Maybe you know the graveyard scene from the absurd comedy Zoolander:
Derek Zoolander, a really really good-looking male model played by Ben Stiller, meets former hand model JP Prewett, played by David Duchovny.
They’re meeting in a graveyard at night. Because Duchovny has a dangerous secret to reveal… male models committed all the biggest assassinations in history! And Derek is next in line.
“But why male models?” Derek asks.
“Because they are perfect,” Duchovny says. Male models are in peak physical condition… they get access to the most exclusive locations… and they don’t think for themselves.
Derek ponders on this for a minute. And then he scrunches up his forehead, pouts out his lips, and asks,
“But why male models?”
Don’t judge.
Because for years, I was asking one question in the same stupid way. And then earlier this week, I heard a marketing talk by Dan Kennedy.
The subject was segmentation. It’s not a complicated concept:
You have your audience or your space of prospects. But instead of marketing to everybody… you market to only a segment of the whole.
“But why segmentation?”
Lean in Derek. I’ll tell you the explanations I’d heard for years.
Segmentation is the only way to make expensive direct mail work. You only pay to mail to people who are most likely to buy your offer.
“Ok, go on…”
Segmentation is also a smart way to avoid pissing off your email subscribers. Don’t send them stuff they don’t care about, and they won’t unsubscribe.
“I see…”
But I didn’t really. I kept pondering on this many times over the years.
And like Derek Zoolander, each time I scrunched up my forehead, pouted out my lips, and asked once again,
“But why segmentation?”
Well, it finally clicked. Or rather, I heard Dan Kennedy explain it, and it pierced my thick male-model skull.
The real reason you segment is to increase response.
Because when you segment your list, you know something extra about the people you are writing to. You can take that extra info and stuff it into your message.
For example:
Rather than mailing out a sales letter with the headline, “How to increase your IQ by 30 points in the next 90 days”…
Your headline can read, “How beautiful but dimwitted male models can get equally beautiful brains before Milan Fashion Week 2021.”
When you segment, your message becomes more targeted. Your copy becomes more specific. And your response becomes more up.
This is just one of the many simple direct response levers that even Zoolander could pull to make an unprofitable campaign profitable… or to make a worthless business worthwhile.
Which brings me to my offer of partnership and investment opportunity from yesterday. In case you didn’t read it, you can read the archived version here.