Archive for the ‘customer segmentation’ Category

eMail Marketing

Friday, May 16th, 2008

My recent experience of this with one of our partner companies has shown that as well as customising the offering in the email to segments of your customer base, you also need to be playing with other aspects of the mail to see what works. Don’t expect instant success either building familiarity with customers takes time.

Here are a few examples

  • Alter the subject of the email to find what works best, different calls to action work for different customers. Consider using product names in the subject line as these can be of more interest than another sale.
  • Typically the email offers similar links into a site as might be seen on site menu system, however with limited space this cannot be identical. Therefore make sure the menus maximise the opportunity for that segment, if you are promoting jeans in the email replace the jeans link with another sales opportunity.
  • The best time for sending an email campaign needs to be established over time. Don’t believe what you read on the web that Tuesday’s are the best or Wednesday’s or … if you look hard enough you will find every time is best.

Posted in customer segmentation, eMail marketing, marketing | No Comments »

Customer Proposition

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

Having identified your target customers, this could be one or more segments, you are looking to build up a proposition(s) that either suits one or more of the groups. If you look at your segments and their characteristics, from a market point of view, there are likely to be a number to a few that over lap. Where this occurs you can start to group some of the segments.

If you already have an ecommerce site then this stage of the segmentation can be slightly easier than just from a retail channel. Internet sites provide such a wealth of information that are key in delivering targeted products and services. If you are just using Google Analytics to track customers it can be a bit trickier.

Look to build a proposition that suits each of your segments this will include the product and the promotional structure offered to the groups. With an eCommerce site this will be the products offered in a particular category and the cross sells that are offered along side a particular product. Today’s sites should allow the site to be tuned to individual customer requirements -including the home page, order of products on the category page and the recommendations to customers on the product page.

Posted in Google Analytics, customer segmentation, eCommerce, marketing | No Comments »

Building The Customer Proposition Through Segmentation

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

In order for a business to generate new revenue opportunities or to encourage our customers to spend more with us, we need to examine who our customers are. If you haven’t done a segmenation exercise in your business it can be quite challenging, especially when the segments seem to blend into one.

I recently completed one for my business, in the end I chose to break down the market by size of business, as I am working in a B2B environment. It took a while to find some useful market data, but a good trawl across the internet can usually uncover some interesting stats. The UK government typically has statistics on major industries, otherwise look in trade press and other internet sites to find what you are looking for. Esentially you are looking for a supported analysis of your markets. (Here we seen a good example of how businesses make use of IT in day to day business. The internet can be an excellent source of marketing data and if you cannot find public domain information it can be a great way to source a supplier. )

Segmenting customers is vital in all businesse, but provides great opportunities for those with an eCommerce channel. Having identified customer segments you can attribute sales and enquiries to the various groups to build a picture of their value. This then allows you to focus your resources on the most valuable groups.

Posted in customer segmentation, e-business, eBusiness, marketing | No Comments »