MailChimp segments versus groups

As a MailChimp trainer, I’m often asked about Groups and Segments. A recent question was: “How can I can send different messages to different Subscribers?”  This is one of the reasons that I moved to MailChimp – I wanted to be able to communicate with ‘groups of people with shared needs’ and MailChimp can does this with style via Groups / Segments.

My first piece of advice is to have just one List. If this is challenging, then have as few Lists as you possibly can.

I see Groups as a way of dividing people up (i.e. dormant customers, current customers, prospective customers, ‘London customers’) etc.

I see Segments as a way of working with the data that MailChimp generates, i.e. recent subscribers, most engaged subscribers etc.

On this basis, start by thinking about your customers and divide them into appropriate Groups. If you wish to create a Group, first select – or create – a List. Then choose: Manage subscribers / Groups. Click ‘Create Groups’. You can add subscribers to Groups in a number of ways. To add an individual subscriber to a Group, view their Profile and scroll down to see ‘Groups subscribed to’.

Once you have built up a reasonably large List and sent out a few Campaigns (i.e. newsletters in MailChimp terminology), you will find that the Segments option really kicks into life – as it now has data to work with.

I offer MailChimp training on a 1-2-1 basis, for teams and audiences of any size. If you would like to get the best out of this email marketing software – by all means get in touch.

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