Behavioural Segmentation

What is Behavioural Segmentation?

Behavioural segmentation is a customer segmentation strategy that groups individuals based on their actions and interactions with your brand.

Unlike demographic segmentation, which focuses on criteria like age, gender, or location, behavioural segmentation dives a little deeper, reflecting how customers engage with your website, products, services, and marketing efforts.

In truth, a combination of the two is the perfect approach to email marketing. Take a lead conversion email marketing journey for a clothing company, for example.

You would want to segment your audiences based on what clothing they are interested in buying, which would involve splitting them by age, gender, and possibly location (demographic), and also by which products they viewed on your site (behavioural).

The Advantages of Behavioural Segmentation

As you can imagine, there are many benefits that come from incorporating behavioural segmentation into your marketing strategy.

Increased relevance

By understanding customer behaviour, you can deliver highly relevant messages that resonate with their specific needs and interests.

Using our clothing example from earlier, a female email recipient is much more likely to resonate with messaging about women's clothing unless they are shopping for a loved one, of course!

Improved conversion rates

Targeted communication based on past behaviour is more likely to convert website visitors into leads or paying customers.

If you successfully identify products that specific customers want to see, they are much likelier to click through and make a purchase than if you send them an email communication promoting a product they don't want or need.

Enhanced customer retention

When customers feel understood and valued, they're more likely to remain loyal to your brand.

Behavioural segmentation can help you foster those customer relationships, by only speaking to them about goods and services they are interested in, and only contacting them at a time that suits them.

Data-driven marketing

Behavioural segmentation empowers you to base your marketing decisions on real customer data, leading to a more data-driven and effective approach.

A lot of marketing departments and agencies will claim that content marketing efforts are difficult to report on, but I see that as a lazy approach. There are always ways to show off your wins and improvements, believe me!

How to Implement Behavioural Segmentation

Here's how to implement behavioural segmentation in your marketing strategy:

Data collection: Gather data on customer behaviour through website analytics tools, CRM systems, and email marketing platforms.

Customer analysis: Analyse the collected data to identify patterns and group customers based on their actions.

Segment creation: Develop distinct customer segments based on shared behavioural characteristics.

Develop targeted content: Craft targeted marketing messages, emails, and promotions tailored to the specific needs and interests of each customer segment.

Delivery and measurement: Deliver your targeted content through appropriate channels and track the performance of your campaigns.

Refine and adapt: Continuously analyse the results of your segmented campaigns and refine your approach based on data insights.

Examples of Behavioural Segmentation Strategies

Here are some practical examples of how you can implement behavioural segmentation in your marketing efforts:

Purchase history

Segmenting customers by purchase history is a fantastic way to create cross-selling opportunities.

Did some of your customers recently purchase a brand-new football? They may also be interested in other football-related accessories, such as nets, pumps, and other products that would suit their previous purchase.

Purchase history is also fantastic for products that have a shelf life. If a client purchases a product like shampoo, work out the average time it takes to get through a bottle and send out repurchase communications as their current bottle begins to run out.

Website behaviour

Segmenting users based on their website behaviour is another perfect example.

How many times have you added a product to your basket but then decided you weren't quite convinced enough to make the purchase, only to leave the website and suddenly see an email pop up in your inbox?

This type of behavioural segmentation is excellent for capturing leads while they're still hot before they either decide not to purchase or, worse, purchase from a competitor.

Email engagement

Another important element for segmentation is based on email engagement. Send more frequent emails to highly engaged subscribers and re-engagement campaigns to inactive subscribers.

Not only will this save you time and money on wasted sends to unengaged customers, but it will also ensure that your email domain doesn't get marked as spam due to a lack of opens.

It can be very tempting to try and send to all, regardless of email engagement, but it's important to respect how much your audience wants to be contacted, or you run the risk of alienating them for good.