How to: Effectively Segment Your Contact List

When you've got people interested in your company, then you know that you have something going for you. These leads can come in nearly all shapes and sizes, ranging from small-time firms even to big players in the industry. And when they come at you, they're either just looking around or looking to buy something. As such, it would be best if you knew how to segment your contact list and know exactly at which point in the buying cycle your prospects are at. This allows you to prepare more appropriate marketing offers and use their interest towards your benefit.

When we talk of segmentation, we need to also understand that we're dealing with moving targets. Back then, maybe we could segment our contact lists on demographic-based factors, but today leads move along the buying cycle really fast. So to speak, demographic-based segmentation can no longer catch-up with how things work nowadays. What we need now are dynamic segmentation methods which allow us to follow our leads along the cycle and allow you come up with the best offers to make during appropriate times, all depending on where they are in the buying process. As such, here are some tips to help you with segmentation of your contact list:

Segment by how you acquire your leads.

If you have multiple marketing strategies in place, then you of course have a steady flow of leads coming in. However, not all of the leads you generate will be at the same stage of the buying process. For instance, leads generation through email marketing may not yet be ready to buy and will just be starting along the cycle; leads generated from online marketing may be just looking around; leads generated from a B2B telemarketing campaign may be further along, you get the idea. So depending on how you acquire these leads, you can segment your contact list and find out which part of the process your prospects are on as well as how to best engage them with your marketing offers.

Segment by prospect behavior.

Just like how leads come in, the behavior of your prospects also matters when it comes to segmentation. Are they making phone calls? Are they sending you email queries? Are they contacting you via your websites contact form? All these can be used to help you segment your contact list and create better offers based on how your prospects are behaving and engaging your company. Are they asking for you to give them a call? If so, then segment your list into a calling list and start making follow-up calls. Are they emailing? Create a mailing list and start replying to their queries. Prospect behavior can really help you gauge where they are in the process, assess their interest in your brand, and help you come up with ways to reply to them.

Segment by attraction to your content.

You've probably got a lot of content up in order to bring in more leads for you. And once again, depending on your content, you can segment your list according to how your prospects react and are attracted to your content. Different marketing channels require different types of content, and different content attracts different kinds of prospects. Information you get in assessing how they engage your content is helpful in assessing their interest, readiness for sales, and for how further along the sales cycle they are.

These three tips are not the only ways to segment your list; there's a whole lot of others ways for you to do so. The best way to find out how to segment your list is through constant experimentation and engagement with your prospects.