1. Find the people most likely to respond

Let’s say you sent your big mailing two weeks ago and you’d like to drum up a bit more action, but you want to send something more targeted this time. This is the perfect opportunity to send a campaign to the people most likely to read, click, or respond.

Who gets included in this list? That’s up to you. It might include everyone who’s opened one of your mailings in the past three months. Or it might include only those folks who’ve clicked one of your links in the past month. By tinkering with the response criteria and range, you can whittle your most-likely list down to your ideal size — big enough to generate results but small enough to fit your needs.

2. See how different groups are responding

Let’s say your last mailing generated a 10% click-through rate. But you sent the mailing to two different groups, and you’d love to know how that click-through rate varied by group. You can create a segment that tells you just that.

Start by creating a segment based on groups and choose Group A. Then narrow your search to find the members of Group A who clicked during a certain range of dates, such as the five days following your send. Save your segment, and then create a similar one for Group B. You’ve now got a quick snapshot of clicks by group and a general sense of how your campaign fared among the different audience members who received it.

3. Find your least active recipients

Dealing with bounces is fairly straightforward: A server rejects your email to a particular person and we report that rejection. But what about people who don’t show up as bounces, but simply don’t respond? These so-called non-responders can be tricky to find, but with segmenting, it’s quite easy.

Start by creating a segment based on response history and select your criteria to find everyone who’s received your mailings over a period of time, but never opened or clicked. Just remember that opens are not a rock-solid tracking number because some folks might receive the plaintext versions of your emails (and not click any links). So it’s highly possible that some people who show up in your non-responder list will have received your emails; they just haven’t ever seen your images or clicked any of your links.

What now? You might send a special mailing to your non-responders asking them to confirm their opt-in to stay on your email list.

4. Find your limbo contacts

When people join your list, they’re typically assigned to a specific group or groups, either because you’ve added or imported them directly into those groups, or because they’ve signed up using your signup form, which automatically adds them to the groups you’ve specified.

If you suspect there may be people in your audience who don’t belong to any groups and are floating around your account, there’s an easy way to find them. Create a segment based on groups and choose the option to find the members in limbo (not in any groups). If you have any limbo members, this will find them, and you can now decide where to put them.