Audience segmentation is the secret to creating a real connection with your customers. 

Creating a connection with your customers will ensure that they engage with your message, translating to a higher Return on Investment (ROI) for you. 

Digital marketing today requires you to meet your customers where they are—-this is not just knowing your audience's location but also understanding their needs, wants, and desires. 

Audience segmentation is the real power and benefit of doing digital marketing over traditional marketing.

While traditional marketing (billboards, radio ads, magazine print ads) limits segmentation to audiences who like a particular channel, digital marketing can help you reach specific audiences. 

For instance, through paid ads, you can set your ad to target men or women who have visited your website in the last 120 or 180 days while adding personalized messaging and visuals.

What is Audience Segmentation?

Audience segmentation involves creating subgroups with different attributes within your target audience and sending customized marketing messages. 

This approach builds customer connections and drives action. In fact, there are tens, if not hundreds, of audience segmentation criteria. These include demographics (age, profession, and gender) and psychographics (pains, desires, and behaviors).

Why Audience Segmentation is Crucial Today

Modern customers, especially millennials and younger generations, expect personalization. A McKinsey study revealed that over 76% of customers would consider buying from a brand with specialized communications. 

Broad, vague messages just don't fit in today's world, and the only way to play this game is through audience segmentation.”

Audience segmentation can help you achieve the level of personalization your clients expect. Some segmentation benefits include: 

• Finding better customers since you can craft custom messages instead of generic ones that customers ignore
• Uncovering media and information types (texts, emails, blogs, whitepapers) that each audience segment prefers
• Increasing audience engagement
• Building better audience relationships
• Uncovering opportunities to create products and services better tailored to customer-specific interests

4 Audience Segmentation Trends to Follow

With so many strategies available, you need to ensure that you are approaching audience segmentation properly by implementing the latest trends to achieve business growth. Here are 4 segmentation trends to guide you.  

1. Hyper-Personalization

Gone are the days when personalization only meant ‘Dear (First Name)‘ or ‘adults between 25-30‘. 

Today, successful marketing must include more audience attributes. For instance, companies avoid excessive marketing by researching or testing the ideal number of email campaigns they should send their subscribers. 

Another hyper-personalization technique in email marketing is creating email templates updated with content based on unique customer profiles, such as seasonal offers, updates, as well as recommendations. 

Hyper-personalization also involves creating ‘pure audiences.' The more attributes you include in a marketing message, the smaller and more personalized an audience will likely get.

By targeting a pure audience, you will be able to achieve a higher ROI since the data will be more reliable. Plus, you can use AI to create even more accurate messaging.

2. Using Real-Time Intent Data

Intent data identifies buying signals you can use for audience segmentation by monitoring people's online footprints.  Footprints can be online searches, content downloads, event registrations, as well as website visits.

But intent data can quickly turn irrelevant without quick action. 

Real-time intent, on the other hand, is a customer's first moment of interest. It’s the gold you need to get a competitive advantage in 2022 and beyond. 

Identifying real-time online sales activities helps you to get your customers at the exact moment that they need a product or service.

You can also use audience segmentation data to prioritize accounts, reduce customer churn, and get ahead of your competitors.

3. New Data-Collection Methods 

Forms, chatbots, and messengers are some of the current data-collection methods you can use for audience segmentation. 

In the future, data collection methods such as UTM (Urchin Tracking Modules) are likely to gain speed. 

UTM parameters are simple tags added to a URL that allows powerful user activity tracking. UTM tags are sent back to Google Analytics when someone clicks on a URL with UTM parameters.

Companies will also start benefiting from cookies well beyond first-party data into second and third-party data. For example, you can match your offer to a customer's activity on an unrelated website.

4. Self-Segmenting Tools

Giving your customers the tools they need to segment an audience is becoming the best way to go.

For instance, you can reach out to your email subscribers and website visitors and ask them the kind of content they'd like to receive. 

You can also target new web visitors by having them fill out a contact form that details what type of information they would like to receive about your product or service.

3 Bonus Tips for Segmenting Your Audience

Here are a few industry and website tips you can borrow today to improve your audience segmentation:

1. E-commerce 

VS ran a segmented flash sale email campaign for an e-commerce client that resulted in the highest sales of the year.

We divided the email audience into two—those who have never purchased before and past buyers. 

The message to potential new buyers was, “now is the time to try us out without having to pay full price.”

For existing buyers, we encouraged them to “claim the discount in one simple re-click order button.” 

This segmentation resulted in the highest yearly sales for our client as well as an increase in first-time and repeat customers!

Other segmentation tips in e-commerce include:

• Promoting goods from a specific category to likely buyers
• Encouraging users to add items from their preferred category to their cart
• Using abandoned cart emails to return churned clients

2. Audience Segmentation for Websites

You can segment your website to connect different customer segments to relevant content. 

Start your website’s audience segmentation by creating different buyer personas and the information each one needs. Some website segmentation best practices include: 

• Using interactive cues to encourage users to self-select into particular segments
• Speaking directly to each audience's needs
• Offering a variety of content formats such as videos, blog posts, podcasts, and whitepapers in one segment to appeal to different buyer preferences
• Providing interactive content such as calculators and interactive walk-through videos to win customers over with your knowledge and expertise

3. Subscription-Based Software

Audience segmentation can also help you send focused messages targeting new and repeat customers. Some tips you can use are:

• Having welcome messages for new users and keeping them up-to-date
• Launching re-engagement campaigns on repeat customers to increase retention

Takeaway: Audience Segmentation Equals More Marketing ROI

In today's world, sending a mass message could end in lost business. What's more, the modern customer will ignore a generic notice and see your brand as uncaring and incompetent. 

In 2022, it's smarter to segment your audiences using strategies such as hyper-segmentation, real-time intent data, and modern data collection methods, such as UTM tracking. 

The bottom line is audience segmentation will improve your marketing ROI. Viral Solutions can help you create and run segmented marketing campaigns to achieve long-term growth for your business. 

We are a full-time marketing agency that has helped brands build successful marketing strategies over the years. Request a free marketing audit today and get the insights you need to grow your business.