What is audience segmentation?
Audience segmentation is the process of dividing a large audience into smaller groups of people, called segments. All the members of a segment have a characteristic or attribute in common, which could mean that they share a behavioral characteristic, an interest, or demographic data.
Why is audience segmentation important?
Audience segmentation is important because it helps to create targeted content that responds to a relevant characteristic of a segment.
An easy example of segmentation is a location-based audience segment that contains all visitors from a certain country. An online store could then provide tailored messaging (about country-specific shipping costs, for example) to just those users.
Using audience segmentation, you can define many different target audiences and tailor your message to each segment. Personalizing your messaging for different segments can increase conversion rates and help you build better relationships with your customers, thus increasing both sales and loyalty.
Types of audience segmentation
1. Demographic segmentation
Segmentation can be conducted based on demographic data. You can divide your audience based on factors like geographic location, age, gender, income, and any other information you have access to.
2. Behavioral segmentation
Behavioral segmentation involves tracking the ways that visitors shop and interact with your website and brand. This includes keeping track of which pages and products each visitor browses, how much time they spend on your site, and their purchasing behavior.
3. Psychographic segmentation
Psychographic segmentation splits customers into groups based on psychological traits that influence consumption habits. The traits that marketers are interested in are drawn from people’s attitudes, preferences, and everyday lifestyles, and they influence the way people make purchase decisions. These could include beliefs, opinions, values, hobbies, and more.
How to use audience segments in online marketing
It’s essential to have an audience segmentation strategy that personalizes your visitors’ experience in 2022. Online shoppers are getting used to seamless user experiences that are only possible with personalization.
Here are 3 simple strategies for using audience segmentation to improve your buyer’s journey by tailoring your messages to their demographic characteristics, interests, and values.
1. Website personalization
Website personalization allows you to display different versions of your website content to different segments of users. This will help you achieve increased sales and conversion rates because your messaging and discount offers will be relevant to the audience segments who are seeing them.
Using a website personalization tool like OptiMonk, you can collect behavioral data and display relevant content to each visitor segment through one piece of software.
2. Email marketing
Email marketing software (like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, etc.) allows you to collect data about your subscribers with the help of subscription forms and email analytics. Using those insights, you can send better-tailored email campaigns to your subscribers.
This can be as simple as using a customer’s first name to start the email or as complicated as running completely separate email marketing campaigns for different audience segments.
3. Facebook ads
You can create powerfully-targeted ads on Facebook to drive new leads to your site or retarget previous visitors and customers by taking advantage of their ad targeting features to ensure that your ads appear to segments that will be interested in them.
