Targeting for the Win (a 3 part series)! Part 3: Segmentation Suggestions

Do you know which segment your clients are in? Many companies segment clients and prospects by simple demographic based data. For example, size of company, title, location or geographical area. Unfortunately, using this method makes it difficult to align marketing messages with customer pain points or purchase stages. It would be better if B2B marketers improved their customer knowledge by differentiating between the types of customers they have.

Targeting for the Win (a 3 part series)! Part 2: Effective Segmentation

If you read part 1 in this series you already know the value of segmentation. But do know how to effectively segement your email list? Let’s explore that now.

Audiences are influenced in different ways by different types of content. If you sell numerous products, or are targeting more than one group, then it makes sense to profile your audience and divide them into small segments so that you can market specific products to specific groups, or create your message to suit the characteristics of the different segments.

Targeting for the Win (a 3 part series)! Part 1: The Value of Segmentation

A company that treats all customers and prospects the same speaks to everybody, and thus nobody. Rather than using a “one size fits all” approach, identify the most likely targets for a product or service. Use email to get to know customers better, and then serve them more relevant content.

Behavioral Marketing: Subscribers Demand More Personalized Content

Targeting tactics should be a key component of your marketing strategy

Behavioral targeting starts with understanding who your target audience is, what they’re interested in and what their needs are. Crafting your email with their needs in mind will help keep them engaged.

Identifying a target market’s pain points and recognizing differences between groups of customers, is at the heart of marketing. What you think is relevant and what a prospect or customer finds relevant may be two different things.

Harness customer data to improve relevancy

Moving into the New Year, marketers will need to make better use of customer data to engage and drive more relevant communications. By gathering insight about customers, marketers can begin to have more meaningful interactions through rich and deep customer intelligence.

Business intelligence data offers immense opportunity to better serve and engage customers. Expanding the customer profile with a combination of transactional and behavioral interaction data collected across multiple channels, empowers marketers to create highly targeted automated messaging. Start by tracking behavioral interactions, such as purchase history, clicks in your emails, and website activity. Use this data to segment your list and create actionable offers that are more integrated, personalized, and relevant across all your marketing activities.

Don’t Mistarget Your Marketing Efforts

To be successful, marketers need to send the right message to the right customer at the right time. According to a 2011 study by Blue Research, if you personalize the experience between you and your subscribers, they are 50 percent more likely to return to your site, and 40 percent more likely to recommend you to others.

Tap into rich subscriber data to deliver unique customer experience.

Tapping your subscriber data is a key component of an effective email marketing program. Subscriber data can come from a variety of sources—observed web behavior, purchase data, stated preferences, CRM notes, social, email, surveys and more. Analyze this information and use insights gleaned (e.g., sentiment, demographics, individual influence, behavior) to create engaging customer experiences that build stronger, more intimate relationships and foster long-term loyalty.

Meet Your Consumers: Browsing Bob, Maybe Mike, and No-way Ned

Meet Your Consumers: Browsing Bob, Maybe Mike, and No-way NedThere are three types of consumers: those who want to buy your product, those who might want to buy your product, and those who definitely don’t want to buy your product. For simplicity’s sake, let’s refer to these types of consumers as Browsing Bob, Maybe Mike, and No-way Ned, respectively. These consumers often times end up on your email marketing list. To keep your email marketing relevant to your subscribers you should know what type of consumers are receiving your emails.

Browsing Bob is “in the market,” as they say, actively searching for something specific to buy. Maybe Mike, while he might not be seeking you out, will be responsive if he sees a relevant advertisement that catches his eye. No-way Ned, even if he does see an advertisement, has no interest in whatever you’re selling.

Maximize Your Advertising Spend

Segmentation is a question of determining the common attributes and characteristics found in a group of buyers that enable you to look at them, and market to them, in a similar fashion.

Start by capturing vital data about who your users, purchasers and influencers are and what interests them. By profiling and segmenting consumers based upon demographics, lifestyle preferences and behaviors, you can maximize your advertising spend and target the audience which will be the most responsive to your messaging. The more information you can collect about them, the more innovative you can make your targeting strategies. The more segments you have, the more focused you can be about selecting one or more groups to target with a distinct marketing message.

Move Beyond The One Size Fits All Approach

Now is the time to take your email marketing program to the next level, and move beyond the “one size fits all” model, and strive to customize products and services for individual needs. Segmentation can help.

A company that treats all customers and prospects the same speaks to everybody, and thus nobody. Rather than a “batch-and blast” approach, identify the most likely targets for a product or service.

Instead of viewing customers/prospects as single-minded groups, all with the same wants and needs, consider how wants and needs might differ among them, and how those differences might influence their purchasing patterns and behaviors.

12 Ways Readers Respond to Your Email


In email marketing, one thing you learn pretty quickly is that sending your email is only the half of it. The next part (and arguably the most important) is what happens after the reader receives the email. You track opens and clickthroughs, as well as other metrics, but even this doesn’t provide the whole story.

You should put yourself in your subscribers’ shoes, and ask what you would do if you received your own email. Whether the campaign worked or not depends on the many things your readers do when they get your mail.

%d bloggers like this: