MarketingSherpa Video Archive

Email Marketing: Using behavioral data to identify and validate customer segmentation

Jeff Koleba and Kate Ellis, The Kentucky Derby



When a brand has a large gap between purchases, keeping customers engaged becomes a consistent concern.

That is the issue the team at the Kentucky Derby was facing when they decided to use their newsletter to identify and validate customer segments.

“When we look to grow a brand like the Kentucky Derby, that breadth of engagement is really core to our growth path,” Jeff Koleba, Vice President of Marketing and Programming, Churchill Downs, said in this session from MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015.

In this undertaking, the team:
  • Researched current content assets

  • Created a content plan

  • Utilized behavioral information from subscribers

  • Segmented sends

In this full session, you will learn how the Kentucky Derby team adjusted their email content to what customers wanted to engage with and, by doing so, decreased opt-out rates by 94% and brought up website traffic by 19%.

Related Resources

MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 — At the Bellagio in Las Vegas, February 22-24, 2016

Email Marketing Segmentation: Clothing brand uses social behavioral data to drive a 141% increase in revenue

CRM and the Marketing Database: Data hygiene, behavioral analysis and more