How to best segment your CRM to drive more sales

DATABASE SEGMENTATION, AND LISTS

“The antidote to complexity is not simplicity, it’s organisation.”

OVERVIEW

Your ability to segment your database will be determined by your software, and of course the nature of contacts in your database.

You can then look to segment the lists based on several principles including: lifecycle stage/contact ownership, product vertical interest), segmentation based on stage in user journey, and ones based on activities (e.g. CTAs clicked) etc.

SEGMENTATION BASED ON LIFECYCLE STAGE (INC. LISTS FOR THE SALES TEAM)

Using this as an example,

As you can see, each team member has a list associated with each lifecycle stage, with a naming convention: [CONTACT OWNER MARTIN: MQL]

This systematic approach, even though looks like it is hard work, is straight forward to achieve if you follow a clear methodology. In the case of lifecycle stage, I would suggest that each contact ‘owned’ by a team member, and that the team member also has a future follow up task set. If not, people are often lost in the system. Every contact that is not under management i.e. doesn’t have a future task set, is moved back to ‘Marketing’ for processing and potentially re-allocation when they reengage.

Tip: Naming conventions for your LISTS and for your TASKS will make it easier long term to see at a glance a) who is in that list, and b) what needs to happen with contacts flagged as a task.

SEGMENTATION BASED ON INTEREST

Additionally, you can segment based on the following: Product interest, and then intersects a broader Life Cycle Stage as well – i.e. Potential could be SQLs/Opportunities (or broader), and Customers move on to the next list, and once they’ve attained that level they are ready to be recycled again for further sales calls, and marketing email outs for upcoming course options.

Each one follow a naming convention e.g.
[POTENTIAL: XYZ – SQLs/OPPORTUNITIES]

Moving through the lifecycle stage to:
[COURSE BOOKED: XYZ] – date/location

And once completed to a list named:
[ATTAINED: XYZ]

SEGMENTATION BASED ON STAGE ON USER JOURNEY

Following this principle you can then market more cleanly to the appropriate people the next stage in their journey, e.g. a customer who has bought Product 1, and not bought Product 2.

Note: you will need to have a process in place to keep your Contact Records up to date in order for the lists to be accurate.

SEGMENTATION BASED ON ‘ACTIVITIES’

Additionally, you can generate ‘Sales Call Lists’ for follow up based on actions taken from a) CTAs in emails, b) CTAs on site (when opted in) – given more refined lists e.g. [SALES CALL LIST: XYZ] Clicked “Call me” in 2 for 1 offer in email

SEGMENTATION BASED ‘SCORE’ AND LAST ACTIVITY DATE OF RECORD

This allows you to find engaged contacts from e.g. old enquiries, or imported lists. Re-engagement campaigns can then be run, and you can remove people from the database when totally ‘dead’ and not a historic customer.

ADDITIONAL INFO:

Due to the email marketing suppression within several email platforms (i.e. Marketing emails don’t get through), you may want to use Lists as a way to give Sales Team members, lists for outreach via email from themselves directly (‘Non mass emails’ bypass the suppression issues). This ensures the database is being ‘worked’ and people are not missing messages. See below.

Tip: when looking to re-engage your database or simply want to move them to the next stage in your buyer’s journey (e.g. moving Leads to MQL), you will want to consider Remarketing and Retargeting across the ad networks. Using targeted ads to specific lists based not only on Life Cycle Stage, but also based on Personas and Product interest is a powerful method of driving results.

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