Ascendant Content

The different types of segmentation strategies are often associated with email marketing, but can be used for other forms of marketing such as social media targeting too. Each can utilised to craft specific content to each area of your audience. In this article, we’ll cover the different types of segmentation strategies and what you can do with each. 

So what are segmentation strategies?

Segmentation is breaking your entire audience down and identifying unique characteristics in how they pertain to sales, engagement, email open rates and click through rates to name a few. The ultimate aim of which is to identify which segments of your audience are the most likely to purchase, and identify areas of your audience who are currently not purchasing. You can segment your audience in a range of different ways depending on the software that you use and what it allows for. 

The types of segmentations

Demographic segmentation

Demographic segmentation involves dividing your audience based on criteria such as age, gender, income, occupation, education level, or marital status. 

Behavioural segmentation

Behavioural segmentation involves categorising your audience based on their actions, interactions, and engagement with your brand. This can include factors such as purchase history, website browsing behaviour, email opens and clicks, and engagement with specific content. 

Geographic segmentation

Geographic segmentation divides your audience based on their geographic location. This segmentation strategy can be effective for businesses targeting specific regions or those with location-specific offers or events. 

Psychographic segmentation

Psychographic segmentation focuses on the psychological characteristics, values, attitudes, and lifestyle choices of your audience. This segmentation strategy helps you understand the motivations, interests, and pain points of different segments. By aligning your email content with the psychographic traits of each segment, you can create a stronger emotional connection and drive higher engagement.

Purchase history and lifecycle segmentation

Segmenting your audience based on their purchase history and lifecycle stage can be highly effective. By identifying loyal customers, first-time buyers, or those who haven’t made a purchase in a while, you can tailor your emails to their specific needs. Offer personalised recommendations, exclusive discounts, or loyalty rewards to nurture relationships and drive repeat purchases.

Engagement based segmentation

Segmenting based on engagement levels allows you to target active subscribers separately from those who are less engaged. Send re-engagement campaigns to inactive subscribers, offering incentives or exclusive content to encourage them to re-engage. For highly engaged subscribers, you could provide advanced content, exclusive previews, or early access to new products or services. You could also consider developing a brand ambassador or affiliate link program for the more invested customers.

How do I choose the right segmentation strategy for my business?

All of the above segmentation strategies could work as the ‘right’ one. As with most areas of digital marketing, segmenting your audience requires a lot of analysis, willingness to curate content specific to each area of your audience and testing. Split testing, otherwise referred to as (A/B testing) is a very effective way of doing this. This involves creating two different types of content for a social media campaign, ad campaign or email campaign. You then measure the effectiveness of both campaigns against a segment of your audience. If you are unfamiliar with split testing, make sure to hit subscribe as this has been planned for another article. 

How do I know if my segmentation strategy is working?

Monitor your data. There are a range of free digital marketing tools that you can use in addition to any paid software. Most types of digital marketing software will also allow you free features for a specified amount of subscribers or followers. Some key ones to take note of include:

• Google Ads
• Meta Ads
• Google Analytics
• Software to create and specify unique tracking parameters

Remember to test, watch what is more effective for each segment of your audience, and don’t feel dejected if your first attempts are not successful. Digital marketing requires testing to best optimise your brand reach and engagement, with the ultimate view of making your business successful and sustainable. If you’d like to discuss how to market to the different segments of your audience, start a conversation with us below.