I’ve organised a fair few email and telemarketing campaigns recently and one thing that has stood out as having a huge impact on response rates is the importance of properly segmented contact data.
In any direct marketing campaign you will only get a good response if your message is well targeted and relevant to your audience. It stands to reason therefore the broader the audience, the broader your message will have to be and the less likely you are to hit the spot.
Photo courtesy of Skyliner via Flickr
What do I mean by properly segmented data?
Essentially I’m talking about separating your contact data into target groups of people who are likely to share the same:
- Interests
- Income
- Geographic locations
- Hobbies and past times
- A.N. Other factor by which you can group your customers / prospective customers into similar groups
By effectively segmenting your data you are able to develop a much more targeted and rich message for your audience. The result of this should be an improved response from your direct marketing campaign.
How do you know what the correct segmentation criteria are?
I would take a first step of looking at your existing customers. Are they mostly male or female, what age and income bracket do they fall into, do they live in a particular part of town, or have a certain type of career, have they tended to approach your company by phone or email etc etc.
For one of my clients I know that the decision maker is often the lady of the house, but the finance behind the decision lies with the husband. Therefore we need to appeal to two audiences with a slightly different message – one reaching out with a story around monetary value gained from buying our service, the other in terms of lifestyle enhancement. This is where well segmented data comes in very useful because not only can we tailor the message for each group, but we can also tailor the medium i.e. email for one and a posted letter for the other.
It is certainly no different in B2B marketing, although your decision maker is likely to be influenced by many more people or layers within the organisation. As such, you will want to have different messages and approaches for each audience. If you are selling stationery for example, you may want to influence the day to day decision makers i.e. office managers, by sending a box of chocolates with a personalised message, but for the Finance Director, you should perhaps think about a different medium.
Of course, for both business and consumers, you will want to consider which stage your target customers are at in the buying cycle. But that’s a whole different kettle of fish. If you are running direct marketing campaigns, make sure you avoid the elephant gun approach of blasting your message at everyone who’s prepared to listen.
Segment your data, refine your message and see your response rates start to climb from those depressingly low numbers every direct marketer has experienced at some point.
I very much agree. Directed to the right audience, your product markets better. This is my goal for a few different websites to meet different needs.
As discussed in your post, I think the application of segmentation criteria for B2B marketing is crucial.
I totally agree with your post. Always the response rate should be high.
You are true in mentioning the facts about the response improving but I worry some of the steps mentioned can bring spammers to your site too that can prove to be dangerous for your site.
This is a great website. I just found you guys today. I’ll be bookmarking, and coming back for sure. There’s a lot of good info here. I’ve usually referred it to the ‘shotgun’ approach to marketing.. I do like the term elephant gun tho. We went through the effort to do some demographics research before we started marketing so we could be sure our advertisements were targeted to our most likely customers. We also track our marketing efforts so we can determine which ones are the most effective, and the best use of our money. Thanks again!
what u said here its all fine and true, but dont forget, that all the people are different and looking at the world from the different angle
I for one seriously don’t understand why people seem to have issues with crowdsourcing. For starters, it’s a great option for small businesses, especially since most of them can’t afford big design companies. Plus it’s also helps new designers and freelancers with their portfolios.
Great stuff and so very true! I think integrating your email message with a telemarketing campaign and direct mail program will boost response rates from 5 to 15 percent.
great work. i must say this post will certainly going to boost one’s knowledge about search engine.
very useful content
Its a huge task segmenting customers and writing different sales letters, but probably well worth it.
Well, it all comes down to know your customers, know how they differ, and have a clear proposition that lights their fire. Segmentation is the first crucial step in marketing. The grouping together of customers with common needs now makes it possible to set marketing objectives for each of those segments. Once the objectives have been set, strategies can be developed to meet the objectives using the tactical weapons of product, price, promotion and place (route to market).
Segment your data, refine your message and see your response rates start to climb from those depressingly low numbers every direct marketer has experienced at some point.
I guess this is the solution to my current dilemma. I am proud og my site, but the response rate is not so good.
Business to Business data can be quite problematic, especially for those that sell to a wide range of companies.
In this case it is always worth looking at the records you are excluding – depending on your product or service, this may be things like retail, public sector, one-man companies, large companies, etc.
The other thing is, if at all possible, try a smaller set of a few hundred first before committing to a large mailing or telemarketing campaign.
I run direct marketing campaigns in my work and i’m struck by the paucity of targeting capabilities by most email B2C and mobile advertising companies. They are possibly the two strongest direct marketing mediums but their targeting capabilities can’t match those of advertising networks.
Most B2C email companies think that male 25-45 counts as good targeting..
Excellent post! The more targeted and specific you can get your leads the better. I have had good success lately in developing niche, long tail keyword websites where they subjects are very specific. These attract far less visitors than a broad topic but the visitors are coming there looking for a very specific term and are normally looking to buy/find out more.
Segmenting your target markets seems to be more important than I realised. Perhaps this is the reason that I’ve been getting less of a response than I anticipated for my marketing efforts…
How could I go about further segmenting my target audiences in my Google AdWords campaigns?
I’m currently looking to improve the response rate of staff surveys for this year. I totally agree with your post. Always the response rate should be high.
I agree. It’s very curious and important if the message relaying is targeted. You will get the highest response you want in this way.
agree the most important part of business is knowing your primary target market and secondary target market and so forth. From there, you can start to map out a strategic marketing plan to capture that target market.
Market segmentation is definitely one of the most basic things contributing to your response rate. and yes i agree with your views up to some extend. well thanks for sharing this valuable information.
Interesting point of view. Every business has different types of visitors/customers/prospects and it doesn’t make any sense to contact them using the same kind of message. But there is a limit in segmenting… The secret is to segment; but not too much, as managing a DB is very time consuming.
As far as direct marketing campaign is concern obviously you will get the good response when you communicated effectively and targeted your audience with good response. And every business has different customers and every business has different niche broad or dedicated. and segmentation is the nice process.
Nice post you have there Andy,
Targeting the right market is absolutely important to getting the click! If you want those CTR’s increasing, you have to make your content or sales copy appeal effectively to the correct audience.
Thanks for writing this, I will be back to hopefully see more posts like this one =)
Segmentation is the first crucial step in marketing. The grouping together of customers with common needs now makes it possible to set marketing objectives for each of those segments.