Whether your singing the praises of the newest car repair service to non-motorists, or promoting a new brand of diapers to women without children, your business is missing a trick. It’s important to create segments within your target group to ensure you’re getting through to the right people. This can start with potential users subscribing to your newsletter, registering for a training course, or downloading your e-book. If you have a growing customer base, it is particularly important that your information is up to date. This makes dividing your target group into segments much easier.
In this blog post, you can read more about segmentation, why it is useful (or not), and the question of permission when seeking certain information.
WHAT IS SEGMENTATION?
Companies of all sizes try to obtain contact information from customers. This is what we call turning cold leads into warm leads. Behind this contact information are people with certain characteristics. By zooming in more closely into who these people are, we can create segments.
Imagine you’re the publisher of a women’s magazine. Your customer base is likely to mainly consist of women, but this is far too general. After all, there are:
- Women with children
- Single women
- Women with young children
- Women with older children
- Women who were born in August
- Women who work in the IT sector
In short: divide your target group into specific segments so that you can focus your marketing on them. Online personalization is the key to success.
Fortunately, tools like Hotjar and Google Analytics can be hugely helpful with segmentation. How many people visit your website? Through which channels? What worked? These insights help you get a handle on what to do next.
WHY SEGMENT?
Let’s return to the example of the women’s magazine. Next year, they plan to publish a special edition about the best day-care centres in the Netherlands. This is only likely to be of interest to women with young children. They are much more likely to want to receive and read the newsletter, causing increased conversion to the special edition. Women without children won’t want to receive the newsletter at all.
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DOES SEGMENTATION ALWAYS WORK?
Segmentation certainly works when you have a large mailing list, but if your list consists of only 100 addresses, it can seem pointless, since you probably have a good grasp of who your readers are. However, when it comes to gathering the right information, it’s best to start doing this from the get-go.
Asking for someone’s date of birth or sex might not seem immediately useful, especially if your only sending one newsletter. However, these details may become useful in the future if you’re sending a birthday email, or a newsletter directed only at women, for example.
ASKING FOR INFORMATION
Segmentation is always allowed, but certain information you obtain can be more sensitive. Always explain why you’re asking for specific details in your privacy policy. Obtaining certain information is only permitted under specific conditions, and information for people who don’t interact with your content or company can only be held on to for two years. For more information, it’s best to read the GDPR rules yourself. Of course, I can also personally advise you on this.
