If you want to convert leads into buying customers (which you do, of course), customer segmentation is an important aspect in marketing. No matter what business you are in, your target customers will have a diverse mix of individuals with different needs.
To deliver message to each segment of your customers, the trick is organize contacts into target segments. In each stage of the sales journey, you need to segment your leads – both at the moment you capture them and on an on-going basis as their relationship with your brand changes.
Segmentation is a crucial marketing strategy that determines how you engage and bond with your customers.
What is lead segmentation
Lead segmentation breaks your contacts into smaller lists, based on actions and attributes. For example, you might have one list of people who have previously visited your home page only; and another group of people who have looked at specific product or services on your website.
This allows you to send different messages to people based on their browsing behavior. The goal with former homepage visitors is get them back on your site and reengage with your brand, so they will be more likely to become buying customers. As for the people who have visited specific product or service pages on your website, you already know what they are looking for – so you focus your messages around products and services to increase chances of conversion.
The basic way of segmenting your leads can be breaking them down into stages or actions:
- Known intent/interests
- Low-intent leads
- High-intent leads
- Hot leads (engaged)
- Cold leads (unengaged)
- Conversion completed
- Conversion uncompleted
- Homepage visitors
- Product/service page visitors
- Repeat visitors
- Content downloaders
- Shopping cart abandoners
- Existing customers (single purchase)
- Repeat customers
- Email subscribers
Why is lead segmentation important
Without lead segmentation, you’re just sending the same generic messages to everyone. You’re not addressing the specific needs of your customers and providing solutions to resolve their problems or give them any reason to buy from you.
Lead segmentation is useful for marketers to plan their campaign based on lead stages or actions. Let’s say your company sets up cable and broadband systems for corporate business. You know it’d be hard for businesses to choose the right system for their offices, so you’ve created an eBook buying guide for people to download as a lead generation strategy.
Right off the bet there are several obvious lead segments we can create:
1. People who visit your eBook page but don’t download it.
2. People who download your eBook but don’t convert.
3. People who download your eBook and do convert (ie: buy one of your products).
You want to create an effective approach to reach out to your leads and potentially convert them into buying prospects.
For people on list #1, you want to message them a reminder to download the buyer guide, and maybe talk about challenges in choosing the right system.
People on list #2 did download your guide but, for whatever reason, didn’t go on to buy a system from your business. Perhaps you need more information about these businesses to make more relevant suggestions. Or maybe a discount offer will be enough to turn these readers into customers. The good news is you’ve got these users’ email addresses from the moment they download your eBook and this gives you a solid platform to find out more about these leads, try out different messages and segment further if needed.
As for list #3, well, this is where your eBook worked like a charm and people bought from you after reading through your guide. This doesn’t mean your job is done, though. You want to turn these customers into loyal, repeat buyers or brand advocates who recommend you to other businesses – perhaps both.
How to segment leads in Mautic
Think of it as adding leads into the filing cabinet. Your job is to categorize leads and target them in specific campaigns.
Creating new contact segments is easy in Mautic. You can go under segments to fill out the segment name.
If you have criteria to qualify contacts into the segment, you can apply filters like campaign membership, and city. You can set a positive or negative filter to narrow down to a smaller subset of leads.
While Mautic filter helps you segment contacts, you can also use Mautic campaign to target leads with a specific attribute within one or more target segments.
