This is a guest post from Etee Dubey at Outgrow.
Marketing segmentation may sound serious, but it’s a simple way to appeal to your subscribers in a personal way. This is especially true when you start incorporating interactive content subscribers can engage with firsthand, especially since you can use that same interactive content to segment your leads.
Segmentation is done by marketers to divide their leads, users, or prospects into groups of similar people. The basis for this process of lead segmentation can range from demographics to priorities to customer behavior.
But why do companies go through the pain of lead segmenting? There are numerous reasons, but the bottom line is this: It helps companies in targeting their customers with personalized communication. And, as long as the company-customer communication is relevant and helpful, the sales will keep on rising.
Read on to learn more about the best way to conduct lead segmenting: interactive content.
Before considering examples, it’s important to understand the basis of marketing segmentation. If you wish, you can jump to the section on using interactive content for lead segmenting.
How to segment customers
Customer segmentation can be done in several ways. Most of the time, companies choose to segment their customers on the basis of:
1) Demographics
This divides the market on the basis of variables like income, education, religion, race, occupation, etc. You can also send based on age brackets and gender. This provides more relevant content for subscribers.
This type of segmentation helps subscribers receive relevant updates: For instance, a woman might receive updates about adult women’s style shoes because of lead segmenting, rather than something that doesn’t appeal to her demographic.
Find out what type of marketing appeals to Gen Z by reading our guide.
2) Geographics
This segments your customers according to the region they reside in. This is a perfect opportunity to localize content for your customers, especially if they speak a different language or dialect, or if something especially relevant is happening where they live (e.g. Carnival in Brazil).
Segmenting by geography doesn’t just mean international localization, however. In fact, geographic lead segmenting can help you personalize down to the weather your subscriber is experiencing.
Take a note from this Grubhub email, which uses the rain outside to convince this subscriber to order in:
3) Behavioral
This segment type separates people on the basis of their knowledge of and response to the product. Which function of your tool are they most interested in? Are they a fairly active user or not? On what occasion do they seem to use the product the most?
In the example below, Wayfair has sent a specific email to this subscriber based on their recent search: dining chairs. This email is segmented specifically based on the subscriber’s behavior on the site.
4) Psychographics
This segmentation is done on the basis of lifestyle and personality traits. What are your customers’ interests, beliefs, and opinions? How are those choices likely to affect their purchasing choices?
For example, you might send big-ticket items to subscribers who spend the most with your company, while it makes more sense to promote less expensive items to more modest shoppers.
But you can also apply this segmentation process to companies. For instance, a B2B business might segment its email list based on the types of businesses that subscribe. This would allow them to send relevant emails to the companies on their list: expensive offerings to big companies and niche offerings to small businesses.
Once you’ve segmented your list based on these different categories, interactive content can come into play.
Using interactive content for lead segmenting
Now that we’ve discussed organizing your leads by demographics, behaviors, and other differentiating factors, it’s time to discuss how you can use interactive content to segment those same leads.
When it comes to lead segmenting, interactive content could actually be your best bet. It gathers a lot of valuable information from your customers by providing real value in return.
This information can then be used to create detailed buyer personas. Segmentation seems like a far less daunting task when you already have a lot of information collected for you.
Here are some real-life use cases to explain.
1) Age, gender, occupation, etc.
Interactive content can help you gather information without invading the customer’s privacy. And being interactive, it’s likelier to encourage active participation from your users and leads.
In fact, 66% of marketers have reported greater audience engagement after using interactive content. Here’s an example:
Imagine you’re a car dealer who wants to segment your list. You can create an effortless interactive quiz that suggests the perfect car for customers. In the quiz, you can ask them questions about their gender, their age, or even their marital status.
Your leads/users are more likely to divulge this information because they’re getting a personalized car recommendation in return. However, make sure to only include questions that a person considers while buying a car.
2) Existing knowledge of the service/product
Segmentation is all about dividing your list after finding out what your customers want. Interactive content allows you to segment your customers on the basis of their existing knowledge about your services.
Imagine you run a French language institute online. You can send your leads an interactive quiz that grades them on the basis of their existing French knowledge.
Once you have that information, you can send them targeted emails. For instance, you can send a preview course video with simple French concepts to a person with beginner-level knowledge.
You can increase the difficulty level for people with higher knowledge on the subject. This will increase the relevancy of your reach and will lead to a higher conversion rate.
3) Customer needs/preferences
Customer preferences are very often confused with their needs, but customers choose the types of marketing communications they want through a preference center.
For another example, let’s say you own an e-commerce business that sells high-end fashion garments. You could send subscribers a quiz titled “Which Paris Fashion Week Gown Are You?” In that quiz, consider asking them to choose a favorite color or their favorite fashion icon.
Then, map your choices to the products you’re trying to sell. You can customize your future offers according to the outcome that’s obtained by your leads and customers. Moreover, you can retarget through their obtained outcomes.
4) Opinion
You can create an interactive poll and segment your customers on the basis of where they stand compared to other customers.
For instance, say you’re a company that offers digital marketing solutions. You can create a poll that asks them their opinion on the top content marketing trends in 2019.
Then, on the basis of their answers, you can segment your customers. If someone rates blogging as the most important trend, you can send them blogging tips and your services related to that.
5) Expected ROI
Interactive content can help with your lead segmenting on the basis of the expected ROI of your leads. This will help your sales team figure out which leads to pursue first.
You can create an ROI calculator and send that to your leads. Let’s say you provide email marketing services: The email ROI calculator will collect information like the number of emails sent per campaign, open rate, CTOR, etc. You can then target your customer communication accordingly.
6) Classify high-intent leads.
Interactive content can help you differentiate between the high-intent leads from the low-intent ones. All you have to do is keep tabs on the user’s pattern of engagement with the interactive experience.
High-intent leads tend to have increased engagement with your experiences. For example, they might be willing to divulge more information in exchange for a helpful resource.
Now, to classify high-intent leads, you can include an eBook or another premium resource. Simply offer your resource in exchange for their contact information.
To further classify your leads, offer a personalized advice session with an expert at discounted rates. Those who opt for this are your high-intent leads.
Lead Segmenting Wrap up
You can never run out of ways to segment your customers, and using interactive content to segment is a way to simplify that process.
Create your interactive experience in a way that collects the most relevant information. You can collect demographic information, find out customer needs and preferences, and classify high-intent leads solely through one quiz or poll.
So, research to see what customers take into consideration while investing in your field. What are their major pain points? Once you know, you can create your interactive content accordingly.
About the author
Etee Dubey is a full-time content marketer at Outgrow and part-time dreamer. In her free time, she catches up with her reading and often finds herself explaining the meaning of her eccentric name to people around her.
The post How You Can Use Interactive Content To Segment Your Leads appeared first on Campaign Monitor.
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