One Audience or Several? How to Organize Your Contacts to Optimize Your Marketing | Mailchimp (2024)

6 benefits of maintaining a single audience, and when to create more

One Audience or Several? How to Organize Your Contacts to Optimize Your Marketing | Mailchimp (1)

The way you organize your contacts can make the difference between targeted, personalized marketing and a one-size-fits-all approach.

So how and when should you create new audiences in Mailchimp? It's one of the most common questions we hear from customers, along with the misconception that separate audiences should be created for contacts based on shared characteristics like where they're located or what types of products they're interested in.

In reality, your Mailchimp audience should be all-encompassing: it’s where you keep everything you know about everyone you know, so you can get a holistic understanding of the people who keep your business growing. Maintaining a single audience still allows you to send targeted messages to contacts with shared characteristics—in fact, it makes it easier. Read on to learn all the benefits of a one-audience approach (and a few exceptions to the rule).

Your Mailchimp audience is where you keep everything you know about everyone you know, so you can get a holistic understanding of the people who keep your business growing.

6 key benefits of a single audience

Having all your data in one place within Mailchimp creates a single source of truth for insights about your people, making it much easier to get an understanding of who your audience is as a whole.

This holistic view is important for your marketing for several key reasons:

  1. It helps you get a better understanding of your people. Particularly if your business is just starting out, having 1 audience helps you see a clearer picture of who you’re talking to, and who you should be talking to (it may not be what you’d expect). But seeing trends across your entire audience is helpful for businesses at any stage of growth.

  2. Targeting is more effective with all your contact data in 1 place. A single audience makes it easier to use tools like tags and segments to organize insights about subsets of contacts while still keeping an eye on your audience as a whole, and lets you use pre-built segments with confidence, knowing you’re reaching everyone who meets a particular criteria.

  3. A single audience simplifies sending. Not only does maintaining 1 audience make sending to tags and segments more effective, it also makes it a lot easier if you do want to send a message to your entire audience. Rather than replicating content across siloed audiences, just select everyone you want to send to—all in 1 send.

  4. You can keep tabs on trends—and quickly take action. Just because your business is growing doesn’t mean you need to create new audiences. Continuing to add contacts to your existing audience can help you spot changing patterns in your data at a glance—and find new ways to talk to people as your audience evolves.

  5. It helps preserve data. When you have a central location to look for details about your people, data is unlikely to get siloed or overlooked—or lost in the shuffle of moving data from one audience into another (and this is particularly important if you’re using GDPR forms to collect consent).

  6. It makes it easier to maintain your contact data as you grow. With one view of your contacts and one complete record of their engagement history, it’s easier to decide if it’s time to re-engage or archive contacts.

Just because your business is growing doesn’t mean you need to create new audiences. Adding to your existing audience can help you find new ways to talk to people as your audience evolves.

When to create a second (or third) audience

While growth in itself isn’t a good reason to create additional audiences, some businesses may notice trends as they grow that do justify a need to create more than 1 audience in Mailchimp. The most tell-tale sign is when you start to see distinctly different subsets of people you need to communicate with, with no crossover in contacts or messages you’d want to send to both.

Here are a couple of examples where separate audiences may be the best option for your business:

  • If you have a B2B and B2C side to your business. If you market to both vendors and buyers—or 2 distinctly different types of customers—through Mailchimp, it may be best to keep these audiences separate. This is particularly true if you know you’ll want to dig into reporting to understand trends and performance separately for these audiences (and not just the campaigns you send to them) over time.

  • If you communicate to both internal and external audiences. For businesses that talk to both employees and customers through Mailchimp, keeping these audiences separate may be useful to keep performance data cleaner—and make sure you never accidentally send a message with sensitive information to an external audience.

In cases like the ones described above, where you’ll never want to talk to distinctly different audiences in the same way (or where crossover in messages may actually be a liability), maintaining separate audiences can help you keep content, reporting, and insights separate across these 2 (or more) subsets of people. But in many cases, using tools like tags and segments to target within one audience is the best—and easiest—option.

One Audience or Several? How to Organize Your Contacts to Optimize Your Marketing | Mailchimp (2)

Fewer audiences, more targeting

As a general rule, before you create a new audience it’s a good idea to stop and ask yourself if organizational tools like tags or segments could get the job done (and still let you maintain a single view of your audience).

Here are a few examples where targeting within a single audience is far more effective than creating new audiences:

  • Instead of creating a new audience for contacts you met at an event, use a tag to note where you met them when you upload the list of new contacts into your existing audience. You can even set up an automation to trigger based on that tag, so you can easily follow up with these contacts in a personalized way—without separating them from the rest of your audience.

  • Instead of creating separate audiences for contacts located in different cities, keep all of these contacts in one audience and use the pre-built segments on your audience dashboard to reach out to contacts based on their location—just click and go.

  • Instead of creating a new audience for all contacts that share a particular interest, use tags to note anything you need to about your contacts’ preferences. Common tags across your contacts can also be seen in your audience dashboard, so you can target these tags with campaigns in just a few clicks.

  • Instead of creating a separate audience for new contacts to welcome them or share onboarding information, use segments to target messaging based on signup date, while still keeping new contacts in the same audience as the rest of your customers. Bonus: with the audience dashboard, you can quickly reach segments of new contacts based on their sign-up source, so you can get even more targeted with your messages.

In short, keeping contact data as consolidated as possible makes it simpler to get a holistic view of your audience, makes it easier to use flexible tools like tags and segments to target messages based on insights, and ultimately sets you up for smarter growth.

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One Audience or Several? How to Organize Your Contacts to Optimize Your Marketing | Mailchimp (2024)

FAQs

Can you have more than one audience in Mailchimp? ›

As a best practice, we recommend you maintain only one primary audience in Mailchimp, and use tags and segments to organize and target your contacts. If you have multiple audiences, you can use our combine audiences tool to merge them together.

How many audience will Mailchimp allow you to create? ›

With the Premium plan, you can store up to 200,000 contacts. The monthly send limit is 15 times your maximum contact count. If you want to store more than 200,000 contacts, let us know and we'll customize a plan for you.

What is the best way to organize Contacts? ›

In addition, the Android app lets you organize your contacts more efficiently. Tap your avatar and go to Contacts app settings—under Display and Edit contacts, you'll be able to sort contacts by first name or last name, or to show or hide phonetic names.

What is the best way to organize business Contacts? ›

The best way to organize contacts is to gather these details in one location to make a centralized database. If you use JustCall, you can easily centralize your contacts without hassle. JustCall makes it straightforward to import contact information from several sources.

Can you have more than one target audience? ›

It's not uncommon for businesses to have more than one target audience or ideal customer, especially since Covid-19 witnessed many companies having to pivot and adapt their products and services to cater to a new normal.

How do you create an audience? ›

Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Audience
  1. Start with what you know. ...
  2. Use social media to engage audiences. ...
  3. Focus on audience preferences. ...
  4. Use postcards to stand out. ...
  5. Expand your landing page traffic. ...
  6. Team up with complementary businesses. ...
  7. Create an omnichannel marketing strategy. ...
  8. Keep up your expansion.

What is the difference between contacts and subscribers in Mailchimp? ›

Subscribed Contacts opted in to receive your email campaigns. Non-subscribed Contacts interacted with your online store, but haven't opted in to receive your email marketing campaigns.

What are audiences in Mailchimp? ›

Your Mailchimp audience is where you keep everything you know about everyone you know, so you can get a holistic understanding of the people who keep your business growing.

Can you have 4 columns in Mailchimp? ›

Create a 4-column layout

Select a 2-column template, add a Text block to each column, then make each block 2 columns.

Is a Mailchimp list the same as an audience? ›

Your list is now your audience in Mailchimp—and it comes with lots of new insights. Here's what you need to know. Your Mailchimp audience is much more than a list of email addresses. It's your people: your fans, your advocates, the customers who tell the world about your brand and keep coming back for more.

How do I segment my audience in Mailchimp? ›

Create a segment
  1. Click Audience.
  2. Click Segments.
  3. If you have more than one audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
  4. Click Create Segment.
  5. Set the drop-down menus to Date Added | is after | last campaign was sent.
  6. Click Preview Segment.
  7. Click Edit to make any changes.

How do I move contacts between audiences in Mailchimp? ›

Click Audience. Click All contacts. Click the Current audience drop-down and choose the audience you want to move subscribers from. If you want to work with a specific section of your audience, click Manage contacts, and choose Groups or Segments.

Should I use groups or tags in Mailchimp? ›

Groups are intended to be contact-facing, so you can collect information based on what your contacts tell you about themselves or their preferences. If you don't need to let your contacts categorize themselves, and you're looking for a way to organize contacts internally, consider using tags instead.

Can I organize my contacts into groups? ›

You can group contacts together with labels. On your Android phone or tablet, open the Contacts app . At the bottom, tap Contacts. Create label.

Does contact groups help keep your contacts organized? ›

As you can see, contact groups are great tools for organizing your Google Contacts. They can save you some time in the future when you're looking for a particular contact, and make it much easier to communicate with a group of individuals.

What is an effective way to organize your contacts within Outlook? ›

To sort your contacts, do the following:
  1. Click People.
  2. Click Home > Current View > List.
  3. Click the column heading you want to sort on. For example, to show your contacts alphabetically by last name, click File As.

Why is contact list important in business? ›

Contact list validation is a methodology to capture and store accurate and clean customer data. It enhances the accuracy of the database. An efficient validation solution helps in automatically verifying, correcting, and standardizing the data. It is important to assure the authenticity of the data as well.

Why is it important to effectively manage contacts? ›

Contact management is essential for keeping digital records of customer data. Contact management is the process of storing and tracking data on customers and leads. In addition to providing quick access to customer data, investing in contact management can help you grow and diversify your customer base.

What are the 4 types of audiences? ›

The 4 Types of Audience
  • Friendly. Your purpose: reinforcing their beliefs and sense of shared interests.
  • Apathetic. Your purpose is to first convince them that it matters for them.
  • Uninformed. Your requirement is to educate before you can begin to propose a course of action.
  • Hostile.
May 11, 2021

What are the 3 types of audiences? ›

Three categories of audience are the "lay" audience, the "managerial" audience, and the "experts." The "lay" audience has no special or expert knowledge.

What are the 6 types of audiences? ›

Author Jeffrey Rohrs identifies six types of audiences in his book Audience: Marketing In The Age Of Subscribers, Fans and Followers.
  • Seekers. ...
  • Amplifiers. ...
  • Joiners. ...
  • VIP Joiners: Subscribers. ...
  • VIP Joiners: Fans. ...
  • VIP Joiners: Followers.
Jun 6, 2014

What are some examples of audience? ›

Audience Definition

Some general examples of an audience in literature would be children, young adults, or adults. For example, The Boxcar Children series was written for an audience of children, The Hunger Games series was written for young adults, and the Broken Earth series was written for adults.

What makes a good audience? ›

Being a good audience member is a characteristic that guarantees your respect in your relevant community. Good listeners are engaged and respectful of the presenter while trying to make a genuine connection, smiling, listening, nodding their heads and make the most of their time spent attending the presentation.

What are audience give example? ›

An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called "readers"), theatre, music (in which they are called "listeners"), video games (in which they are called "players"), or academics in any medium.

How do I clean up my Mailchimp audience? ›

To delete a single contact from their profile page, follow these steps.
  1. Click Audience.
  2. Click All contacts.
  3. If you have more than one audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
  4. Click the contact to open their profile.
  5. Click the Actions drop-down and choose Remove contacts.

What is a cleaned contact? ›

Cleaned contacts have email addresses that have hard bounced or repeatedly soft bounced, and are considered invalid. In this article, you'll learn about cleaned contacts and how to view or fix them.

What is the difference between a subscriber and a contact? ›

Contacts and Subscribers

A contact is a person you send messages to through any marketing channel. A contact typically appears in the All Contacts section, but a contact record can also appear in other locations. A subscriber is a person who opted to receive communications or belongs to a particular channel.

What are the 4 areas of audience analysis? ›

4 components of a complete audience analysis
  • Demographics. Probably the most popular categories among marketers, demographics provide the foundations of a thorough audience evaluation. ...
  • Psychographics. ...
  • Prior knowledge. ...
  • Usage patterns.

What are the different types of audiences in marketing? ›

Here are the three types of audiences that are assets to your social strategy.
  • Influencers. Influencers are those individuals in a community who affect purchase decisions, due to (real or imagined) influence, position, knowledge, relationship, or authority. ...
  • Brand Advocates. ...
  • Customer Advocates.

Who are audiences in marketing? ›

For marketing purposes, your audience is broadly defined as anyone your business and/or brand engages with, either directly or indirectly. Where most marketers go wrong: They only focus on customers, often at the risk of saying something that offends another key segment.

Can you have 3 columns in Mailchimp? ›

Some email templates include pre-built column layouts. If yours doesn't already have them, it's easy to create two, three, four, or five columns using the pre-built layout blocks found on the Build tab.

Why do I have 3 stars on Mailchimp? ›

Three stars: Low engagement, clicking some links in the campaigns; they may be inconsistently engaged, or still relatively new. Four stars: Moderate engagement, often clicking on links in your campaigns. Five stars: High engagement, often clicking consistently.

How do I combine 4 columns? ›

How to concatenate (combine) multiple columns into one field in Excel
  1. Use the CONCATENATE function in column D: =CONCATENATE(A1,B1,C1).
  2. In the menu bar, select Insert, Function. ...
  3. Enter A1 in the text1 field, B1 in the text2 field, and C1 in the text3 field.
  4. Click OK. ...
  5. Copy and paste for as many records as needed.

What are audience lists? ›

Audience lists enable you to create lists of users who have performed specific actions on a site, then target ads to members of those lists. For example, you could insert a Floodlight tag on an order confirmation page that appears when a user makes a purchase on your site.

How do I update my audience list? ›

Facebook
  1. Go to your Audiences.
  2. Select your customer list Custom Audience, then select Update.
  3. Select Replace customers, Add customers or Remove customers.
  4. Upload or paste your updated file or list that includes the information you want to replace, add, or remove from your Custom Audience.

What are lists called in Mailchimp? ›

Your Mailchimp list, also known as your audience, is where you store and manage all of your contacts.

Can I organize my Contacts into groups? ›

You can group contacts together with labels. On your Android phone or tablet, open the Contacts app . At the bottom, tap Contacts. Create label.

How do I move Contacts between audiences in MailChimp? ›

Click Audience. Click All contacts. Click the Current audience drop-down and choose the audience you want to move subscribers from. If you want to work with a specific section of your audience, click Manage contacts, and choose Groups or Segments.

How do I clean my audience in MailChimp? ›

Click All contacts. Select an audience if you have multiple. Select Data management tool from the "Manage Contacts" drop-down menu. Check the boxes next to contacts with "Cleaned" next to their names.

How can I put my Contacts in alphabetical order? ›

Change how contacts are sorted
  1. Click People.
  2. Click Home > Current View > List.
  3. Click the column heading you want to sort on. For example, to show your contacts alphabetically by last name, click File As.

How do you organize contact groups in a team? ›

Create a group

on the left, select the Chat dropdown at the top, and then select Contacts. Next, select Create a new contact group at the bottom. Name your group and select Create. You can always rename or delete your group later.

How do I make a smart group in contacts? ›

Creating a smart group is easy: you search based on your desired criteria and then choose 'Create smart group'. Once the smart group is created, each time you ask to see the contacts in a group, CiviCRM will carry out a search and show you contacts that meet the criteria you specified.

How does a contact group work? ›

Use a contact group (formerly called a “distribution list”) to send an email to multiple people—a project team, a committee, or even just a group of friends—without having to add each name to the To, Cc, or Bcc line individually.

How do you communicate with multiple audiences? ›

Below are some tips to follow when communicating with diverse audiences:
  1. Eliminate figurative language. ...
  2. Remember that nonverbal communication is critical. ...
  3. Keep your presentation straightforward and brief. ...
  4. Ask questions and rephrase comments. ...
  5. ​​Research linguistic preferences.

Why do emails get cleaned in Mailchimp? ›

When an email has been marked as 'Cleaned' in Mailchimp, that means that either the last email sent to that address hard bounced or there have been multiple repeated soft bounces in a row. A hard bounce happens when an email could not be delivered to the intended address for permanent reasons.

Can you see audience growth in Mailchimp? ›

To view your audience dashboard in Mailchimp, simply click the Audience tab. From there, you'll gain access to the following insights: Growth of your campaigns. Tags.

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