Imagine All the People

From Segmentation to Personalization – Taking the Extra Mile

If you are frustrated by the results of your marketing campaigns, perhaps you are focusing too much on HOW to reach people – and not on the people themselves.

It’s not just a numbers game. Creating a successful online marketing strategy involves focusing on the real people who are behind the stats. Thinking about the human beings who stand behind the data is at the core of any good marketing. So when we build a marketing plan, we have to focus on expressing ourselves in a way that causes our target audience to feel right – and to respond positively to us.

Success at reaching an audience is a natural outgrowth of following two simple but golden rules – be personal, and have a compelling branding strategy.

Powerful marketing is about creating more person-centered experiences. Another way of saying this is that if our marketing is for everybody, then it is actually for nobody. The goal is to relate back to a particular user.

In today’s digital marketing arena, we tend to focus on click-throughs and landing page optimization. We tend to focus on the analytics, and forget that there are real people behind them. It’s time for us, on-line marketing professionals, to move away from a focus on performance reports and hitting the KPIs. To drive more conversions, we need to start interacting with our audiences as human beings.

We must remember that behind every click stands – somebody, and knowing about this somebody is the secret base of any successful strategy. The starting point involves talking to people so that they feel you understand their needs. Just letting them know you understand their problem is half the battle. The endpoint is when you get to a point where you know your audience so well that you can picture a face and a name that you’re talking to.

In order to follow your customers’ needs, you have to diligently check and analyze your existing data. Furthermore, it is important that you take surveys from time to time to sharpen your knowledge about your customers’ preferences. If you invest in approaching the individuals in your target audience as if you honestly know them, they are going to follow you. This means that your offers as well as your inquiry form, must be segmented – and more than that – personalized.

Walk a Mile in their Shoes

Let’s apply this to the following case study – Imagine that you’re responsible for the email marketing for a big conference, and your goal is to sell tickets for the event.

As a first step, you could start out by dividing your target audience based on where people were coming from, how far they were traveling to attend the event. On the base of this data, you can create a campaign that will be sent only to a specific segment of your target audience, for example, those who live far away. Offer discounts on the cost of a ticket just for those people who would need to pay for a flight in order to come.

You’d be amazed at how high conversion rates can be as a result of this kind of targeted activity. People appreciate the fact that you understand their specific problem – or, in this example, that the cost of the flight combined with the cost of the event was prohibitive. In addition, you could consider creating a second email campaign for individuals who live very near to the event, and give them an incentive to buy tickets.

Be more personal

Now take the extra mile. For example, it is recommended that e-mails you send out to your subscribers will be personalized, applying each customer by his name. You also have to maintain a real human voice and express ourselves such that it comes across as a conversation – and, therefore, it hits a responsive chord.

The point is that you plug yourselves into your audience’s thinking – and come away with very high conversion. Remember – the more you understand your customers’ specific needs, apply to them personally, and provide them with the adapt offers, the more they convert.