It always gives me a moment of pause when I think about how far marketing strategies have come in a relatively short amount of time. And, thank goodness they have! Now, there are many ways to influence potential prospects. Segmentation is one of the major ways.
Segmentation is possible through the different online communication tools we have at our disposal. So, online marketing is not only far less expensive than traditional forms of marketing, but it’s also easily tailored to your target market, making it far more impactful. Online marketing can be interactive in ways never before possible. This interaction allows marketers to categorize our prospects into segments based on their activity to our online communications, increasing our conversion rates in the process.
In order to increase your e-mail marketing metrics and conversion rates, segmentation is an essential. The reason segmentation is so effective at increasing conversion rates is because your campaigns can be highly targeted to each segment, speaking to the exact information each group is searching for from your brand. This is far more impactful than simply sending the same message out to all of your prospects.
The Basics of Building a Lead Scoring Program
Data is king, especially here. Begin by reviewing any historical data you have. Then, meet with sales to work together to define the profiles and behaviors of your target customers. You’ll then be able to create productive segments that will tell you who is ready to buy and who is further up the funnel and needs further nurturing. (For more specifics on this, take a look at my blog How To Qualify Leads.)
At the most basic level, your lead scoring program will capture two kinds of data:
1. Demographic/Firmographic – Captures info on job title, education, department, company size, geographic location, revenue, and industry focus
2. Behavioral – Captures information based on the prospect’s behavior like web pages visited, webinar attendance, responses to e-mail offers, marketing content downloads, forms submitted, and purchasing behavior. You can add in time frames to increase relevance.
Defining A Segment
You want to begin by identifying the common problems or needs your product or service meets. Segmenting groups like prospects with common attributes and behaviors. Ideally, each segment will be significantly different from the other to make it easier for you to create targeted marketing strategies. Once you create your segments, new prospects will be funneled in to the different segments as they meet the requirements for a particular segment.
The more automated your process is the better. There are good software packages out there that enable the segmentation to occur seamlessly, notifying you when a prospect has become sales ready.
The success of your segmentation will rely on your ability to gather the right demographics and behavioral data. You’ll then need to create targeted campaigns that talk directly to each different segment. As I usually suggest when starting out, keep it simple and automate as much as possible.
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