Let’s say you’re a Marketing Executive at eBay; would you feel chuffed sending out an email promoting the latest offers on Stannah stairlifts to your subscribers in the under 30 category?
Of course not!
Now that’s a pretty extreme example, but it’s a crucial example to understand. Segmentation is the process of separating your audiences into chunks (or “segments”) so that the content you distribute becomes more relevant and impactful.
Remember when you used to separate all the different Smarties and eat them one colour group at a time? No? Maybe just me then…
Still not convinced? Let’s take a look into how segmentation can really improve your marketing efforts.
More Relatable Content Through Localisation
One of the most powerful methods of using segmentation is localising your content to different geographic locations.
On a basic level, any copy should be translated into the user’s native language to create an optimal experience, however, there’s much more to consider.
For instance, when converting your copy for residents of the United Kingdom over those in the United States, you should take into account any Americanisms which need to be included – “color” vs “colour”, “bangs” or “fringe”, “fanny pack”… you get the idea.
Getting more granular, different language should be used for audiences in specific areas of your targeted country (dialect) as well as for those who have certain interests and hobbies.
Where appropriate, dialect, slang, jargon and other types of language will help you to hone in on your target audience and make your content both more relatable and more persuasive.
Minimised Unsubscribe Rates for Email Sends
Racking up a sizeable email database takes a long time and can often require some financial investment too. With that being said, you’d surely want to take every effort to prevent people from unsubscribing.
By segmenting your email sends, you may be sending to fewer people but, after clicking the send button, you can expect to see a smaller unsubscribe rate in your reporting.
Continuing with our hypothetical Stannah stairlift example, it’s far more likely that 30 year old video gamers will unsubscribe when compared with their grandparents who are close to retiring. Yet both segments could definitely exist in eBay’s database.
The first step is to ensure you actually have the data to segment. Check that your contact forms include all relevant fields for you to use moving forward such as age, location, interests or gender. Anything you feel is relevant to your business and its verticals.
Lower Costs in PPC and Social Advertising
Segmenting isn’t just a consideration for email sends.
You can segment audiences in much the same way through many social and PPC advertising platforms and you don’t have to worry about the technical CRM aspects either as it’s all done for you. Happy days.
If you’re using Facebook ads, make sure you’re not simply “boosting” a post.
Facebook’s Power Editor has a vast number of targeting options and includes parameters such as interests, location, age, gender, yearly income, marital status and so much more.
This kind of data is invaluable and, if used correctly, will help to increase a vital metric known as “relevance score”.
Relevance score is pretty much the same as AdWords’ “quality score” and is the platform’s way of telling you how well you’ve created your campaign both in terms of the advert’s creative and the audience it’s intended to be placed in front of.
By focusing on improving your relevance score, the overall cost of your campaign will drop as a result, allowing you to reach more people, gain more video views and link clicks or simply sell more.
Improved Brand Reputation
Have you ever heard your friends moaning about why they’re being shown an irrelevant advert on YouTube? Here’s looking at you Trading 212…
Every touchpoint a customer has with your business is incredibly important and providing the wrong type of video content, tone of voice, design or anything in between can deter them from continuing to engage with your brand.
Conversely, placing a focus on a smaller but similar audience will help facilitate more effective content creation and distribution which in turn will lead to improved marketing metrics.
Segmenting your marketing campaigns wherever possible will prevent groups of your customer base being shown content which doesn’t resonate with them, thus, avoiding the dreaded anti-word-of-mouth marketing we all fear.
Highly-segmented marketing campaigns are nothing without compelling content which hits on an emotional level.
If you need support with your content creation, let’s get started.