No matter the industry, customers demand more thoughtful and meaningful experiences from the companies they do business with. 80% of consumers report they are more likely to purchase from a company that offers personalized experiences. As a digital marketer, meeting this demand requires you to deliver the right content, at the right time, to the right people. If you get this combination right, the result is more qualified leads, more sales, and more long term relationships with customers that lead to even more business for you.

The reality is that when you reach out to new prospects, most won’t be ready to purchase right away. Research shows that only 3% of the market is ready to purchase now, which means that 97% aren’t. Yet 65% of marketers report they are not actively nurturing leads, which creates a significant opportunity.

Automated customer segmentation allows you to target customers and provide more personalized and meaningful content. As a result, you can boost conversion rates and do so at scale.

What Is Lead Nurturing?

For those who know, feel free to skip ahead. Otherwise, here’s a refresher. Lead nurturing is a marketing activity that moves undecided prospects along an educational path through the customer journey. It creates a cadence of contact with prospects and keeps the lines of communication open, so you’re top of mind as they get closer to purchasing.

Over time, as people respond, you can learn more about their needs and interests to refine your targeting, which will provide increasingly relevant information to make prospects more ready for contact from someone in your sales division. Consider the following:

  • Eighty percent of new leads never translate into sales.
  • Organizations with effective lead-nurturing strategies generate 50% more “sales-ready” leads, and do so at a 33% lower cost.
  • Marketing automation used with lead nurturing brings in a 451% increase in qualified leads.

According to our data, automated segmentation programs increase email open rates by 300% and click rates by up to 700%. In addition, creating a segmented automated lead nurture program outperforms the “batch and blast” email that many B2B businesses use when sending generic messaging to their main list.

What Is Marketing Segmentation?

Segmenting your automated email program to target specific audience groups is a great way to personalize your emails and send relevant messaging to prospective buyers. According to McKinsey and Company, personalized programs result in more engaged customers and a higher top line.

Most customers (71%) are frustrated by impersonal experiences, and 72% of customers will only engage with personalized messaging. In fact, consumers are more than twice as likely to view personalized offers as “important” than “unimportant.” Customers are craving personalized experiences, and when they get them, your connection quickly grows.

You can set up lead nurturing at each stage of the sales funnel and segment your campaigns based on target industries and the different stakeholders within each prospective organization.

You can segment just about any data set, including by geography, role, stage in the buying cycle, business size and more.

How to Get Started With Automated Marketing Segmentation

Before you begin to personalize your marketing efforts through segmentation, you need the data to customize your campaigns. Check with your ops or CRM teams to learn which data fields you can use in addition. If your existing marketing technology is tracking website engagement, you can tap into that as well.

In the planning stage, you’ll want to consider mapping out your audience, goals and workflow. Here are a few pro tips:

  • Define who you are targeting
  • Define why you are targeting them
  • Define the outcome you want
  • Define how you will report on this outcome

Read the full blog on our partner Act-On’s website. Want to learn more about how Goose Digital can help you with customer segmentation? Contact us today.