Mailing List Segmentation

Major mailing list management programs, such as Constant Contact and MailChip, offer users a list segmentation function. You use this to divide your list members into sub-lists. For example, I might want to send a particular email exclusively to women who've taken one of my self-defense classes, or to those who've taken my safe rolling & falling class.

Large organizations don't always take advantage of this to the extent possible. I get a lot of email from San Francisco Symphony, and some of it - weekly reminders about which concert will be on this week - I don't necessarily need to see. I checked with them recently, and they do have plans to segment their list more than it's currently segmented.

This morning, I've got email from San Francisco Opera encouraging me to subscribe to the summer, 2018 production of Der Ring des Nibelungen. Evidently, they're also a little behind at mailing list segmentation: I applied for Ring tickets in January, and I already have the confirmation of where I'm sitting.

It's admittedly more difficult for an organization with thousands of addresses on its mailing list to segment that list than it is for me: I have around 125 people on my list. Still, it's possible to run a script comparing existing Ring ticket purchasers with the full SFO mailing list. Tessitura might even have such a function built in, for all I know. Heck, it's possible to do this by dumping the information into a spreadsheet, and it can't even be that difficult to write a little macro to create a non-Ring mailing list to get this stuff.

I note that I'm not particularly bothered by the extra email suggesting I subscribe. Some sections, for some of the cycles, are selling out fast, I've heard from people who bought tickets this week. So anyone who is thinking of going really should get going on their tickets, before the Ringheads snap them all up.

When Databases Don't Communicate

I received the following somewhat amusing email from San Francisco Opera:

We noticed you were looking into Rigoletto. We're thrilled to present a dazzling cast under the baton of Music Director Nicola Luisotti, who infuses this classic masterpiece with "breathless urgency" (San Francisco Chronicle). Home | Contact Us

Dear Lisa, We noticed you were looking into Rigoletto. We're thrilled to present a dazzling cast under the baton of Music Director Nicola Luisotti, who infuses this classic masterpiece with "breathless urgency" (San Francisco Chronicle). We look forward to seeing you at the Opera House soon!

LISTEN TO THE MUSIC BUY TICKETS Questions? Our friendly and knowledgeable Box Office staff are here to help!

Only somewhat amusing, because

1) It's ambiguous whether this is trying to sell me a ticket, but I bought a Rigoletto ticket last year
2) most people don't understand how an email such as the above even gets sent
3) some percentage of SFO customers will find it upsetting to receive email such as this

Either I was logged in to the SFO web site when I last looked around at who was singing what or the site deduced my identity from a tracking cookie. That information went to the marketing software that sent me the email above, but there is no point in this process where the ticketing database is checked to see whether the target (that's me) already has a ticket. (I think, because it's ambiguous.)

I'll probably be sending this email along to the right person at SFO to suggest adding such a check, but in the meantime, I've got an addition to the publicity basics page: Don't Make Your Customers Think You Are Stalking Them.