Landing on a marketing strategy that’s effective in today’s oversaturated marketplace is, well, hard. The answer? Segmentation. Segmentation is all about specifically focusing on your target niches and creating personalized content resulting in optimization, retention, and deliverability worth bragging about.

You’ll want to pair those segmentation processes with a systematic and refined lead creation funnel – the two should create a harmonious relationship, be tied at the hip, and become best friends for life.

What is Behavioral Segmentation?

If you’re in the email marketing space, chances are you use segmentation strategies like demographic, geographic, or even psychographic fairly often as it can be a helpful tool for targeting your audience. While these types of segmentation techniques are helpful for maintaining a relationship with current customers and guiding prospects down the funnel, behavioral segmentation can significantly improve the customer and prospect experience overall. Essentially, behavioral segmentation analyzes user behavior (things like what emails they open, content they download, sites they visit on your Website) and then uses what you learn from those actions to accurately identify your audience’s actual needs to create personalized marketing strategies.

It’s simple— the more relevant and timely your emails are, the more likely you’ll get a positive reaction from your recipients. When you identify possible behavioral triggers, analyze your audience behavior, build your flows and create segments, it can be a sure fire way to drive engagement and achieve profitable outcomes.

What is a Lead Creation Funnel and Why You Need One!

If you were to surmise one key takeaway from our section on behavioral segmentation, it’s undoubtedly the fact that there is no “one size fits all” approach to marketing today. However, there is one thing (typically two) that all marketers are in search of: eyeballs. Grabbing the attention of your target audience is no easy task, but it is imperative that you do so if you are to create a successful lead creation funnel.

In short, a lead creation funnel is the process by which you are attracting, nurturing and converting contacts into leads for your business. As you plan your lead creation funnel will flow, consider the following points to be instrumental to that process:

  • Identifying your target is key and should be clearly defined
  • Spot a problem and provide a solution
  • Accessible, engaging content (CTAs) coupled with email deliverability best practices

Every great idea should be coupled with an equally great plan. As it relates to your lead creation process, your plan should be to attract, interact, and convert your leads into customers.

The Process

TOFU

Your lead creation funnel should be aligned with your overarching lead acquisition and sales development programs. In order for that to occur, you will want to implement a process that helps enrich those programs.

This starts with the top of the funnel, or, TOFU. This portion of the funnel is designed to garner awareness and interest, utilizing different means such as:

  • Social Media
  • Email Outreach
  • Targeted landing pages
  • SEO/Pay-per-click ads

Once you have attracted your new leads, it is time to nurture them.

MOFU

MOFU, or Middle of the Funnel, is where we get a bit more targeted, with specific nurture programs that automate based off of the interest we gathered at the Top of the Funnel. As your audience begins to become more refined, it will give you the opportunity to customize their journey based on their intent, with the goal of driving them to landing pages and obtaining contact information.

This stage is also paramount in ensuring that you are receiving favorable inboxing with your MOFU email campaigns. By sending to recently opted-in contacts, with content that they have signed up for and at a frequency that they are expecting, you are putting yourself in a great position to consistently reach the inbox.

Ultimately, anyone that has made it to the Middle of your Funnel is still weighing their purchasing options. In this stage, we want to capitalize on that opportunity and prove to them that your solution is the best fit for their specific wants or needs.

BOFU

It’s now time for the conversion phase, also known as the Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU). When someone reaches this stage, they become a qualified lead and are ready to buy. This is the natural conclusion to your lead creation funnel.

However, the work here is not yet done, as we still need to optimize these conversions. To do this, we will want to provide content such as free shipping, discount codes, or even additional products or services to help sweeten the pot. For B2B audiences, this could be things like free trials or assessments. This offer should be so irresistible that there is no way your lead could ever say no!

Final Word

Make no mistake about it, the way in which you mesh your lead funnel and behavioral segmentation strategies will be vital to your success in generating new leads and returning positive ROI. It can’t be understated how important these structures are to bridge the gap between your marketing and sales teams.

Developing smart and effective behavioral segmentation and lead funnel creation processes takes time, focus and brainpower. But isn’t it time you got off the hamster wheel of batch and blast emailing and started doing strategic nurturing to your customers and prospects that makes a real impact to your sales and marketing team? The answer is a resounding yes!

Read the full post on our partner Act-On Software’s blog.

Do you need advice on building out a strategic segmentation or funnel nurture program? Contact us today to speak to one of our marketing experts who can help!