Our knowledge hub produces a steady flow of articles across different topics, but not every post is relevant to every reader, which is a problem many companies face. At Zooma, we like to practice what we preach — so we set out to make a small but powerful tweak that could be done in just a few hours.

The goal is to provide and distribute content that better matches what our readers need and want, in an automated way.

There are countless ways to approach this based on:

• Number of subscribers
• Segmentation options you have (how much information you know about them, what they would like to receive, historical behaviour data, any segment we can more closely tie to revenue generation, etc.)
• How much content you produce and in what formats, topics
• How much work you are willing to put into the setup. Is it something you do for every newsletter based on new content, or something you set it up in an automated way?
• Consider the capabilities of your tools and your budget — there’s no point recommending high-end AI personalisation if it’s out of reach.

The solution we picked

We combined HubSpot's RSS email automation with contact segmentation via one (and a half) dimensions – persona (and preferred email frequency).

The result? Each contact now receives a content feed that’s tailored to them — both in terms of subject matter and timing.

This method is best if:

• You have at least 100+ subscribers, with the relevant email type – if you are in B2B, you need their work email, in B2C, their personal one. (And preferably not the junk email people give to receive a coupon or bypass a content gate – totally not a personal example.)
• You produce content regularly, biweekly or so, and there is a variety of topics and target groups.
• You can consider a primary segmentation property that serves as a good indicator of the type of content they would enjoy.
• You have limited resources, so you need something that is automated but doesn't require high subscription tiers.
• Having a bit of developer help for polished custom emails is ideal, but basic templates can also work well.

Picking the right dimension(s) for segmentation

This is the bread and butter of this approach, the most crucial decision.

Let me walk you through our thinking first, then share other approaches you might find helpful.

We have a persona field we fill for each contact in our system (Decision-maker, Change-maker, Practitioner). We realised that this works well when it comes to content too – the goal of these people when they are educating themselves is different. One needs trends, overviews - big picture content that sets directions. The other needs more hands-on advice, efficiency, and incremental improvements.

Since we would recommend almost the same articles for Decision-makers and Change-makers, these two were merged into one segment for this exercise.

Let me demonstrate how this works. Here, I describe the problem, the solution, and the decision-making elements – all things most interesting to decision makers and changemakers. Therefore, this article will be tagged accordingly. In Part 2, we cover how-to steps, and that will be tagged for practitioners.

We added frequency as an additional layer. From the outset, we asked subscribers how frequently they wanted to hear from us. So we have this saved in a property. (Instant, Daily, Weekly, Monthly) We wanted to respect this initial choice, so we kept this as a secondary layer.

So we have our matrix ready.

What could be your way of personalising?

Use the examples below to spark ideas about what might work best for your own company. Note that one content piece can receive multiple tags if you deem that it fits numerous categories. However, a contact should be in only one category.

Cybersecurity service

You probably have a few main segments besides the usual industry grouping of 100+ values, for example, these four segments:

• Hospitality and Travel,
• Banking and Finance,
• Retail,
• Adult

Bio Animal Food

You most likely have your buyers, who are all owners, and you know what kind of pets they own:

• Dog
• Cat
• Rabbit
• Fish
• Bird
• Other

Solar Panel Installation Company

In this case, you might want to segment based on whether you are trying to convince them by educating them about benefits, or they need to hear more about maintenance, or upcoming regulations that affect them. And, of course, product lines and calculations differ for personal and enterprise customers. Since these are all binary, you could even combine them and have these four segments:

• Company Decision-making,
• Company Maintenance,
• Private Decision-making,
• Private Maintenance
  
  

Validating your segmentation choice

Once you have your matrix, cross-check against your CRM.

1. Are the necessary properties filled and updated? Or have we just uncovered a skeleton in the closet we need to fix first? There is no point in personalising if we cannot execute correctly due to messy data.
2. Do all segments have a reasonable number of contacts? (Or do we expect them to grow into one soon?) There is no point in personalising content if there are no people to receive it.
3. Does your existing (and future) content correlate with this segmentation? Can you tag the content with these labels and have content for all segments? There is no point in personalising to a segment if we can’t serve them anything.

Once you have your main segmentation, you can decide whether to add a frequency layer as we did, or not.

Note: If your brainstorming uncovers a great two-dimensional segmentation, you can build it — note that it will require higher-tier HubSpot subscriptions and custom-coded RSS feeds, so it’s more complex.

Sending the RSS email

We cover the details of the setup in part 2.

However, you essentially set the frequency at which the email should be sent (daily, weekly, or monthly) and select the exact times.

When that time comes (let’s say Tuesday at 8 a.m. your time), the system checks for new content and, if it finds any, sends the email to the contact list. If there is no new content, no email is sent.

It is entirely automated, which means the marketing team only needs to publish and tag the content, without spending additional time adding it to emails.

Results

Unfortunately, we cannot draw exact conclusions yet on the open rates/click rates. Because we also made changes to our subscriber base and implemented these changes exactly as summer started, which is typically a lower engagement period for us.

However, one thing we can already see is the difference in behaviour between the segments: the decision-makers have a lower open rate for our weekly emails – 22% for decision-makers, compared to 39% for practitioners. But decision-makers are more likely to click on the content. We see a similar pattern for daily emails about clicks.

At this point, I guess our recent content was stronger and more interesting for them.

But we will see how these numbers evolve.

Dare to improve

Try to find ways to be more relevant, more helpful. If you find a proper segmentation option, this setup takes only a few hours to complete, and then it will run on its own; you need to keep an eye on your results.

In Part 2, I will guide you through the basic setup, and as always, please don't hesitate to reach out if you need any assistance.