MBA2072 How to Segment Your Email List to Improve Conversions + Free Ride Friday
2 Feb 2026 · 4 min
Omar Zenhom breaks down email segmentation: ask new subscribers why they joined with clickable options, tag them based on their answers, then use those tags to trigger targeted follow-ups. Drill deeper into sub-interests like high-ticket vs low-ticket products, monitor clicks to catch deliverability problems, and purge inactive subscribers.
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Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar Ba show helping you build a better business every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away easy course, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course in 30 days. It retails for $500 over at EasyCourse Co or you can win it for Just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday just like today to see if you won. It's that easy. It's our way to say thanks for showing us love on Apple Podcasts. In today's lesson you will learn how to segment your list to improve conversions. One of the biggest mistakes a lot of online entrepreneurs make is they treat everybody on their email list the same. And the truth of the matter is is that your customers are coming to you at different levels, at different stages in their progress of being a buyer with different needs, with a different understanding of what you actually do and can provide. So when you broadcast an email to everybody on your list trying to sell your products or services, you're basically talking to everybody the same. You're selling the same. And that's not how sales works. If you want to increase your conversions, you got to treat people based on their needs. And I'm going to show you how you can segment your list so that when you are making an offer to your email list, you're making an offer to your audience, you drastically improve your conversions because you're speaking directly to them and addressing their particular needs. And most of all, they understand, based on their needs, how your product can help them. What I'm going to teach you today will work on whatever software you use to manage your email lists. Whether it's Mailchimp or ConvertKit or AWeber, it doesn't really matter. All of them are going to be able to do this. So don't worry about the technical stuff. I'm going to walk you through how to do this step by step. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.
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You work hard to grow your email list. You put out great content. You write great blog posts. You might be even spending money on ads and driving traffic to your lead magnets so that you can bring in interested customers. You got the leads, now we got to know how to manage them. The thing about online business is that a lot of us forget that these are still just people. If 30 people showed up to a store, a physical store, you'd probably be looking at 30 different types of people. People with different needs, different wants, different levels of willingness to pay, different preferences, all that kind of stuff. And the same goes with people on your email list. So we got to make sure that we treat them differently so that we can close more sales. I mentioned this a few times, but my father was a car salesman. It was his second career and he was one of the top car salesmen in single year on the east coast of the us. My dad's a non native speaker. He didn't go to business school, he didn't have the gift of gab. But he knew that people were different and one of the things he taught me is that, hey, when you're selling to anybody, it's hard for you to know what to say to them, what to show them, what to teach them. If you don't know what they need, if you don't know anything about them, you need them to tell you in some way where they're at. So my dad would ask a lot of questions when he first met a new customer. And one of the questions he asked really early on was, why are you interested in buying a new car? This question is really important because it revealed a lot of important information. Some people would say, I need a new car that's reliable, that will get me to work every day without me worrying if the car is going to start in the morning. Maybe somebody would say, I'm treating myself. I just retired and I want a new car. That makes me feel like a million bucks. Somebody else might say, I'm not into cars. That's why I get a new car every three or four years, because I have no interest in maintaining and taking care of my car. Three different people, three different answers. And now he has a bit of information to know how to approach this customer. Now that we know that this is really important and that this works, we're going to apply the same thing to our own email list. When anybody joins your email list, it's really important to ask them the question, why are you interested in X? X being whatever you offer your area of expertise. If you're a coach or trainer, X could be your product, just like the new car example, X could be asking, hey, what's the problem? Like when somebody goes to the doctor's office, hey, why did you come into the doctor? How can help you today? And this is really, really good information. Now you might be saying, how do I actually do this on email? Well, you can just simply be transparent. A great technique is for you to one ask this question. Let's use webinar Ninja, my webinar software, for example. I might ask the question, hey, thanks for joining our email list. Why are you interested in running webinars? Some of the things that could be on this list are I want to grow my audience, or I want to sell live workshops, or I want to sell my own products. And I might list, you know, about four or five of these things on the email. And what I would do is I would hyperlink each of these with a blog post, with a piece of content, with maybe a video or even maybe a Twitter thread that's on that topic, and just flat out tell Them, hey, click on the one that pertains to you. It'll take you to a page where you can learn a little bit more about this topic and it will let me know what you're really interested in so I can give you more content like that. I also like to include an additional option saying I'm not sure yet. Sometimes people are not really sure why they want to do something that means they're really early on in their journey. And I would link that choice to maybe a very basic blog post, something that's a beginner type of content. Now the reason why I want them to click on a link is because in my email marketing software I can easily tell the software, hey, when they click on this link in my email, tag them in this way, give them this tag and you can just create tags with the names of each topic like in my example here. Grow my audience. Sell my workshops. Sell my products. Now I know what the needs are of the people on my email list. This is huge, guys. This is gonna really, really change the game. Now that I have them all tagged properly, I can now set some automations in my email marketing software based on that tag so I can make the tag the trigger saying, hey, when the person is marked with this tag, I want you to start this automation. And what I like to do is give them a series of emails. Now that I understand their needs and the main reason why they signed up, I can even drill a little bit further in. So for example, if somebody clicked, I am interested in webinars because I want to sell live workshops. That tag would trigger an automation that would start sending some specific emails based on how to sell live workshops with my software. And now we're going to drill in even more. I might have an email that says selling live workshops on webinars is really easy with webinar ninja, whether you're selling low priced items or high ticket items. And I would link each of those with specific trainings on how to sell a low price item with my software and high price items with my software. And these could be short 3 minute videos on my website, but again I am tagging them when they click. So I know this person's not only interested in selling live workshops but but they're going to be selling live workshops as a high ticket item, meaning that the price of the workshop is quite expensive. In my world that means, hey, this person is going to need a little bit more nurturing of their audience in order for them to get an ROI or get a sale using my software. So I got to show them more content on how to do that. And you guessed it, a new automation gets triggered and they're given specific information on that topic. Now, when I make an offer in this automation, I'm using all the language and all the pain points and all the needs based on all the data points I've gathered. So my offer email might say, you know, it does take some time to grow your audience and build trust with that audience to be able to sell them a high ticket live workshop. This is why with our software we have automated webinars allowing you to start growing your list and build trust in an automated fashion. You can then lead people from your automated webinars to your live workshops where you can give them a demo of your paid high ticket masterclasses. And I can show them the value of my product based on what they said they need, instead of me kind of shooting in the dark and listing all the different ways they can use my product that don't pertain to them. Like somebody who's selling a high ticket live workshop or live training, they're not really interested in running an open Q and A interview style webinar that they can use on their YouTube channel. That's kind of cool and maybe interesting to them, but it's not a driving force or a driving reason for them to buy. Just like somebody who said they want to buy a new car because they want to treat themselves because they're retiring, it's nice to know that the car is reliable, but that's not the main reason why they're buying the car. So as you can see, these automations really, really allow you to convert at a higher level because you're speaking specifically to somebody with specific, specific needs, wants, desires, and real problems that you can solve with your product. Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter? Right? And the best part, they accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh yeah, huh? Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on, baby, get with the times. Right, so we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback, I think. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. So to wrap up today's lesson, asking some questions and linking and tagging with your email, automation allows you to really put your customers into segments, into buckets so that you know that this group needs these things. So I need to address those needs. And this group has different needs. Now, why is this actually Important? Well, because from the customer's perspective, they start to feel like you're talking directly to them. Like your product, your service, is exactly what they've been looking for. It's built for them, when in fact you built it for many kinds of people. But you're showing them how your product can be used with their needs. Now, this does take a little bit more work to set up, but it pays dividends because you tend to have more engaged email list subscribers, people that get used to clicking. And clicking is very important in email marketing for many reasons. One, when you send an email out and there's a bunch of choices for them to choose, and they choose something, they click something, they get to habit. When they get an email from you, they're going to click something. You do this a few times, they're going to understand that your emails are all about clicking. It's all subconscious. So that when you send them an offer, guess what they're going to do? They're going to click, they're going to check out your offer. The other thing is that this does wonders for your deliverability and your email cred with inboxes. Because when anybody interacts with your email, it sends a signal that your email address is really credible, that people actually like your emails. And they're clicking links in emails, that means it's not spam. That means it's actually something that they want to receive. This allows open rates to skyrocket. This allows your emails to go into the inbox, not the promo folder. This sends all positive signals to the email providers that you're sending to. And lastly, when many or most of your emails ask them to click something and somebody does not click on your emails over and over, they do not click on any of your emails. This is a very strong signal that this person is just not interested and you should stop spending your time and money on having them on your list. As a last chance effort, after sending I would say two months of emails, I like to send an email, a very short and sweet email, to people that have never clicked on anything and say, hey, are you still interested in growing your business with webinars? In my example, you might be saying, are you still interested in learning how to eat healthy and get fit? Reply and let me know. That's it. Short, sweet email, that's it. If they don't reply and let you know, it's time to purge them. It's time to get them off your database. If they do reply, guess what? An opportunity for you to ask some questions and learn why have they been uninterested for so long? How can you get them interested? How can you get them over the fence? This is a great opportunity. When anybody replies to you, this is a sales conversation. This is a chance for you to close that sale. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss a beat. Today's episode is not over though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's hear who won this week's Free Ride and the winner is Moriak. Moriak says Great information in bite sized chunks 5 stars this is one of my favorite daily podcasts. I've been listening every day for the last few months since I've ever heard about it. Everything's actionable and easy to do in my business or any other business for that matter. Moriac, thank you so much for leaving us that amazing review on Apple Podcasts. Your mission is to email me over at omar@100mba.net so I can hook you up with a lifetime membership to Easy Course over at EasyCourse co. It's our 30 day course on how to build your own online course. It retails for $500 but you just want it for free lifetime access. If you want to win a free ride just like Moriak just did today, just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Freeride Friday. Listen in on Friday just like today to see if you won. It's that easy. Before I go, I want to leave you with this out of all the ways to sell online, email marketing still, till today, converts the highest. And when you have something that works, the best thing you can do is optimize it. Make it work better. So your time investment in building out these automations tags and learning a little bit more about your subscribers so you can serve them better is an investment that is worth making. It will differentiate you from the marketplace. You'll get your customers raving about your emails and saying hey, I actually like opening these emails because they're interesting. What they really mean is it's interesting to them and you don't have to do them all at once. Just get started. Just start with that welcome email. We ask them why are they interested in buying X so at least you can start tagging them and knowing what they need. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.
Building a Portfolio with Fidelity Basket portfolios is kind of like making a sandwich. It's as simple as picking your stocks and ETFs, sort of like your meats and other topics and managing it as one big juicy investment. Mmm. Now that's pretty good. Learn more@fidelity.com baskets Investing involves risks, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member NYSE SIPC.
