Who Are You & How Can We Help?
The power of Infusionsoft really starts to shine thru when you learn the art of segmentation. You've surely heard the buzzword of “the right message, to the right person, at the right time” – that's what Infusionsoft is famous for. But in order to do that, it really comes down to properly segmenting your list.
The more you segment your list into small sub-lists, the more you can be specific to them with your marketing messages. More specific marketing messages lead to better marketing results – it's that simple. But how do you effectively segment your list? Many people struggle with this concept in the beginning.
Two Simple Questions
This is the simple approach that I've used for years to help clients get their lists into powerful segments that make sense – by asking two simple questions.
The first question is “Who are you?”.
Now, I'm not saying you ask it exactly like that, but that's the purpose of the question – to segment your list by their primary avatar. For example, for our list, that might be Individual users, ICP's, Service Providers and Resellers, and Infusionsoft Employees. Knowing that “who” allows you to target those segments very differently.
Our products and services can now be aligned with those segments. Our offers and marketing messages make much more sense when aligned to “who” they are being offered to. Your business will be the same way.
The second question is “How can I help you?”
Again, this question / segment will likely be phrased entirely differently. But it's about breaking up what you do into different channels or segments as well. By segmenting your offer and services, you create more opportunities to sell. I'm not saying to offer entirely different things, but coming up with variations on your offer at different price points and service levels will add revenue.
How Many is Too Many?
One of the big questions I get every time I talk about the subject of segmentation, is how many segments should I create? The line of thought is that the more the merrier and that if four is good, then eighteen must be better – wrong!
After doing this for years, I can tell you that effective segmentation comes down to picking the top three to five segments – no more, no less. Less than three means that you really don't have a good idea of who the person is – at least not a good enough idea. I've never seen a list that doesn't have at least three viable segments to it.
More than five becomes very difficult to support and maintain. Can you do it? Yes, but at what cost? It all comes down to the law of 80/20. With four or at most five segments, you'll have hit 80% or 90% of people on your list. But by going to 6 segments, you'll only increase that by another couple percent and it's just not worth that extra work.
The law of diminishing returns kicks in and you'll find that you're simply creating more busy work and that it's really not yielding any additional results. So that's why I say that effective segmentation will almost always yield three to five primary segments.
Tuning Your Message
If you've taken my advice, you'll have three to five primary segments now and probably three or four different targeted offers or services. With these two dimensions of segmentation, you can be very, very targeted in your messaging. Let's put this into a practical example to clarify.
Let's say that you're a realtor and that your three primary segments are:
- Divorced Women Over 40
- Single Women Buying Their First Home
- Single Women Buying Their First Custom Home / Retirement Home
Let's also say that you have three primary areas of inventory that you focus on:
- Beachfront Single Family Homes
- Beachfront Condos
- Beach-Access / Walking Distance to the Beach Multi-Family Units
Look at just how specific you can now be with your marketing messaging by identifying these two primary groupings? The copy will practically write itself!
So your challenge today is to ask yourself those two questions and start to think about the segments of your list, not your list as a whole. When you do, your marketing and sales will flourish!
Software Recommendation
A very elegant software solution that can help you with your segmentation is Thrive Themes. Thrive has some great features and terrific integration with Infusionsoft. One of the things that I like most about it is the ability to create powerful popups that have multiple segmentation buttons built right in. Think of them as mini-surveys and they're perfect for creating these two questions.