Marketers today know that blasting the same generic messages to all their customers is a major faux pas. There are myriad ways to segment your customer base, and it often comes down to the content youâre sending and the goal youâre trying to accomplish. Got a sale on womenswear? Segment your contacts by gender to avoid spamming the men in your database.
But often these segments can still be too broad. In the world of one-to-one marketing, brands need more specific characteristics to focus their efforts. Enter, personas and lifecycle stages.
Customer personas are essentially pre-defined segments that help you understand who your customers are in the context of your business – namely, their behaviours, goals and pains. They can be used to guide the content you create, the campaigns you plan and the customers you should send to (weâve written in-depth guide to personas here).
Rather than creating a new segment ad hoc for every e-newsletter, for example, you could simply create a tailored version for each of your existing personas.
Lifecycle stages, on the other hand, are great for overlaying on other segments, to make your marketing even more targeted. For example, letâs say you want to send an email offer to one of your personas – Middle-aged Mike – but you want the copy surrounding the offer to be a bit different for customers that are about to churn.
To do this, youâll need to determine which customers fit into the Middle-aged Mike persona, and then identify those that havenât purchased or engaged in a while. Then you can send two versions of the email – with one version specifically focused on re-engaging the Middle-aged Mikes who are about to lapse.
Sound a bit complicated? Horizon is built to help, with personas and lifecycle stages baked in – these can be used for reporting on your customer base and for targeting the content you send.
See it in action >
