386 - More Segments, More Problems: Rethinking Email Segmentation

Segmentation sounds like the answer to everything. The right message to the right person at the right time - that's the dream. And to be clear, I'm a segment stan. Smart segmentation is one of the most powerful things you can do for your email program.

But the conversation around it is almost always one-directional: more segments, more targeting, more personalization. And at a certain point, that stops being true.

I see brands build 12, 20, who even knows how many segments - and end up spending more time managing those segments than actually sending good campaigns. The result is a sophisticated-looking account generating less revenue than a simpler setup would. More segments doesn't automatically mean more revenue. Often it just means more complexity for the sake of complexity.

There's also a math problem most brands don't see coming. When you fracture your engaged list into smaller segments, you're sending to fewer people - and the lift in open rates doesn't always make up for the drop in volume. Worse, when you send one campaign to five "different" segments, there's almost always massive overlap. You're not reaching new people. You're just hitting your most engaged subscribers more often.

In this episode, I break down when segmentation starts working against you, the simple test for deciding which segments are actually worth keeping, and what a leaner, more sustainable segmentation strategy actually looks like.

✨ In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why more segments doesn't automatically mean more revenue - and can actually mean less

• The real workload cost of maintaining too many segments

• The math problem most brands don't realize they have when they over-segment

• Why sending one campaign to five "different" segments often just means hitting the same people more often

• Why using a completely different segment for every send leaves you with no baseline to learn from

• The simple test for deciding whether a segment is actually worth keeping

• Why segments with only 10-20 people are usually adding noise, not value

• What a leaner segmentation strategy looks like: one engaged foundation plus a small number of intentional layers

A leaner set of segments you actually use is worth far more than an elaborate setup that mostly just looks impressive.

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