Audience segmentation with marketing automation
Brands have begun to realise the importance of tailoring content to users individually, and it is paying off: An estimated 80 percent of customers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalised experiences.
Consider the purchasing experience before the Internet became widely available in the early 1990s. Customers were forced to wait for brands to reach out to them with catalogues or salespeople to let them know about new products. With the birth of the Internet, customers began to take their search for new products and services online. They could learn about companies and their products and services on their own, allowing them to take charge of the earliest stages of the buyer's journey. This power has changed commerce across all industries. Forrester has found that even for offline purchases, B2B buyers conduct over 70 percent of their research online.
Since then, companies have become progressively better at understanding what customers want to learn about and see online, thanks to data analytics and strategies such as keyword research and search engine optimisation.
Now, the technology exists to take it a step further. Rather than merely understanding the wants and needs of 'customers' as a whole, brands are now able to unlock the motivations and needs driving individual customers. They are also able to reach people with personalised recommendations and deals. Consumers have responded well to these advancements. Nearly a third of customers say they wish that shopping was more personalised than it is.
Segmentation is the cornerstone in effectively reaching customers with these personalised messages and recommendations. Here is what you should know about the benefits of market segmentation and how it can help drive your brand growth.
What is market segmentation?
Market segmentation refers to a strategy of separating customers into distinct groupings based on shared characteristics. By creating these groups, you can send messaging that is more targeted and is, therefore, more likely to nurture them through the sales funnel. Because you have a better sense of what the people in a particular group want to see, your marketing will address their requirements more precisely.
There are a few different ways you can segment your prospective customers.
Classical segmentation
This refers to the strategy of segmenting prospects based on the sort of information that is often in the public domain and is gathered through online research or simple lead capture forms. For example, you might segment based on their location, their seniority within their organisation, their industry, or the size of their company.
Lead scoring
With a lead scoring strategy, you assign different weights to your leads based on the characteristics that matter the most to your organisation. For example, if the buying power for your products and services typically lies with the CEO or CMO, then members of the C-suite would receive a weighted score higher than their subordinates.
This score will help you estimate the value of particular leads and what should be used to encourage them through the buyer's journey. It also offers clues about what this lead might want to learn about through the content you send.
Relationship and behavioural profiling
Relationship and behavioral segmentation lists allow you to dynamically sort people based on their relationship to you and the behaviours they exhibit on your site. For example, the pages they visit, their level of social media engagement with your organisation, the emails they click on, and the products purchased can all be used to determine how a lead should be segmented and the emails they receive.
For example, say you wanted to encourage people to sign up for a webinar. You might invite people who belong to a particular segment because they've shown an interest in a specific product by visiting production information and pricing pages on your website. You can create a dynamic email campaign that delivers personalised content based upon people's responses. One email can be sent to people who have RSVPed and a different one for those who have not. RSVPs who have answered 'no' can receive an email tailored to their response, and a different one sent to those who responded with a 'yes'. This allows you to send relevant, intelligent and tailored communications to people.
Dynamically sorted lists also allow you to follow up after the event based upon people's attendance, improving the user experience and building the relationship with each individual.
Personal preference
Finally, you can also offer segmented emails based upon the preferences of the user. You can provide different levels of registration so that leads can select the sort of interaction most suited to their needs. A basic example is allowing your email subscribers to determine how frequently they want to hear from you. Some customers might want to receive news and updates from you weekly; others might only want a summary once a month. Offering customers the ability to personalise their email subscription can allow for further segmentation based on their own needs and desires.
Why is market segmentation important?
Segmenting emails makes it significantly easier to tailor the communications you send based on an individual's unique needs and obstacles. It allows brands to take their business marketing to the next level. Additionally, it accomplishes these goals without the need for endless spreadsheets. Businesses find that it reduces costs and saves resources. Nearly a third of marketers say that the most significant benefit of marketing automation is the time savings.
Allowing customers to influence the segmented lists they end up receiving also helps them define the type of experience they want to have with you.
The average person today sees about 5000 ads a day. Brands who want to engage with their audience successfully need to find a way to rise above this constant noise and produce relevant content that customers want to see.
Not only does a higher degree of personalisation help brands get the information they want to their prospective customers, but it also fulfils the expectation that many customers are beginning to have. Consumers want to see businesses customise their sales process and communications for customers. Sixty-two percent of customers report that they expect to receive personalised deals from firms based on what they have already purchased. This explains why 65 percent of email marketers say that dynamic lists and personalised email campaigns are the most effective tool they have.
Studies have even found that effective email personalisation can generate 17 percent more revenue for the organisations that use it. Ninety-six percent of surveyed digital marketers report that personalisation advances customer relationships, with 88 percent saying that they have seen a quantifiable lift in their business results since they began using personalisation efforts.
How can I develop a marketing segmentation plan?
Creating an audience segmentation plan is a highly individualised process, with each business having to determine the method and segments that work best for them. Look at the business insights that matter the most to you and your organisation and parse out the factors and buyer behaviour that differentiate your categories of prospective customers. Think about the different levels and types of content that will help them the most.
You want to consider who will find various types of content the most relevant and helpful. Think about the pain points and obstacles these prospects face. For B2B businesses, you must also think about who has to be involved in the decision-making process. Who has to sign off on major purchases? What do these people want to see, compared to their subordinates? Consider also what goes into the decision-making process for these customers and what will help propel them through the buyer's journey and help them decide to buy. You must have a keen understanding of buyer behaviour.
As you develop a market segmentation strategy, you also need to pay close attention to data hygiene. Customer contact information and data degrades by an average of 22.5 percent each year, so staying on top of the data will help ensure that your emails reach the intended audience and do not end up going to junk or non-existant inboxes.
Your marketing segmentation plan must also incorporate analytics. You want to watch how people engage with your brand's content throughout the buyer's journey. Collect data from all stages - from the beginning, when the user's goal is to educate themselves on options, through to the point of them becoming a customer, and into your nurturing efforts to gain repeat custom. Remember that increasing your customer retention by just 5 percent can increase your profits by up to 75 percent. Taking the time to carefully track how well you engage people at all stages of the buyer's journey will help you build revenue and grow your organisation.
As you use data to track how your customers move through the sales funnel, you will see how well your segmented lists work. You will see which segments have the best results and which ones fall behind. You can see how your expectations align with purchases and the value of those purchases as well. You should also monitor how well your marketing segmentation efforts to engage existing customers results in returning customers.
Use this information to improve your efforts and campaigns moving forward.
What can I do once customers are segmented?
Once you have built your segmented lists, you want to begin sending customers content that aligns with their specific needs. Consider the audience profile of each segment and research their pain points. Craft content will address their needs and frustrations.
Focus on sending material to each segment that not only aligns well with their persona and their place in the buyer's journey, but that provides them with actionable help and guidance. By looking at their demographics and behaviour on your site, you should have a good idea of where their struggles lie, so you can tailor the information you send to ensure that your material addresses concrete needs. Your content should help these leads do their jobs better.
Using a marketing automation platform can help you better monitor visitor behaviour. You can track the questions people have, the content they digest, and the information they engage with on your site and in your emails. You will then know what your potential customers want to learn about and have a better idea of their expectations of your business, helping you to align your emails and communications more accurately, so they only receive material relevant to their interests and desires.
Once you have your segmented email lists established, use data every step of the way. You want to make sure that you fully understand how well your segments perform and whether they increase engagement at each stage of the buyer's journey. Track the impact that your efforts have had on your conversion rates and revenue generation. Find the weaknesses and improve your marketing segmentation efforts as your understanding of the leads on each list improves.
Marketing automation and segmentation offer incredible potential for businesses who use them correctly. These organisations learn how to send material to visitors, so they receive precisely the right information at exactly the right moment. It keeps prospective customers engaged with the brand throughout the buyer's journey, and engaging prospects with personalisation increases the chances that people will buy. Understanding how to use segmentation successfully provides an enormous boost to personalisation.
