Segmentation is one of the most effective ways to engage your leads. But how you segment makes a big difference in how much time you spend creating content for your leads, as well as in the outcome of your efforts.
The world has changed: you may be using the wrong segmentation approach for your leads’ short attention spans. In mid-January, I was discussing with some traditional marketers how traditional marketing is segmentation based on demographics. Although relevant, this sort of segmentation does not yield engagement and results that are effective any longer.
Let me give you an example. Not long ago, I attended a 3-day course on how to structure and run a great webinar. At this course, all age groups were represented from a wide range of demographics – early 20s to the 70s. Yes, people in their 70s are still interested in learning how to run great webinars!
What’s fascinating is that the same appealing message had lured us into the 3-day course. The room was full of Millennials, Gen-Y, Gen-X, and Baby Boomer folks, all wanting to learn more about this topic. There was a good mix of men and women in the room, some were married, some single, and some had kids. Though some people had more experience in marketing than others, all of us were interested in the topic of how to run a great webinar.
Why am I focusing on this? We were all brought together for engagement on a topic where the common denominator was a desire to use the information for our purposes. A common goal to learn something new, fueled by curiosity, made the difference in engagement.
Let me ask you another question. Do you have a lot of time to work on your marketing message and campaigns? Likely not, as indicated by a broad range of people who were attending this course. Here’s an observation: if marketing had focused on demographics, consider how much time it would have taken to craft those messages to each demographic in order to generate the attendance in this program. There was a common denominator regardless of demographic -curiosity to learn more about a particular topic. Though we have differences, it’s that common denominator that connects and brings people together, plus the message that got their attention in the first place.
Increase Your Conversions
Increasing your conversions has more to do with the message’s relevance. What connected us in the program was our commitment to leveraging webinars to help grow our businesses, and achieve real growth. There are many different ways to do this, but we wanted to know if there was a new approach to achieve this growth. Inspirational, right? Therefore, this has nothing to do with demographics but rather the “segment†that we all fit into based on our interests. This is the secret to segmentation that will achieve results today.
If you’re not convinced, let me share with you one more story. I worked with the Head of Continuing Education registration for a community college in the Eastern United States. After sending a broadcast (batch & blast) email to his list, he noticed that he got a lot of clicks on a link that was at the bottom of the email.
When curiosity got the better of him, he decided to focus in on that interest area to figure out why the response was huge. The link that got so many clicks was for a sewing class, a big surprise since his email was primarily about professional development courses. This inspired him to create a “back-to-basics†theme. He assembled instructors for cooking, canning, and sewing together, and each offered an article about their subject, engaging people with some fun information and things people could do. Each article page had a section about the instructor and links to upcoming classes that each instructor was teaching.
Then he gathered the names of everyone who had shown interest in cooking, canning, or sewing but had not enrolled in classes and he created a list. There was a separate list for those who had already enrolled. Considering he was using our Genoo Marketing Automation platform, this took him only 5 minutes to do. Then he prepared three emails specifically for the segment that he created and sent them out.
Essentially, he created a segment of his leads based on a specific interest that his potential customers expressed. The results were amazing. This is the new type of segmentation.
Improve Email Deliverability
There are multiple benefits to segmenting the right way, but the one that I want you to really consider is improved deliverability. If reaching the inbox is a priority to you, then engagement is critical, and you get more engagement when you send emails that are relevant and personal to your leads. Segmentation done right (as stated in this post) will propel your email marketing efforts forward. Why? More emails will make it to your potential customers’ inboxes.
Back to the results of our community college customer who created the interest-based campaign - how did it go? Well, he got direct replies from recipients that they loved the articles. Not only did his campaign strategy pique their interest, he got lots of engagement with his leads with clicks and replies. What he also achieved, without directly asking people to sign up, were filled classes for the instructors that he featured.
An important question anyone with a business should ask: how can you harness interest-based segments in your marketing?
