Ultimately, being shrewd about how you segment your marketing data gives you the opportunity to become more effective at targeting the right people at the right time.
Here, I share just some of the ways you can use attribution and segmentation to unlock even more value from your marketing efforts.
Understand the journeys of converting and non-converting users
As the name suggests, the data captured by traditional CRM systems is based on customers: On people who have completed a conversion.
However, there will always be far more people browsing your products and services only to walk away.
It’s here, in these non-converting journeys, that marketers are able to uncover where their efforts are falling flat.
Effective user journey analysis and attributed reporting provides you with not only an understanding of the behaviour of people who buy from you but also those people who come to your site and do not purchase.
Armed with this information, you can identify the marketing channels that aren’t helping attract or convert your chosen customer segments well enough.
You can then experiment with cutting back spend in those areas and reallocating budget to other more effective channels.
Discover what activities attract new customers
One of the most common uses of segmentation is to provide a distinction between new and existing customers.
Segmentation allows you to distinguish between these two types of customers, while attributed reporting and user journey analysis helps you understand their typical behaviours.
This combination then gives you the power to experiment and discover which channels are most effective at attracting each type of customer.
How might user behaviour differ between these two segments? You might expect that new customers are exposed to your brand through channels like display and non-navigational search.
On the other hand, existing customers might visit your website more often directly, through email marketing, or a branded, more specific, search.
Once you have the data to prove (or disprove) these assumptions, you’ll have an idea of where to focus your marketing efforts.
For example, if you want to attract more new customers, you’ll know which channels, and which combination of channels, to test first.
Reach your different customer groups in the most effective ways
Effective segmentation should also allow you to determine between different groups of customers based on their demographic or behavioural characteristics.
Analysing your attributed reporting data by customer segment allows you to formulate and test marketing campaigns specific to your different customer groups, rather than put out an ineffective ‘one-size-fits-all’ campaign and hope for the best.
To give a simple example to put this into context, say you’re a travel company and you’ve identified two of your common customer types:
Active Retirees
- Description: older holidaymakers who have the free time and money to enjoy travel.
- Relevant products: cruises, package holidays, tours.
- User journey: don’t regularly use social media, conduct a lot of online research before making final choice, often complete purchase offline.
- Effective marketing campaigns: display advertising, affiliate partnerships, email marketing campaigns well in advance of peak booking time offering in-store discount.
Affluent Singles
- Description: spontaneous decision makers with money to burn.
- Relevant products: last minute group holiday deals.
- User journey: impulse purchasers with short lead time, engage with social media regularly.
- Effective marketing campaigns: targeted social media advertising offering limited-time group discount.
In this example, ‘Active Retirees’ tend to have more touchpoints in their path to purchase than ‘Affluent Singles’.
Given this data, you can then try targeting your Active Retirees well in advance with an in-store discount across the various platforms that work for them.
At the same time, you can test cutting back on the number of different touchpoints used to engage with Affluent Singles, who convert last-minute regardless, to see if you get better results.
Learn how to market to customers with high lifetime value
Segmentation can also allow you to group customers based on their purchasing habits.
For example, one-time purchasers, occasional purchasers, and regular purchasers with a high lifetime value.
Using the Active Retirees example again, let’s say that your attributed reporting shows that a retargeting campaign had only a minor impact on these customers’ decisions to purchase their first holiday.
In this way, it doesn’t appear to be a profitable a campaign.
However, when you analyse the attributed data over an extended period of time, you may find that these same customers come back to make additional purchases further down the line, making them fall into your high lifetime value segment.
You may also find that they return using what we might call ‘free’ channels (SEO, email, or direct), interacting with fewer touchpoints each time.
When judging the value of the initial retargeting campaign across the entire lifetime value of these customers, the associated ROI becomes much greater.
Only by using segmentation and attribution in combination can you gain this insight and judge the performance of your campaigns effectively.
This then gives you the power to experiment and get better at targeting the right people in the right ways.
Use attribution to unlock the value that’s right under your nose
By harnessing the power of attributed reporting data, marketers can better understand the intricacies of the true value of their efforts.
By segmenting that data in astute ways, marketers are given the opportunity to test, evaluate, and ultimately get better at targeting their most valuable customers.
When talking about attribution, the conversation is immediately drawn into the algorithm, with little regard as to the additional benefits it can bring to all of your marketing channels.
The advice I’ve provided here hopefully demonstrates that using the data to enhance insight presents a huge opportunity for marketers.
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