7-15-08: Elements of Intentional Marketing 1:
Goals and Objectives

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]]> http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/elements-of-intentional-marketing-1-goals-and-objectives/feed/ http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/market-segmentation-and-intentional-marketing/ http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/market-segmentation-and-intentional-marketing/#comments Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:00:54 +0000 Linda http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/?p=270 Market segmentation and intentional marketing are related because intentional marketing requires target marketing. And target marketing requires market segmentation.

If you are unfamiliar with intentional marketing, it’s just what its name implies. It’s marketing with intention to accomplish specific goals by getting a target market to take specified actions. Thus, the three major elements of intentional marketing are:

marketing to meet a specific goal with objectives that move you step-by-step to that goal,

marketing to a identified and known target market, and

marketing to get target market members to take specific actions that fulfill objectives and lead to your goal.

The first element requires that you have a marketing plan – that you know what you want to accomplish with your marketing, and you know how you plan to accomplish it.

It’s for the second and third elements that market segmentation generates much valuable information. First, market segmentation helps you to identify the people most likely to buy your product or service. They comprise your target market.

Second, market segmentation helps you to relate to your target market members so that your marketing offers will effectively persuade them to take actions that you propose. These actions may or may not include buying a product or service.

Intentional marketing actions may relate to objectives other than actually selling a product.

For example, in the Internet marketing business, building a list is fundamental to success. So list building is an important marketing objective.

Most Internet marketers don’t try to sell you something the first time that you visit their sites. Instead they offer to give you something in return for your name and email address. After you are on a list, smart list owners will build a relationship with you by offering additional helpful information.

So building a relationship is a second important marketing objective. It requires that list owners learn as much as possible about their list members. Some Internet marketers use surveys to gather this information and offer rewards to you for completing the survey.

Others choose a less formal and less reliable method of learning about their list members. Two common examples include encouraging you to provide feedback by replying to messages or to going to their blogs for information and leaving a comment.

Only after they have built a good relationship with you, will the best internet marketers attempt to sell you something which is, of course, their ultimate goal. Internet marketers like all business owners must make a profit or eventually get out of business.

Market segmentation aids relationship building for any type of business. It reveals psychographic, sociographic, and buying behavior characteristics that help you to meet your intentional marketing objectives and ultimate goal.

You can read more about Intentional Marketing through the link in this sentence.

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Posted 7-14-08: Market Segmentation And Intentional Marketing

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]]> http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/market-segmentation-and-intentional-marketing/feed/ http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/examples-of-cause-related-marketing-for-publishers/ http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/examples-of-cause-related-marketing-for-publishers/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:30:38 +0000 Linda http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/?p=247 This series of posts on examples of cause related marketing has provided examples for retail stores and professional offices. Today’s examples of cause related marketing are especially appropriate for publishers and information product business owners.

Examples Of Cause Related Marketing: Combining Free Library Information Products With Presentations

Publishers can collaborate with local libraries by offering a free copy of a book or other information product to the library and doing a presentation at the library on a topic related to the book.

Many local libraries have limited budgets, and nearly all will welcome a free information product. Just giving your book or information product to the library is not an event to warrant media coverage, but when combined with a presentation, it becomes one.

Most libraries will provide rooms for free presentations that provide a community service. So this example of cause related marketing costs you nothing but your time and expertise.

But it gives you the opportunity to sell and autograph books or products in the back room at the end of the presentation. If your presentation relates to something news worthy and to your book, it can also give you valuable publicity.

Even if you don’t sell any books, the publicity and contact information from participants will often lead to eventual sales.

Thus, the library, the business owner, the presentation participants, and the library’s readers all benefit. And that’s the beauty of all examples of cause related marketing. Everybody wins.

Examples Of Cause Related Marketing: Donating A Portion Of Book Proceeds

I also know small publishers who donate a portion of the income from each book sold to their favorite charities. People are more likely to buy something they want anyway if they believe they are helping others.

I know one small publisher who has built her business this way. She combines it with speaking at women’s organizations. It’s easy for her to get the speaking engagements because each organization leader knows that all back-room sales will benefit the charity.

She also displays her charity policy on her Web site. She contends that it improves her sales.

This ends my series of posts on examples of cause related marketing. If you have found any insights or motivation from them, I’ll appreciate your comments.

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Posted 7-10-08: Examples Of Cause Related Marketing
For Publishers

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]]> http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/examples-of-cause-related-marketing-for-publishers/feed/ http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/examples-of-cause-related-marketing-for-professional-offices/ http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/examples-of-cause-related-marketing-for-professional-offices/#comments Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:13:44 +0000 Linda http://www.strategicmarketsegmentation.com/blog/?p=245 I’m providing examples of cause related marketing this week. Yesterday’s post provided an example specifically appropriate for retail stores. Today’s post provides examples of cause related marketing for professional offices.

The examples of cause related marketing in this post include one for a medical office, a lawyer’s office and an accountant.

A doctor’s or dentist’s office can assist the local County Health Agency by giving shots or other medical care for people without insurance. The medical professionals benefit by publicity from the event and the good-will it creates. The County Health Agency benefits by getting volunteers, and the people benefit by getting the health care.

A lawyer’s office can do the same with a local legal assistance organization, and an accounting office can collaborate with an Area Senior Citizens organization to provide free tax preparation.

Although these professional offices may not get patients or clients directly, the good will and publicity often does generate additional leads. That’s true of all the examples of cause related marketing provided in this series of posts.

Plus, many people who need help now will later become able to pay services. They will usually select a professional they already know. This is especially true if the professional has helped them in the past.

They may also provide positive word-of-mouth marketing to friends and family who are able to pay for services. But for this to work, you need to provide printed information with your contact information for them to take home with them. A publication about the service provided works well. Just be sure it contains your contact information. Everyone won’t keep the publication, but many will.

Tomorrow’s examples of cause related marketing will apply specifically to small publishers and information product business owners.

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Posted 7-9-08: Examples Of Cause Related Marketing
for Professional Offices

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