Key takeaways
So you have all of this lead info in your CRM … now what? Having a way to follow up with leads is great, but if it’s inefficient it’s no better than using your email client’s contact list. That’s where CRM customer segmentation comes into play.
By grouping leads based on relevant characteristics and following up based on their interests and buyer stage, you improve the odds that they will find your nurture campaigns and outreach helpful (rather than annoying). But how would one go about doing such a thing?
What is customer segmentation and why is it important?
Let’s talk about socks for a moment. If you’re in the business of selling socks, you can try selling ankle socks to everyone you meet. “Who doesn’t need socks?” you might say. “This product is truly universal.”
But that’s a professional fallacy. The wiser option is to try and identify characteristics that different sock buyers have in common. Do women or men buy more ankle socks? Are athletes more inclined to buy them or less? Does their history of shoe purchases factor into the decision? Is weather or geography a factor?
By breaking the pool of potential customers into groups based on their relationship to the core offering, you can build a profile of attributes that aids in recognizing other leads that likely fall into a given group.
If you have a good idea of what the lead is looking for and why, the work of meeting that need becomes a lot easier.
The “how” of CRM customer segmentation
Before we go any further, it’s important to know that customer segmentation is a useful business process with or without software tools like CRM. Using applications to automate parts of the process and reduce the workload can facilitate better implementation of the strategy with lower overhead.
Keep in mind that, like segmentation parameters, CRM tools and what they can do will vary by vendor. Interfaces, options, and functions all depend on the tool, subscription tier, integrations being used, and a host of other factors.
In this section we’ll cover general best practices and provide some examples with broad application for a majority of use cases.
1. Define the segments
This whole step could be a dissertation on its own. In fact, the subject has been given that very treatment both in print and online. Rather than try to distill that kind of wisdom into a few hundred words, let’s instead cover some guidelines to get you started.
When defining segments, the primary objectives are quantifying levels of interest and highlighting the factors at play for the decision-makers. Criteria for these distinctions will differ wildly based on brand offerings, ICPs, and a lot of other things.
They might include details such as:
- Age
- Gender
- Nationality
- Industry
- Education level
- Socioeconomics
- Nationality
- Political, religious, or philosophical leaning
How you get information like this from your audience will depend on what systems and campaigns you have in place already. Ebook downloads, blog visits, newsletter signups, survey answers — all can be used to help gather details that will aid in segmentation.
Finally, never underestimate the value of feedback from the front lines. Sales and customer support agents should be seen as the treasure trove of voice for customer insights. Interview them to learn about the complaints and compliments they hear from leads and customers alike.
Why are people buying or signing up? Why are they passing on the deal? Why do they stick around or walk away? These are questions that should guide the segmentation and define how different groups are pursued (or in some cases even discouraged from buying).
It sounds like a lot of work, and it is. But the better you can pin down these details the more effective a sales/marketing follow-up will be with any segment you establish. Once the parameters are in place then and only then can the software do its job.
2. Leverage the CRM
With the plethora of available CRM options on the market, a comprehensive step-by-step guide for segmenting using every tool would be quite the fool’s errand. Instead we’ll cover some basics and then use the ever-popular Hubspot platform as an example of how a CRM can be used.
Once you’ve determined personas, characteristics, and metrics that can be used to categorize leads you’ll need to do some setup so the app knows how to sort leads automatically. This is done by building lists.
Rather than painstakingly adding each relevant lead to the appropriate segmentation category, you can use smart lists. Set the criteria for who should and shouldn’t be in the list and it will update automatically as contacts meet those criteria.
Once lists are in place it’s on to building workflows. These automate sales and marketing functions, like sending prebuilt emails. Then you can set enrollment triggers to further track the progress of leads from a list as they move through the sales process.
You can also add branches to the workflow (e.g. “Did they answer ‘Yes’ to the survey? Then they go on to receive emails A, B, and C.”). This enables further breakdowns and subdividing, allowing you to send increasingly targeted and specific follow-ups.
Finally, you can set workflows to apply additional actions to contacts that have met various enrollment conditions in a given branch.
In summary, the system is designed to give you the ability to send more meaningful communications to your leads. You can learn more about the details of HubSpot’s segmentation tools below.
An extensive rundown of CRM vendors, their pros and cons, and what use cases match which tool could be helpful at this stage. There’s also this Sales CRM guide.
3. Analyze and iterate
A word of warning: no successful sales or marketing pro ever “sets and forgets” a strategy or process. Long-term sustainable growth is always tied to self-reflection and self-improvement. Most CRMs know this and build their tools specifically to meet this need.
How reporting and analytics work depends on the software in question, but whichever CRM you’ve chosen you should put that data to good use. Look at the numbers and identify patterns of success and failure. Do your segments match buyer intent? Do the characteristics or criteria need tweaking to more accurately separate leads?
Test, review, revise, and iterate. Find what works, ditch what doesn’t, and try again. Failure can be an asset and an effective teacher provided you fail fast and adapt quickly.
The “why” of customer segmentation
The main factor determining what goes into the spam folder and what doesn’t for users is relevance. And low relevance is nearly always a result of low effort.
In other words, lazy outreach alienates leads. Reactions may range from apathy to annoyance, but there’s no shade of “positive” among them.
Sales and marketing teams that want to find success with their efforts to generate leads and nurture conversations will need to step up their game — and back away from the “reply all” button.
In summary
When you treat the “leads” in your CRM as “people,” everyone wins. The tech can help with that. It is, in fact, uniquely designed to facilitate that kind of endeavor.
Looking for the latest in CRM solutions to get your customer segmentation under way? Check out our CRM Software Buyer’s Guide.
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