So here's a weird coincidence.

Last email I promised I'd send you an advanced tip on how to focus your offers on the people who are actually interested in what you're promoting and avoid pushing stuff at people who aren't.

And then a couple of days later I got asked to contribute to an article on email segmentation on the exact same topic.

I guess there's just something in the air :) 

The issue the tip relates to is when we have a product or topic that might be of interest only to part of our list. Or for times when our product has a long sales cycle so at any given time most people aren't ready to buy.

If we try to message our whole list with our offer we have this dilemma of knowing that more emails will result in more sales. But more emails will also annoy potential customers who just aren't interested in this particular offer or just aren't ready quite yet.

In other words we end up in this trade-off between emailing more to get immediate sales, but risking losing high value potential customers for the future. So usually we end up going for what we think is a safe “middle ground” of a few emails but not too many.

The problem with that is that the middle ground actually means you're sending too many emails for the people who aren't interested but too few for the ones who are.

It's the worst of both worlds.

A better method is to use an initial email to try to identify who's interested in the topic and then mail more to them and less to the people who aren't.

A simple way of doing this is to send a useful email on the topic to your entire list, and in the call to action ask them to click if they'd like more on this topic.

Then you can follow up with the people who clicked with more useful information knowing they're interested so you're not mailing too often. And you don't send the follow-ups to the people who didn't click.

And what that means if you have a relevant product or service is that including calls to action to offer that product or service in the follow up emails won't be seen as too much full-on selling.

Now of course, it's not 100% accurate. There might still be some people who are interested in the topic right now but not in a product or service that could help them with it.

But the vast majority of people interested enough to click a link to hear more about a topic aren't going to get upset if your follow up emails mention a product or service which helps with that topic.

So instead of trying to find a middle ground frequency and tone for everyone, you send more to those who are interested and make more offers; and send less (or nothing) to those who aren't.

And it really does work.

Whenever I launch a new product I try to use this strategy to focus on the people who right now are interested in the areas the product helps with.

I still do one general email to offer the product. But the people who are interested will get at least 3 or more emails on the topic with useful information and the offer.

And I find that almost all my sales come from those who clicked that initial link and got the additional emails.

Net net, I get more sales, but fewer unsubscribes from “not ready now but could be in future” potential customers.

And honestly, it's not that complicated to implement. Just send the initial email, tag anyone who clicks, and then send the next emails to the tagged people.

So while it's an advanced tip conceptually. In practice it becomes quite easy to do.