Every seasoned marketer knows that it’s not how many people are on a list, it’s how well people respond. To keep the shine in your marketing to impress customers and prospects, I’ve compiled thirteen ways on how entrepreneurs can segment and ultimately target your subscribers so they receive relevant communications from you.

It’s more important than ever that you treat every contact with customers and prospect like it’s your last and through targeted email marketing, you can achieve a balance with the needs of the business needs and respect for consumers.

What’s this targeting  all about? There is nothing wrong, immoral or unethical with segmenting customer and prospect lists. In fact, it’s very beneficial so people get exactly what they want, when they want it and don’t get bombarded with wrong messages at wrong times. Much of the controversy around targeting is directed toward behavioral targeting, which advertising networks do to advertise products and services to people, often stealthily, based on the Web sites they visit. CRM applications hold a significant value for businesses who need to market to their customers so they can deliver valuable products to customers.

13 Ways to Segment and Target Prospects & Customers for Email Marketing

1. Prospects, Customers and Partners — It’s a good idea to roll with the idea that you want to have broad categories to segment your customers, prospects, partners and users. This will help you when you have broad announcements as well as assist with metrics and analytics later.
2. Lead scored Prospects — With effective lead scoring, you can target prospects by factors that score their “warmth,” to your products and services. At the center of it, every interaction contributes a little more to a lead’s score until it’s time to close a deal or few.
3. Topics and Interests of Prospects — By narrowing the interest of a prospect down into what they want out of a lead capture, you can tailor specific offers. For instance, SEO review services for someone who wants advice for optimizing their search engine rankings.
4. Customers Product Interests — This is a natural, but it’s so often overlooked. Customers who buy a product are much more likely to buy complimentary products if it provides them value. This is also a great chance to follow up to say ‘Thank You’ and give them advice on using products or services.
5. Customer Lead Score – Are you customers looking to buy again? A great way to provide tailored offers for the returning customer. Maintaining separate lead scores or even one that resets over time is a great way to target value to subscribers.
6. Customer Revenue — As evil as it sounds, targeting value to customers who spend a lot is a great way to induce more repeat sales and customer loyalty. We had a successful customer who targeted his past clients who contributed to
7. Strategic Partners and their Customers — What better way to reinforce a strong relationship with partners than to provide tailored value to how a customer learned of your business. Likewise, provide mutual value so your targeted audience is highly respected for their bonds and relationships and isn’t forced to choose one over another.
8. One-time Transactions and Subscriptions — Providing tailored messages for who purchased one-time products is valuable so you can compliment them with beneficial products and services.
9. Recent Activity — Nothing irritates me more when a company ages ago emails me soliciting me to spend without virtually any contact beforehand. Being able to place customers and prospects into buckets of recent activity of days, weeks and months ago are helpful for targeted messages nurtured follow up.
10. Customers: Loyalty and Referrals — No better way to reward customers who reward you than with attractive discounts. Be sure you offer value to their prior purchases or activities otherwise it will feel like a generic discount. Word of mouth is a cost that many small businesses can afford.
11. Everyone: Email Opt-In Status — We all know that double opt in renders better satisfaction, email delivery and is just better. Providing specific value pending on if someone is single-opt-in or confirmed will greatly assist in satisfaction. (Example: if someone is confirmed, don’t make them click a link to opt in twice.)
12. Geographics & Demographics — The usual suspects of targeting … the ‘who’ and ‘where’ we live. Probably a wise idea to poll your users and have them volunteer the data to you in alignment with your privacy policies. This can totally be used for tailored offers, events and buzz in a specific state or profession.
13. Survey Data – Consider what matters to you and build a survey that assists you to profile your customers and prospects. Suveys can be quickly assembled in minutes with PollDaddy or SurveyMonkey. If the data is valuable enough, incentivize it and collect data from your users willingly. You’d be surprised what people will do for a free gadget. Just with any data collection practices, make sure it’s clear where there data will go after you have it. With CRM software like Infusionsoft, you can use custom fields to store the results and even use it in future segmentations.

A special thanks go out to Tyler Garns, director of marketing at Infusionsoft, who shared several ways on how he segments customers with Infusionsoft. Yes, we use many of the targeting criteria, but not all. All data collection practices are in line with our privacy policy.

These are the 13 most applicable ways that many small businesses could slice and dice their customer, prospect and partner lists. Depending on your business, goals and sales process, there can be nearly infinite ways you can target and narrow customers so you can deliver personalized email marketing in an impressive way.

I want to boldly point out that these people on lists deserve respect. Never trade, sell, barter or purchase a “list” of people. It never converts and will result in direct spam complaints — and you know how we do with violators. Like our peers in the email marketing space, we terminate spammers with extreme prejudice.

I hope this helps entrepreneurs and small businesses communicate with their prospects and customers better. It’s not about the technology, but the plan in how you offer products and services. No longer will two groups suffice for targeting, narrow targeting is the way to go. If you have any additonal suggested ways to target customers or prospects, let us know in the comments.

–Joe

[Photo: GregPC on Flickr, modified.]

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