Guide to more sales and marketing efficiency from advanced segmentation automation and data-driven customer personas
Marketers and product designers, for that matter, have used customer personas to gain empathy for their target audience to ensure that they solve the problem and meet the expectation of value. Fast-forward to the present day with digital marketing, eCommerce, social media, and mobile applications capable of collecting and interpreting customer data. Modern data analysis allows marketers new capabilities in data to drive decisions on which customer personas and characteristics are significant to keep growing new sales and revenue streams. This guide gives you a great foundation for getting started with data-driven Customer Personas; keep reading!
What is a Data-Driven Customer Persona
Customer personas are powerful tools for understanding your target audience, but they don’t just appear out of thin air. Data-driven research is essential to creating an accurate representation that will resonate with potential customers and help guide copywriting efforts and marketing strategies like tailoring targeting or informing the product development process.
Data-driven customer personas are more accurate in understanding your target audiences than traditional ones. They use data from web analytics, digital surveys, or social media insights to arrive at relevant marketing strategies that will reach out to potential clients with ads tailored toward them specifically while keeping other people who might not be interested bypassed altogether.
Often referred to as advanced segmentation allows you to gain detailed insights about customers to produce a powerful, data-driven marketing strategy for social selling and mobile retailing. The work pays off.
Marketing personas made websites 2-5 times more effective and easier to use by targeted users.- HubSpot
This guide will teach you how to group customers more thoughtfully and strategically based on their behavior. By the end, you will be able to advance beyond the basics of segmentation to improve your email and SMS performance, signup forms, social media, and analytics capabilities.
Before You Start- Key Prerequisites
This guide will walk you through some of the more advanced use cases and best practices for segmentation. Before jumping in, if you need a refresher on segmentation basics (e.g., examples of Lead, Dating, Loyal, and VIP segments), be sure to check out Getting Started with Segments.
Customer personas are powerful tools for understanding your target audience, but they don’t just appear out of thin air. Data-driven research is essential to creating an accurate representation that will resonate with potential customers and help guide copywriting efforts and marketing strategies like tailoring targeting or informing the product development process.
Another prerequisite for segments that utilize our predictive analytics feature is that you must have at least 180 days of order history, orders within the last 30 days, and at least 500 customers who have placed an overall order time (all three of these refer to the Placed Order metric). You can’t get around math and need a suitable sample size to ensure your marketing models are accurate and relevant.
The data sources of your data-driven Customer Persona
I can empathize. Typical marketing teams use twenty-five applications, so connecting all the data can be overwhelming. So here is a list of the key sources you should start.
Point-of-Sales: The software that collects and processes your sales is the Point-of-Sale (POS) platform. Many store operators added an eCommerce platform during the COVID-19 pandemic, using Shopify or Woocommerce to process online payments. Regardless of the system you use or how many POSs you have, that data is very important and will give you valuable insights into a purchase and its history.
Sales CRMS: The customer relationship management (CRM) software your sales reps use is another treasure trove of data that will tell your company how customers interact with the business. What plan do they have, what designation does this person have within their organization, and whether or not it’s seasonally adjusted to get an idea for future growth trends based on past performance can help set expectations when marketing campaigns go live.
Marketing Automation: You set up your emails and text out to your customers to ensure a more consistent customer experience. Applications such as Klaviyo and SendGrid are included in this group. You have set up your workflows and marketing campaigns. Bring in the data to see how campaign performance is performed by segment further and used to build and define unique personas. The analysis gives you ideas for further personalizing your content for those valuable segments.
Web Analytics: The analytics on your website, either available through Google Analytics or one of the other tools you are using, can provide v.aluable information to understand what viewers find engaging about it. Simple factors like how long they stay and where their attention goes within each page will let marketers know more than ever before to create an effective strategy as we advance.
Behaviorally targeted ads are twice as effective as non-targeted ads. HiP
Especially for B2C brands, segments can’t function without understanding the proper “why.” The best and most efficient way is to ask them. Understanding customer attitudes within segments indicates why customers consider and buy products from your brand. We all do things for a reason. For example, we pick up pre-packaged food because we are always on the go and never around a kitchen. Or we choose to get fit once the promotion is available at your local gym.
Practical uses of Data-Driven Customer Personas
In addition to the deep customer insights and customer intelligence, you get when you connect the different customer data sources with an analytical customer data platform (CDP). There are practical uses of data-driven customer personas that you can deploy to grow sales and build loyalty.
Build Audiences on other platforms
Create lists of users or accounts that match specific criteria for persona audiences. For example, you can push the audience to your marketing and analytics tools by creating an “inactive accounts” audience that lists paid accounts with no logins in 60 days. This method is a fast way to include everyone in “inactive accounts” – like two building block pieces coming together.
Sync audiences to marketing tools
Many eCommerce stores ensure as many audiences as possible on Facebook & Instagram. Include youtube and TikTok, two more social media platforms on the list. You can use these Traits and Audiences to personalize messages across channels, optimize ad spending, and improve targeting. Once you create the factors, you need to sync between marketing tools.
Upsell and Cross-Sell opportunities
The Upsell and Cross-Sell model is a mathematical pattern-based function of independent attributes built using advanced statistical models with several linear, non-linear variables for likelihood computation. The Upsell and Cross-Selling model uses algorithms and business rules to determine which products or services a customer might want based on the buying behavior of similar customers in your group. With math and business data, you can unlock customer love and get insights to bring them back.
Recommendation Engines
Recommendations from a CDP are better than any other information solution because the data is so extensive (reaches all the other apps) and reliable (conforms to security and privacy rules). By analyzing recency, frequency, and sales value (RFM) behaviors, your software can automatically recommend to your customer when things come back into stock or when a promotion may apply. Personalized recommendations boost the bottom line for your business by increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Caveat: continuously update your customer personas
One of the most important things to remember when updating your personas is that customer data should be at the forefront of every decision-making process. Customer surveys, interviews, and online reviews can give insights into who they are from an attitudinal point of view. Add on information that helps customers buy products or services – this allows us more opportunities for ROI on our marketing efforts!
Another thing we must remember about persona updates isn’t just how often it needs to be done but also which version affects plans: if current trends hold, newer versions might have different requirements than older ones; alternatively, one could opt instead. Keep track!
So what does this all mean for your marketing team and your business? If you haven’t already, it’s time to start thinking about customer personas. Customer data is readily available, so there’s no excuse not to use it. Even if you have a limited budget, there are ways to get started with data-driven personas that don’t require hiring a team of data scientists. We can help! Check out our guide on getting started below. And if you need help putting all of this into action or want someone else to take care of the data analysis for you, reach out to us.
