Friend,

I apologize for sending this 30 minutes late. My wife just flew back in town tonight and we went for an impromptu dinner with the kids.

Looks like I need to have these done more in advance. 😆

That being said…

Do you know who your subscribers really are?

The highest converting newsletter signup forms consist of a single input field for subscribers to enter their email and submit.

For every additional field included on a signup page, the conversion rate tends to drop.

This is why the top newsletters in the biz only require your email to join.

Depending on your niche or business additional fields may be required. There are a bunch of studies that show you how additional fields can also improve conversion rates.

But for this insight, we will focus on individuals signing up for a newsletter only.

If we are only asking for an email address, how can we know who are subscribers really are?

For starters…

The best way to acquire information about your subscribers is to ask them.

Adding an onboarding survey after the initial email submission is a great way to gather additional information without the chances of hurting your conversion rate on the front end.

When you subscribed to this newsletter you may have filled out my survey below, which helps me to identify who my subscribers are and what they are most interested in.

👉 Take The Audience Bridge Subscriber Survey Now!

You can use your survey to gather…

• Demographic information (gender, age, ethnicity, etc.)

• Interests (sports, comedy, fitness, movies, music, etc.)

• Work-related information (role, industry, company, etc.)

• Finances (income level, investments, etc.)

• and more.

If you haven’t set up a survey to capture additional subscriber information I recommend you do it now.

The step 2 survey!

You have just captured a new subscriber, and there’s no better time to ask for additional feedback on who they are.

Ideally, your subscriber signup widget or landing page platform has the ability to add additional steps to the signup process.

For example, on Beehiiv you can seamlessly integrate a survey into the subscribe now process.

Full instructions on how to implement them can be found here.

What to ask

Depending on your target audience you need to decide what the most important data points you would like to identify and why.

In my case I wanted to identify:

• The Subscriber Name (to personalize messages)

• If they have an email list (helps me to know where in the newsletter process they are)

• Their Role (helps me to identify subscriber skill level and actual decision makers)

• What they need help with (helps me identify what content to publish and what offers in the future to promote/create)

Don’t think you need to try and capture everything about your subscribers right off the bat.

There are many ways to skin that cat including using 3rd party data providers to give you audience insights.

3rd Party Data Appends

If you are unfamiliar with 3rd party data appends, it’s the simple process of using an identifier (email, phone, or name + address) and grabbing specific information about that individual.

This is a great way to get the demographic makeup of your audience without having to ask them to provide that information.

There are a number of data service providers, but the ones I’ve used the most are:

• DataZapp

• AtData formerly Tower Data

• Email Oversight

The data comes with a fee but understanding the makeup of your audience is invaluable.

You can append the data in real-time using their API or request bulk appends by uploading your list.

Common appends we utilize are gender, age, state of residence, zip, and political affiliation.

The types of data you can append are endless.

Including…

• Ethnicity

• Interests

• Income Level

• Education

• Marital Status

• Date of Birth

…and more.

You can pretty much find an append for anything you can dream of.

Now what do we do with these audience insights?

There are a number of strategies that can be implemented with the data you now have.

The most utilized implementation of the data comes in the personalization of your email content.

The most obvious use case is using the subscriber’s name in your greeting.

For example, in customer.io you can provide an if statement using the liquid templating language to greet your subscriber by their first name or a default greeting.

{% if customer.first_name %}
   Hi {{customer.first_name}}!
{% else %}
   Hi Buddy!
{% endif %}

Every ESP has its own syntax for personalizing your emails. For example, in Beehiiv it looks like this.

Hello {{first_name|there}}!

Outside of greetings, you could provide specific content based on a specific data field like their location to show content related to the city or state they live in.

Use the data to set up specific automations to reach out to your subscribers.

Based on the data you received, especially if you use the survey format you can include different welcome emails based on the subscriber’s response.

Other standard use cases are event-based reminders like birthdays, anniversaries, and winbacks.

Want to deliver specific content to only those subscribers who fit the demographic you are targeting?

Set up your segments based on what you know about them.

Use the data to help identify content ideas.

By analyzing your subscriber data you will have a better idea of what content they are looking to receive from you.

And finally, you can use the data for targeting your ad buys.

You will clearly understand who your demographic is and what their interests are.

Utilize this information to set up the correct audiences on platforms like Facebook, Google, and 𝕏.

Now you can not only own your audience, you know exactly what they need.

Remember… I know who you are 😉.

Til next week,
Chris Miquel

Follow me on Twitter: @miqchris

And on LinkedIn at: chrismiquel