Simitless helps sales agents segment their list
App 53/60: Segmented Mailing List
Simitless helps marketers and sales agents segment their mailing lists.
When you are pressed for time, it can be tempting to launch large-scale communication campaigns, hoping to reach as many people as possible. At the end of the day, don’t they always say that the more, the better? Throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks, because something must stick, you keep convincing yourself. Yet, although not as obvious as one would have hoped, it is a trap that many of the marketers and sales agents get themselves into. And here is why. The problem with large-scale communication campaigns is their lack of focus. Often, the messages of such campaigns are too generic, too broad, too nonspecific. They pique nobody’s interest. They want to address everyone and end up addressing nobody at all. You, as a recipient, have surely experienced it for yourself too many times to bother to even remember. Receiving unsolicited and much too vague messages, without having the slightest clue of why you are receiving the message or how the sender got your email address in the first place, are by now part of everyone’s daily routine. No wonder that such messages are more often than not destined to end up in this one particular place – . Trashed messages are, unfortunately, not simply every marketer’s nightmare but are a huge loss for the business, both in not attracting new customers and in appearing, well, "spam-y". And yet, the answer to how to avoid this problem lies on the surface. According to modern communication practices recommendations, properly segmenting your communication list is a key to success of any marketing campaign. But what does a proper communication list segmentation look like? Well, as a rule of thumb, one can segment a list using 4 main types of characteristics: demographic (age, income, position, title), psychographic (personality), behavioral and geographic. Indeed, if you consider the matter from a point of view of logics, if your audience is not a uniform group, why would or should you address everyone in the same manner?
Ok, now that we are clear about the conceptual part of segmentation… how is one to go about actually segmenting the list that one has? Does one need to hire someone to do it? If so, that does sound to be rather pricey… Maybe there is an app for that? And indeed there is! A simple, yet powerful application model for segmenting your contact list, brought to you by Simitless. With such an app at your fingertips, boosting your communication, enhancing your collaboration, and polishing up the effects of your marketing efforts would feel as easy as pie. And all it takes to make the life of a marketer and sales agents bearable is a centralized database that enables you to manage your contact list efficiently. Did we manage to pique your interest? If so, let’s have a look at what Simitless platform and in particular the app in question looks like.
Consult the application model, then click the " Use this model" button to create your copy of the app. Simitless is a system that adapts to your needs. Plus, it is risk-free. How so, you wonder? Well, Simitless does not require any disproportionate investment upfront to set your application up and running: try out the app first and then pay only for the necessary resources. At any time, you can either improve and grow your application, or, on the contrary, reduce its size and cut down on its capabilities. To save your progress, think of creating an account by following the instructions on the green buttons! Once your application has been created from the model provided, invite all of your employees to join your application by creating a Simitless account. ( Edit application Access rights)
The application itself is very simple. By default, each contact record contains a name, an email address, a categories field and a notes field. But you need not stop there! To make your application a perfect fit for you and your business’s needs, add as many and as narrowly-defined fields as you require.
Now, on to customization. The first customization step consists in specifying the segmentation categories that correspond to your products or services. Go to the "Categories" type edition menu of your application Edit app Edit data type Category Click on "Manage selection values". The text box shows the value that is going to be displayed, when you switch from app editing view to data input view. Modify this value in accordance with your requirements. The value to its right, on the other hand, is the one stored in the database. This value remains behind the scenes – i.e. it remains invisible in the data input view –, it purpose is to describe the "content" of the field. For example, if you are designing a bilingual app, the value on the right will describe the content of the field, say that the field is going to deal with events. The value on the left – the one that you are going to see when inputting data – can be tailored to say either "Events" – for the English language version of the app –, or "Événement" – for the French language version –, or "Veranstaltung" – for the German language version. Continue adding as many values as necessary to the bottom of the list, and reorder them to your heart’s content whenever you want.
Now, on to the second customization step. This step is optional, and consists in configuring access to your SMTP server (sending email server) to allow the platform to send emails directly from your address. If you use a free email provider, you will quickly be blocked by the sending quotas that most carriers impose. These quotas often amount to something around 200 recipients per day or 600 messages per month. I would, therefore, suggest that you open an "SMTP service" account. This is the email sending service. Professionals typically use specialized providers to ensure the proper delivery of their emails. It is a paid service, but it can remain affordable if it is well configured. You can choose from many providers such as Mailjet, MailGun or Sendgrid. Once your account is created, you can add the information of this account into your Simitless app settings, and Simitless will take care of sending your emails through this service, directly from the Simitless interface.
Once your app is all set, you can import your customer list. In addition to direct manual input, Simitless supports the import of CSV files, a very common and versatile information exchange format. Thus, if the files with your customer lists come in the .csv format, there should be no issue for the Simitless platform to handle their import. Give it a try!
Et voilà! Congratulations, your shiny new application for segmenting your customer list is all set up and ready to go. You can easily segment your contact lists in accordance with the profiles your marketing campaign is looking to address. And with this major hurdle of "dividing and conquering" out of the way, you have secured more time for yourself to arrange better collaboration and structure communication-related task delegation more effectively.
If you want more features, but don't think you know how to modify your application yourself, talk to your local IT specialist, we will support them in setting up your system for you! For a limited time, while we are working on setting up our consultant network, we can personally assist you with getting your system up and running.