Online marketing solutions

Why Use Market Segmentation?

Segmentation helps guide us as we focus on the prospects that will be a good candidate to purchase our offer, service, or product.  As an arrow is carefully aimed at a target, positioned strategically to hit the mark, so must our campaigns be accurately focused and targeted for the greatest receptivity and results.

When direct bulk email campaigns are carried out properly, it helps insure the highest return for our marketing sales and expenditure expectations.  Whatever the service or product you are selling, who you sell it to, will define the design, content, and message.  Each segment has its own unique demographical makeup.

Segmentation strategies have traditionally been used by email marketers for years…Clients or prospective customers are classified according to different demographic criteria and are then selected for different types of marketing activities or communications. Models can be used and tested to predict which segments are most likely to respond to which types of e-campaigns based on their previous histories.  Identifying profitable segments to be targeted, results in a much higher return on marketing investments (ROI).

Defining the Main Areas of Segmentation

Depending on whether you are selling to individual consumers or a business, there are definite differences in what you will consider doing, when defining market segments for your e-campaigns. To apply this knowledge accurately, you need to devise a specific segmentation strategy, designed and crafted around your message according to your subscribers’ preferences and action history.

Each Segmentation Focuses on a Different Aspect of the Targeted Client

Demographic Segmentation: The focus is on who they are:

• Gender
• Marital Status
• Age
• Profession
• Income
• Location
• Education
• Family Size

Using demographic segmentation research to determine subscribers within a particular age range and income is a real eye opener.

According to the Boston Consulting Group, “women drive the world economy. They control $20 trillion in consumer spending, and that figure could reach $28 trillion in the next five years. Women make the decisions in the purchases of 92% of vacations.”

These stats alone might cause you to modify your next campaign and its focus.

Behavioral Segmentation: The focus is on what they do. For example, how to people purchase?  What are their criteria?

• Benefit Preferences
• Brand Loyalty
• Readiness to Buy
• Impulse Shopper
• Price
• Time Constraints
• Need

When studying the stats from your last email campaign, following the behavior of your recipients is crucial to improving the future effectiveness of your next strategy.  What link did they click on in your newsletter?  What links did they visit on your website?  Did they click on the call to action?  Did they visit your landing page?  Each site experience is different.  With the help of behavioral segmentation, you can personalize their experience.

Attitudinal Segmentation – The focus here is on what they think.  Attitudinal Segmentation categorizes target customers, grouped together by a shared set of attitudes.  How someone responds to the world they live in, the things that they buy, and the services they desire, is what makes a person tick.  This is the most interesting segmentation, because it crosses over every other segmentation profile.

How a person reacts or what their goals and drives are, helps create a persona.  Personas cross all industries, markets, and culture.  Personas are created as a guide to help the seller or service better understand how to relate and understand that individual.  Whether you are a restaurant owner, designer, technical writer or developer, you need to create personas to market the right tools, and services, to the right audience.

In Conclusion:  No matter how much data we may collect, it takes time to get insight into our customers, visitors, and prospects.  Using surveys online along with customer feedback, we can begin to understand our prospects and clients on all levels.  With the right understanding, we can continue to create and modify successfully targeted campaigns.  So what is the right segmentation to use?  The right segmentation is the one that works for you.