
Dave Grohl teaches an important lesson in list segmenting
I am a big fan of the Foo Fighters (up until their last album anyway).
Not too long ago, the Foo Fighters put out a documentary called Back and Forth. It basically starts from the death of Kurt Cobain and follows the band from being just Dave Grohl and its (very public) evolution leading up to the making of their 2011 album Wasting Light. Great documentary, highly recommend it.
Let me get to the point however.
There is a part in the movie where Dave Grohl is talking about writing the song Enough Space (Track 9 on The Colour and the Shape).
The backstory that he gives is that North Americans and Europeans dance differently at rock concerts. North American audiences tend to mosh (which for the uninitiated means basically smashing into one another). European audiences didn’t do that. Couple this with the fact that it is good to set the tone with an uptempo song to start a concert, there was a big gap in the Foo Fighter repertoire when it came to getting European audiences moving.
Enter Enough Space.
Grohl describes how European crowds dance as a “bounce”. So he wanted to write a song that would get the crowd bouncing. If you listen to the baseline of the song, it is almost impossible to not nod your head, tap your foot or bounce along with the song. According to Grohl he wrote the song while jumping up and down.
Okay, who cares?
If the Foo Fighters had just played the same set they played for North American audiences they would have no doubt rocked their European concerts too. But having that insight into how their audience behaved on different continents they were able to tap into something much more powerful and bond even closer to their fans.
When it comes to your list, there exists differences in what your audience prefers. There exists different reasons for being on your list. There exists different buying patterns.
The biggest difference between a one time buyer and a customer is the relationship you develop with your list. One way to deepen that bond is (you guessed it) segmenting your list and giving people more of what they want.
Learn to sort out the moshers from the bouncers and you will find that people will be more likely to start handing you more Canadian pesos.
