Target Your Audience

Why email targeting matters 

An email is only effective if it reaches the right audience. When determining who to send your email to, only target the people your content will be relevant for. This will help to cut down on irrelevant messages in all our inboxes—irrelevant messages create noise and make it harder for the things that are relevant to capture the recipient’s attention. 

First, some terminology:  

• Segmentation: splitting up your target audience into multiple categories or groups
• Targeting: focusing on creating one population that meets your needs

We’ll mostly be talking about targeting one population here, but know that you can use this information to create multiple groups for segmentation if needed, especially if you are creating different versions of an email for different audiences. 

There are lots of ways to target your audience, it all depends on the data points you have and what your use case is.  

Email targeting sources and examples 

Here are some things that are simple to target or segment on that are available in CRM:

•  Students:
  • Campus
  • Undergraduate/graduate
  • Academic plan code (degree program)
  • School
• Faculty/staff:
  • Department
  • Campus
  • Salary plan code, which maps to things like tenure and tenure-track faculty, full time exempt staff, people leaders, etc.
  • Employment type (faculty, full time staff, part time) 

Advanced and custom targeting

You can use any data you have access and permission to by adding it to a Marketing Cloud data extension with the custom upload option using Convergence Cloud.

The data can come from SIS, a form submission, event RSVPs, or any other source that’s available to you. Here are some examples of ways constituents can be targeted, which may help you get ideas for how to target your population:

•  Students:
  • Eligible to graduate
  • Part of the 21st century scholars program
  • Eligible to register for classes next semester
  • Not registered for any summer classes
  • Lives in on-campus or Greek housing
• Faculty/staff:
  • Building location
  • Teaching a specific class
  • Benefits eligible

The above list is just the beginning. If you know there is a data point that will allow you to more effectively target your constituents, use it!

Need help? We’re here for you!

If you need help with acquiring data, you can submit a data request from our team. Depending on the type of data you’re looking for, it may take longer than our estimated 5 business day turnaround.