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So I’ve been digging through our subscriber database lately, and honestly? We’re sitting on a goldmine of segmentation opportunities that many marketers would kill for. But here’s the thing—having great data and actually using it are two very different things.

I figured it was time to practice what we preach and take a hard look at what we’re collecting, what we’re ignoring, and what we could be doing better. Turns out, our 10,903 Email Love subscribers have been quietly telling us exactly how to improve our program. We just needed to listen.

The Data Reality Check

First, let me be brutally honest about what we’re working with. Our data collection is… uneven.

We’ve got 89.7% location data (some based on preference data and the rest from IP addresses), 45.2% first names for personalization, but only 2.7% company information and a whopping 0.2% job titles. That’s 25 job titles out of nearly 11,000 subscribers. Clearly, we need to work on incentivizing our subscribers to fill out their preferences.

But here’s what I’ve learned from this exercise: perfect data isn’t the goal—actionable data is. And we’ve got plenty of that.

Domain Intelligence

You might be familiar with segmenting business emails from personal emails, but that’s just scratching the surface. When I dug into our email domains, I found some fascinating opportunities:

53 subscribers with .edu addresses – These are people working in higher education who are already engaged with email design inspiration. Why aren’t we sending them a curated collection of university email examples? That’s a missed opportunity for a highly targeted automated sequence.

117 subscribers with .org domains – Nonprofit organizations with completely different needs than our typical B2B SaaS or e-commerce subscribers. They care about donor engagement, volunteer communication, and often have tighter budgets. We could be serving them specialized content about nonprofit email best practices.

3 subscribers with .gov emails – Sure, it’s a tiny segment, but government communications have unique requirements around accessibility and compliance. We could potentially encourage these individuals to forward our newsletters to their colleagues or ask how we can assist them.

The point isn’t the size of these segments—it’s the precision. A perfectly targeted email to 53 higher education professionals will outperform a generic blast to 10,000 subscribers every time.

Geographic Goldmine

Here’s where our data gets really interesting. We have subscribers in 117 different countries, with 42.6% of our subscribers located outside the United States. That’s not just impressive—it’s actionable.

Our top international markets are the UK, India, Canada, and Australia. Each of these markets has different email regulations, cultural preferences, and business practices. Yet we’re sending everyone the same content.

We do optimize our send times to hit these people when they are awake, but we could also create region-specific content about local email trends, or partner with international email service providers for co-marketing opportunities. Instead, we’re treating our global audience like they all live in California. Not chill, bra, not chill.

ESP Preferences: Platform Loyalty as Content Strategy

Only 3.2% of our subscribers told us their favorite ESP, but those 348 responses revealed something valuable: Klaviyo dominance. Forty subscribers specifically mentioned Klaviyo, followed by Mailchimp (15), and then a long tail of 50+ different platforms.

This tells us two things. First, we have a concentration of Klaviyo users who would love Klaviyo-specific tutorials, template collections, and best practices. Second, the fragmented landscape means there’s an opportunity to create content for underserved ESP communities.

Imagine automated email sequences triggered by ESP preference: Klaviyo users get advanced segmentation tips, Mailchimp users get design optimization guides, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud users get enterprise-level strategy content.

The Engagement Reality

Here’s where most email marketers get it wrong. They obsess over overall open rates and click rates, but they ignore engagement patterns within their data segments.

When I cross-referenced our engagement data with subscriber characteristics, some wild patterns emerged. Take geographic engagement, for example:

Our Netherlands subscribers have a 61.2% open rate and 11.5% click rate – significantly higher than our overall averages. Ireland takes the crown with an 18.3% click rate (compared to our overall 5.3%). Meanwhile, our US subscribers, despite being our largest segment, sit at 43% opens and 4.6% clicks – right around average.

The contrast is striking. Morocco shows a 5.2% open rate (something’s clearly not working there), while Italy crushes it at 63.8%. China has an interesting pattern: relatively low opens (28.7%) but when people do open, they click like crazy (12% click rate, 41.8% click-to-open rate).

71% of our subscribers are high engagers who regularly open and click our emails. These aren’t just subscribers—they’re advocates. We should be asking them to share our content, refer colleagues, and provide testimonials. Instead, we’re treating them the same as everyone else.

27.8% are moderate engagers who open emails but rarely click through. This group needs different content—maybe more visual inspiration and fewer lengthy tutorials. 12.9% haven’t engaged recently and need a win-back strategy or should be sunset from our list entirely.

But here’s another untapped opportunity: subscription anniversaries. We have 3,699 subscribers who’ve been with us for over a year, and 1,378 who’ve stuck around for two years or more. These are our most loyal subscribers, yet we’ve never sent a single anniversary email. Even more interesting, our newest subscribers (0-30 days) have the highest engagement at 47.4% opens and 7.4% clicks, suggesting there’s a honeymoon period we’re not capitalizing on.

Our largest monthly cohorts tell a story of growth: 921 subscribers joined in June 2025, and we had a big spike of 714 in April 2023. That April 2023 cohort is now approaching their 2-year anniversary—perfect timing for a “loyal subscriber” campaign with exclusive content or early access to Email Love Pro.

What We’re Actually Going to Do

Analyzing data is one thing. Acting on it is another. Here are some ideas we’re playing around with:

Domain-based automated sequences: New .edu subscribers get a welcome email highlighting our higher education email collection. New .org subscribers get nonprofit-specific content. It’s a small change with minimal effort that should significantly improve relevance for those subscribers.

Geographic content: When subscribers in the Netherlands are opening at 61.2% and clicking at 11.5%, while our US audience sits at 43% opens and 4.6% clicks, we need different approaches for different markets. We could test localized content for our highest-performing regions and investigate what’s going wrong in markets like Morocco.

ESP-specific content hubs on our website: If 40 of our most engaged subscribers love Klaviyo, there are probably thousands more who would appreciate Klaviyo-focused email inspiration and tutorials. We’ve started to do this with our Trend data, where you can now see a gallery of all brands that use Klaviyo.

Your Data Audit Challenge

Every email program has untapped segmentation opportunities hiding in plain sight. The question isn’t whether you have valuable data—it’s whether you’re using it.

Start simple: Export your subscriber list and look at email domains. How many .edu addresses do you have? How many international subscribers? What patterns emerge when you sort by signup date or engagement level?

Then pick one segment and create one piece of targeted content. Don’t overthink it. A five-email automated sequence for your most engaged subscribers will teach you more about data-driven email marketing than any blog post or conference talk.

The best email marketers I know aren’t the ones with the cleanest data or the most sophisticated tools. They’re the ones who actually use what they have to create more relevant experiences for their subscribers.

What’s the most interesting data point you’re collecting but not using? I’d genuinely love to know—email me at [email protected] and tell me about your own data discoveries.

Much love,
Andy

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @emaillove