Knowing your audience is very important for every strategy aimed to increase your sales. But what if your audience is made up of very different people? This is where segmentation marketing is needed.

In this article, we will tell you what it is, how to use it and which are the best strategies to implement in your campaigns.

What is marketing segmentation?

The definition of segmentation marketing is based on a simple yet very important notion. Your audience is composed of incredibly different people, and trying to address them all in the same way would be a mistake.

By segmenting your potential buyers, you divide them into smaller, easily identifiable groups with similar characteristics. This will lead you to create more targeted messages and therefore increse your ROI and your sales.

Segmentation in email marketing

For instance, you should use segmentation marketing in creating your email campaignes. Let’s say you have a company specialized in wooden furniture. You want to increase your sales of baby cribs.

Wouldn’t it be useful if you could address only your potential buyers in the right age, location and family status? They will more likely respond to your call to action and be more interested in baby cribs than, say, single college students, right?

This is where segmentation comes into place: if you know your audience and divide them in smaller groups, you can send the right message to the right people only. And so you’ll maximixe your conversion rates.

How can you do that?

Three criterias are the pillars of good segmentation marketing.

• Homogeneity
• Distinction
• Reaction

The first one regards common needs within a segment. Whether it is geographic location or age, family size or lifestyle, all the people in the same segment have something in common.

Distinction is about what makes them different from every other segment in your audience. Reaction is the way they respond to the market.

In order to understand these differences and similarities and create your segmented target, you will need a lot of data analysis.

Types of segmentation marketing

Now that you know the definition of marketing segmentation, you will be able to understand the different types of targetization.

Demographic segmentation is based on observable differences among your customers. This is all about their life: age, location, habits, flows of income, family status. It can be identified as the most basic form of segmentation marketing, but it’s very powerful nonetheless.

A behavioral segmentation is based on your users’ habits in response to your shop, both phycally and on the web. What part of the website do they visit the most? Are they online buyers, or do they prefer to seek informations on the web and then buy in shops? Have they come back after a first purchase on your website?

Geographic marketing segmentation is also a good way to split your audience in smaller groups. It would be useless to send them a coupon to use in a shop miles and miles away from their location, wouldn’t it?

The most important strategy of segmentation marketing

It is called psychographic segmentation, and it’s an intricate mix of sociology, psychology and data analysis. In short, you study the mental and emotional attributes of your customers.

Whether they respond positively or negatively to a campaign; if they prefer a color or another for your website; whether they will perform or ignore your call to action.

It is similar to the other three mentioned earlier, but psychographic segmentation is somehow more important because it deals with the emotional response of your customers, prospects or loyal ones.

What are the benefits of segmentation marketing?

There are several things to be noted about segmentation marketing. First of all, it let you reach the right audience at the right moment.

Here some other benefits to be considered:

• Increase of your conversion rates.
• It Informs product development by letting you know your customers’ needs.
• It reveals new inexplored marketing areas. For instance, by segmenting your audience, you could find an entire age group is missing.
• Therefore, it will improve your brand’s decisions in many other ways. You can identify a product your audience needs; a niche that hasn’t been explored; a segment your business is currently ignoring and expand your horizons.

How to implement segmentation marketing

In order to use a strategy of segmentation marketing or another, you need to collect data, study them and use them in your email marketing campaign.

A lot of marketing automation softwares are out there to help you with this complex task. You will save time and money using one of them to collect and measure your campaigns’s results.

Your brand will grow exponentially and your brand identity will remain intact while you gain new clients and turn your old ones in returning customers.

5 simple steps

You can start a segmentation marketing startegy on your own or with an automation software, but anyway this should be your course of action.

1. Define your market. How large is it? how is it responding to customers’ needs? Are your competitors using different strategies than yours?
2. Segment your market. Identify your ideal customers and create several profiles. You can use of the strategies we explained before or a combination of them.
3. Understand your market. This is where things get difficult. You need a way to get to know your audience and collect their characteristics. For instance, through a questionnaire, or collecting data when they subscribe to a service.
4. Build your marketing segmentation startegy. Study your customers’ responses and divide them in categories. Start with larger, easily identifiable ones like age group or location.
5. Test out your strategies. Now you have a number of different segments. Send them targeted messages, analyze their response, conduct split tests to understand what works for which kind of customers.

Successful examples

You’ve learned what is marketing segmentation. Now let’s look at some practical examples on how to implement a strategy in your everyday marketing work.

This strategy can be incredibly useful in email marketing campaigns. For instance, try to send your customers targeted suggestions on what shoes to buy accordingly to that bag they just bought. Or give them special offers and coupons for their 1-month since subscribing annyversary.

You can also implement segmentation in your mobile marketing campaign. Re-engage the users you seem to have lost, sending a push notification reminding them of the many features they will find on your app.

Ask loyal customers for a review in order to increase your popularity among mobile users. Activate new users with an engaging, fun and warm welcome email.

In conclusion

In order to get to know your audience, you need to segment it into smaller groups. Then you can send targeted messages, ads and campaigns to each group, increasing the conversion rate.

You can use several segmentation marketing strategies and specific softwares that analyze your customers. Start with a little step and imrpove your sales with the right messages to the right users, whether by newsletter, social media engagement or anything else.

If you need further informations, don’t hesitate to contact us at Mailsenpai: we are experts at making your business bigger and better!