• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, December 8, 2015

That’s because I know very little about you, the readers, other than the fact that you’re probably registered as a member of MediaPost, and you like reading blog posts about email marketing summits. And that, in a nutshell, is the challenge email marketers have when trying to figure out ways to personalize and automate their email communications to their targets: They just don’t know who the majority of them are, according to the opening “State of the Union” panel at the second day of the Email Marketing Summit in Park City, UT, this morning.

But here’s the paradox, the small percentage of recipients big email marketers do know something about, tend to generate the greatest number of meaningful KPIs (key performance indicators), according to Matt Kassan, director of CRM marketing at Barnes and Noble.

According to Kassan, it’s typical for one of the book marketer’s email campaigns to have data on about “5% to 10%” of its audience capable of sending them personalized and automated content. “But the lion’s share of clicks and commerce” are being generated by that small base, he said.

It wasn’t clear if the base was generating a higher yield because B&N knows more about them, or because they receive more personalized content from email campaigns, but the bottom line is that it’s become some kind of 90/10 or 95/5 rule for the email marketer.

“A small percentage of your audience is going to deliver the majority of your KPIs,” he asserted.