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Piecing together segmentation

Remember those old Publishers Clearing House mailings? It was a big deal when they came to our house. Having an uncommon last name, we invariably got to see our name misspelled many times throughout the mail-piece. They contained wooden sentences like “Just imagine when you, [your full name], appear on the TV and in newspaper headlines in [your city] because you won our sweepstakes. Every member of the [your last name] family will celebrate winning the $10 million prize.”

We used to laugh at those corny campaigns, but the truth is that prospects now expect to be communicated with using what your organization knows about them. Don’t believe me? Answer honestly: how fast do you hit ‘delete’ when seeing an email from a retailer (even if you like them) that’s not relevant to you?! What’s a marketing group to do?

The first thing is to admit that your target audience isn’t one big homogeneous group. Do a top-to-bottom appraisal of your buyers, noting the differences among them so that you can do some good old-fashioned segmentation. For me, segmentation involves communicating a single message in the way that’s most appropriate to an identifiable audience. This post won’t go into the many copywriting tactics used to achieve ‘appropriate,’ let’s just say it’s improved since Publishers Clearing House’s time. Here we’ll focus on the amazingly new twist that the internet has brought to segmentation – it can be done remotely and, if warranted, automatically. If you’re a Salesforce user, look at apps like Postcode Anywhere and you’ll see what I mean.

Starting at the lowest level, let’s say you get a work email address from a web contact form and you need firmographic/demographic data so you can send them the appropriate follow-on email. There are some great online tools to help you flesh out their information, whether you’re looking for Company-level or individual-level data.

Company-level Data

Company-level segmentation can be done with fields like: number of employees, SIC code, annual revenue and headquarters location. Big, public companies are the easiest to get information on – they’re trackable on sites like EDGAR. Those that aren’t publically traded companies still have a lot of research sources available. Here are some websites that let you search by company name:

SIC Code Directory

Thomas Register

Dun & Bradstreet’s Selectory

Hoovers

The Fortune 500, Business Week

The Software 500 database, for US-based software firms

GoogleNews (media coverage is often peppered with facts.)

You may have to pay to access some of these, but the information’s worth it.

Individual-level Data

If you have the persons name and contact details, you can do more segmentation by supplementing: professional designations, title/scope of responsibility, job function, years they’ve held role, gender or location (letting you derive timezone or size of city/town they live in). How do you find these fields? It’s getting easier, now that so many people are publishing their own online profiles. But even without, there are many sites that will yield great data to help your segmentation. There are social media sites that can help here too: twitter and BlogPulse are just two of them. Some sites you can search by name are:

Spoke

Forbes People

Jigsaw

Plaxo Pulse

If the organization is already your client, you can blend in even more data from your corporate records, such as: key contacts, total sales and other transactional information by which you can group them with similar clients.

In summary, it’s easy to see how these tools have made segmentation not only relevant, but an essential part of your marketing and sales arsenal. Start using this extra data and communicate smartly with your prospects, they’ll thank you for it.

What’s past is prologue

The saying 'hindsight is 20/20' could've been coined by a marketer. Why do I say this? Pets.com's Superbowl ads, Van Halen plugging Crystal Pepsi, '90s law firm Canter & Siegel's global spam campaign. There's another type of campaign that's just as bad too – the kind that may be innocuous, but generates almost no sales.

The troubling part is that there WILL be more moments that deserve to be in the Marketing Hall of Shame. Some of these will be the victims of poor timing or uncontrollable events, but many could be prevented by simply looking at our own past efforts. Sure, looking at past activities may bring an uncomfortable reminder of that screw-up from a few years ago, but it can also spark memories of successes. You may find yourself dreaming up new campaigns once you've subconsciously stewed over the performance of past campaigns.

Some practical ways that looking back can help you look forward:

• Before you launch a campaign, imagine yourself standing up a month from now, presenting the results and rattling off lots of metrics. Eyes closed, ask yourself whether those metrics are all traceable today, because this is your last chance to put those measures into place.
• Don't try to sell people on you if it flies in the face of what they perceive. I worked once for a service business that was experiencing capacity problems. Coincidentally, marketing rolled out a campaign saying "Trust the company that handles the biggest volumes." Shortly after, an ex-customer who'd received the promo piece left a voice mail that said these exact words: "I can't believe you're asking for more business! Your biggest problem is volume - you can't handle the sh*t you've got now!"
• Look at anything that stands out from the norm (or for you quant heads, your control group). Look at bounce rates, both those that are much higher and lower than the average, and ask what you can do to bring them in line with expectations.
• Google Analytics goals, for example, let you trace back a conversion to see where that visitor started on your site. By looking at the page paths, you may see a trend among visitors that you never intended. You could also carry this analysis over to the conversions goals that aren't working.
• Where you have an apples-and-apples comparison with an old campaign, set your benchmark. The grueling process of campaign execution is not a good time to try setting objective forecasts. Going back to prior campaigns will prevent you from stabbing at an unrealistic number, as well as bolstering your confidence that you know what you're doing.

Looking back may not seem like the most productive use of time. After all, there are many new initiatives coming along all the time. The truth is that most of these are just bright shiny objects that Marketing could fritter away time on. I'm not saying to be so heads-down on current work that you miss the boat on a game-changing trend in your business. I'm saying you should ask "what's worked?" and learn the lessons of the past so that your future marketing activities can all have a good return on investment.

 

B2B marketers aren't scared of the big bad economy

MarketingProfs has just released their B-toB Marketing in 2008 report, their latest survey of B2B marketers. In it, they asked which tactics will be most important in the 2009 marketing mix. According to the results, they are: 
1. Websites
2. Email campaigns/newsletters
3. Webinars
4. Inside Sales
5. Blogs
6. Social Networks

63% said the top tactics they named have changed significantly in the last year. Some of that is certainly due to current economic austerity, but that’s not slowing down marketers adoption of new tactics. Consider that items 5 & 6 have only come along in the last 5 years, and items 2 & 3 barely existed 10 years ago. If I had to say, the shift is being pushed just as much by tight budgets as it’s being pulled by the power of online technologies. 

Of course, those of us who love demand creation find it inspiring to see “Inside Sales” made the list. We believe that no matter what the business cycle or the technology curve are doing, using a person to build leads into real prospects never goes out of style.

A level playing field for all marketers

Let me first say that I’ve never ever done B2C marketing. Yesterday I spoke with a non-marketer about what “B2B marketing” is. He kept trying to understand it by comparing it to slick consumer marketing tactics he’s seen. I found myself repeatedly saying “No, B2B can’t do that because it costs too much,” or “B2B hasn’t caught up to that level yet.” But as I thought more about it, I came up with many B2B tactics that have revolutionized our jobs. Here are a few of them:

REMOTE SALES
15 years ago, I was a marketing analyst for a services company in which ‘sales calls’ involved several people disappearing from the office for several days. Now the need to connect in-person was, is and always will be a vital step for B2B sales, but that’s not the way one software company sold me. I’d called them about their statistical analysis program and received a floppy disk (!) in the mail. Shortly after, an inside representative called and asked me to run the program. In that one call, we walked through some demo data and ran some reports; I echoed his actions and he magically described everything on my screen. Well since then, web-demos, demos using real-time data and mobile apps have all become standard staples for B2B teams. But looking back, we should be amazed at how far we’ve come and how much we can accomplish without meeting in-person.

CRMs
Say what you will about it, but the adoption of Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) has improved client service and prospect engagement.  Years ago, when you ordered something from a Manufacturer, you needed to know your customer #, the catalog SKU, your receiving department’s particulars and your PO number. It was once commonplace for several sales reps from the same company to hassle you – sometimes VPs tacitly encouraged this practice. Thank goodness CRM’s have made these problems a thing of the past. CRMs have now burgeoned into profiles, which allow users to generated content that they share with their vendor as well as with other like-minded members. Constant Contact and WordPress have forums that are banding users together and slashing support costs all at the same time. I can’t wait to see where online interaction will take us next.

ONLINE DIALOGUES
In the corporate world, most people who use (or are candidates to use) a product make themselves known to vendors. This trend, called permission marketing nowadays, began when companies started opening their email systems to ‘outside’ senders. Judging by the number of corporate newsletters, RSS feeds, listservs and online forms that exist, I’d say this development has been largely positive. In my own experience, I can point to email communications that brought in a major upsell, drove a sudden change to a user conference that was weeks away and re-opened talks with a client who wouldn’t talk to our sales rep. There are still improvements to be made in segmenting and personalizing emails – our bloated inboxes demand it, but the technology to do this is now within almost every business’ reach.

So getting back to the conversation I had yesterday, I ended up upholding B2B marketing as every bit as potent in reaching its market as B2C is in reaching consumers. It seems that marketers, regardless of their target audience, are being put on a level playing field. There’s no longer two camps of marketing competing for dominance, but this levelling has put us all into one big training camp where all marketers can sharpen their skills and learn from whomever has the best ideas.