Segmentation Strategies to Earn Audience Attention

Data-driven marketing relies on segmentation to be fully effective. Whether you’re working from your own house list or using a business mailing list from a third-party database, you need to know enough about the audience you’re speaking with to resonate with them. With segmentation comes relevance, and being relevant to your market leads directly to increased sales. Here’s how to make the most of your database by drawing fine, clear divisions between market segments.

Dynamic Segmentation

Market segments don’t have to be static entities. With a powerful marketing database, you’re able to redraw and refine segments to include your entire audience. For example, your larger audience segment might include professionals in a particular industry; within that group, you might then define segments based on job title, purchasing authority, or geographical location. From there, you can refine segments still more based on how leads prefer to be contacted or buying histories. You can also expand your reach by grouping segments together into super-segments such as professionals in related industries, adjacent ZIP codes, or members of multiple professional associations.

Allow Overlapping without Duplication

Some segments are exclusive by nature. A business can’t be both within a 100-mile radius of you and outside it, for example. Others, however, lend themselves to overlapping. Many leads belong to more than one organization or subscribe to multiple magazines, and you need to be able to identify them so you don’t send them the same marketing materials twice. Working from a larger, more complete database that undergoes regular data hygiene processes and verification is a good way to eliminate duplicate records. Database services that cleanse your own data are also a wise option for marketers who want to make the most of segmentation.

Prioritize Segments

If you’re working with more than one market segment, you’re almost certainly working with one segment that’s going to out-spend another. Segments are not created equal when it comes to buying – and that’s a good thing because it allows you to prioritize your efforts. Here’s where analytics and transaction histories come into play. With them, you can identify your best markets and invest more of your efforts on them, reducing overall cost per lead and making your marketing team more efficient.

Rank Leads

Just as entire segments may align more or less closely with your offer, individual leads within those segments can be more promising prospects. Lead scoring algorithms have gotten increasingly sophisticated, giving you clear insight into how sales-ready your prospects are.  With lead ranking, you can focus not only on the segments that are the most valuable to you, but also on the individual leads who are the closest to the end of their buying journey and ready to convert.

Work with the Experts

Whipping your house list into shape with data hygiene and database management is essential to making full use of valuable information. House lists grow slowly, though, and that can be a limiting factor to a growing business. One way to expand quickly and instantly reach a wider audience is through list rental. When you work with an experienced list manager, you get a business mailing list that’s already been cleansed and verified for you. As your own list grows, you can offer it for list management as well, earning a return on your data-gathering investment.

© Reach Marketing LLC 2021 All Rights Reserved.