It goes without saying that different people have different interests. But marketers who want to get as much promotional material out as possible, as quickly as possible, might not give this fact the consideration it deserves. Prioritizing audience segmentation for marketing is the foundation of a successful campaign.

Why is Segmentation for Marketing Such a Big Deal?

On the surface, creating a single mass marketing campaign designed to appeal to everyone sounds much easier and faster than segmentation. Just get the word out, right?  However, a broad advertisement can only do so much. Your customers want products and services suited for them specifically —and to provide that, you need to know your audience.

Segmentation for marketing separates your potential audience into groups, or segments, based on shared characteristics. These characteristics can include:

• Job title
• Geographic location
• Purchase history
• Expressed preferences
• Engagement with previous promotional material
• Etc.

Organizing your audience like this allows you to give potential customers what they want or need. With specialized advertisements created for each segment, you can more effectively market your products and services to an interested audience.

Modern Marketing without Segmentation, aka Spamming

Modern marketing technology allows companies to send millions of emails with just a click. But without proper segmentation, those emails go out to literally everybody on your organization’s contact list. And given the volume of advertising companies tend to do, that’s a LOT of emails every week, if not every day. Consumers have an unflattering nickname for this kind of marketing: spam messages.

Even unintentionally spamming your customers will impact how much they trust you. Aside from the fact that your messages will look suspicious (and maybe even be flagged by the recipient’s inbox), it also reflects a lack of care for your customers. You are doing the opposite of what the modern customer wants, which is to be empowered to get the information they want because they’ve told the company through their choices and action what they want to receive. Likewise, the customer wants to not receive other information as a result of poor segmentation.

Privacy Laws: The Result of Broken Customer Trust

The new wave of privacy laws is, in part, a result of broken customer trust. Corporations abused the data they collected, and consumers pushed back. Without a healthy respect for your customers’ privacy, reflected in part through segmentation and heavy personalization, you are destroying the trust people have in your company.

How 4Segments Can Help

Advanced marketing automation software shouldn’t have to work alone. For truly effective marketing, pair your system with a powerful segmentation tool that displays the data in a clear, visually distinct format. 4Segments fits the bill perfectly.

4Segments allows you to visually create customer segments and build campaigns around those segments, ensuring you target only the right audience. Even better, this software is designed to pair not only with your marketing automation system but with our privacy compliance software, 4Comply. Maximize your marketing efforts without putting yourself at risk! Contact us to learn more.