The success of every piece of marketing material you create depends on how well you know the audiences you’re marketing to. Landing page copy written for millennials won’t be able to persuade boomers to click the CTA button. An offer catered for C-level executives won’t apply to independent contractors.

Why? Because one marketing campaign isn’t likely to appeal to everyone. A single, 18-year-old college freshman has different wants, needs, and desires than a 45-year-old attorney who’s married with children.

Understanding these similarities and differences between different audience segments allows you to isolate the market into individual categories and create specific selling points accordingly. This makes your campaigns more precise because you can focus solely on serving smaller, more refined segments—a concept known as demographic segmentation.

What is demographic segmentation?

Demographic segmentation is a precise form of audience identification based on data points like age, gender, marital status, family size, income, education, race, occupation, nationality, and/or religion.

It’s among the four main types of marketing segmentation and perhaps the most commonly used method.

Think of demographic segmentation as splitting your vast audience market into more manageable, targeted chunks. Instead of reaching an entire market or broad customer base, your brand can use demographic segmentation to speak directly to a defined market subset.

When audiences are divided into neat little segments you can use your time and resources more efficiently because you better understand the similarities between individuals in the audience to determine what messages they are likely to respond to. Brands can then use advertising personalization to fulfill the defined group’s needs.

Let’s look at demographic segmentation in action. NetSuite is an accounting platform that targets large enterprises, small businesses, startups, and other businesses. It even dissects its audiences by role. The platform uses different messaging for all these segments, making sure the features it advertises match their individual needs.

Why is demographic segmentation in marketing so important?

Demographic segmentation is used to target specific audiences. You cannot effectively communicate with an audience when you know nothing about them, and a personalized, targeted approach is essential to managing your advertising spending effectively—this is why demographic segmentation is so important and has several advantages.

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Build long-lasting customer relationships

Reaching your customers on a more human level with targeted, personalized marketing creates deeper customer loyalty. It allows them to identify with your brand and feel like you are an advocate for their needs, which makes them more likely to do business with you for longer.

Improve your products and services

Loyal customer relationships encourage you to look at your products and services differently. When you have a deeper understanding of your target audience, you can put yourself in their shoes to better serve them.

For example, QuickBooks is accounting software targeted specifically at contractors, solopreneurs, small businesses, and agency owners. The landing page copy addresses concerns of these audience segments, such as due date reminder emails, invoices with tax, discounts, and shipping costs calculated for them. It sends invoices from anywhere in the world. Their pricing plans start at $18/month, which suits this segment. The image with the $150 invoice also relates to contractors and small businesses.

Optimize your marketing strategies

Demographic segmentation allows you to be more specific with your marketing strategies. It helps clarify your vision, gives you more direction with future advertising plans, and optimizes your resources, time, and budget.

If 85% of your clients are 20-35 years old, this is the segment you’ll need to target. You’ll want to ensure any cultural references in your advertising make sense to this age group. You wouldn’t want to spend your time and money making sure your campaigns make sense to seniors—that would be a waste.

Skinny Confidential features UGC content from young users, and their copy uses vocabulary geared towards young females.

Demographic segmentation variables and examples

1. Age

Age is the most basic variable, albeit the most important, because consumer preferences continually change with age. Almost all marketing campaigns target age-specific audiences.

This variable can be viewed regarding specific age ranges or life cycle stages: babies, children, adolescents, adults, middle-aged, and seniors. For example, many famous fashion designers have different collections to target other age groups. They aim for certain clothing lines at specific age ranges, such as a chic fashion line for younger prospects and a more formal and elegant line for older individuals.

Age segmentation is also generation-based: baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, etc. Since members within these groups were born around the same time and grew up with similar experiences, they often share similar characteristics and thought processes. Targeting baby boomers and Gen X with the same offer and marketing strategy will likely produce undesirable results because they think and act differently.

Not only do age groups and generations differ in buying habits, but also in how they respond to advertising. They tend to have distinct ways of speaking and often spend their time on separate platforms. For example, millennials may spend most of their time on Instagram and Facebook, while seniors prefer email inboxes.

Chamberlain Coffee is geared towards younger audiences. They reference that they are “TikTok’s favorite cold brew,” feature user-generated content made by younger customers, and have messaging on the page made for younger females.

2. Gender

Men and women generally have different likes, dislikes, needs, and thought processes. When segmenting based on gender, be careful not to assume gender stereotypes, such as considering pink a feminine color and blue a masculine color. Advertising with gender stereotypes like this could easily make your brand look sexist and cause you to miss out on or anger your target audience.

Let’s look at the differences between skincare brands for men and women.

War Paint is a skincare brand that has a masculine audience.

While SkinPharm is made for women.

War Paint has darker brand colors and simple, succinct language, while Skinpharm has lighter colors and more detailed product descriptions.

3. Income and occupation

If people can’t afford your product or service, there is no point in targeting them. After all, you wouldn’t promote a Mercedes or Ferrari to someone who can’t afford a used vehicle with more than 100,000 miles.

Income targeting lets you measure your audience’s buying power. When you know consumers’ income range, you can usually find data supporting how people spend money on both the higher and lower end of the spectrum. Many companies use this data to sell different tiers of the same product based on income level. For instance, airlines have three classes: economy, business, and first class.

Occupation targeting is also essential since specific resources are aimed at different industries and job titles. This Salesforce page is segmented for professionals affiliated with the education industry.

Job titles are essential in an account-based advertising campaign. Unlike traditional demand gen, account-based marketing is often described as a flipped funnel approach because it inverts the process. Rather than targeting individual leads, it targets the account level.

The intent is to reach highly relevant accounts with the most revenue potential, so knowing the occupation is integral.

5. Family

Family makeup can be instrumental in segmentation because when a family’s dynamic changes, its needs and desires often do. This strongly affects their buying habits and your sales process.

Single individuals tend to prioritize themselves, while newly married couples are likely to prioritize each other and their homes. Couples with several children have different needs than those who just had their first child. Large families might be more interested in low-cost household products than couples with the same income but without children.

Ruggable, is a machine-washable rug brand that caterers to families with children and pets, and homes that are prone to regular messes.

6. Location

Your audience’s location affects their needs, preferences, and buying behaviors. Weather patterns, local traditions, resource availability, and regional trends all play essential roles in influencing these.

JetPet Resort segments its offers based on location to offer personalized services to audiences in these locations.

Get personal with your campaigns with demographic segmentation

You can’t please all consumers, but you can divide the larger market into unique demographic segments and cater to each one’s needs individually—doing this increases your chances of converting these audiences on your landing pages.

If you want to increase ROAS, the best approach is to create multiple offers and personalize them for your audience sub-sets. Don’t know how to scale landing pages for your campaigns?
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• Create any number of unique audience experiences for each landing page
• A/B test audience experiences and variations to optimize for conversions
• Dynamically pair visitor intent to a relevant landing page experience for each ad
• Match copy to visitor-level data like keywords, firmographics, and demographics
• Generated copy variations for headlines, paragraphs, and CTAs with AI

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The main goal of your landing page is to drive conversions—ideally, you are trying to convert prospects into customers. However, not everyone who visits your landing page or website is ready to convert.

Many potential subscribers may not be ready to buy what you are selling, but want to stay engaged and connected with you before they make the definitive decision of converting. They may be willing to give you their email address in exchange for time, thus qualifying them as leads.

A lead is just a future conversion that hasn’t happened yet. To ensure that the lead does eventually convert, you’ll need to nurture those leads with an email newsletter.

So, what does a successful newsletter look like?

In this article, we’ll discuss what an email newsletter is, how email marketing works, and best practices for creating effective email newsletters.

What is an email newsletter?

An email newsletter is a regularly scheduled email sent to newsletter subscribers who have opted in (via a signup form) to receive communication from your brand, including updates, news, stories, articles, offers, and more valuable information.

The purpose of email newsletters is to keep subscribers informed and engaged, with the general goal of building a relationship and cultivating a community with your target audience.

It’s not just an email. Newsletters are an essential part of email marketing strategies, as they provide a way to promote products or services, create brand awareness, and engage with your community beyond your website and social media platforms.

For example, The Washington Post uses its daily newsletter, The Post Most, to showcase trending website articles that other readers are loving.

By offering its email subscribers a sampling of the type of content they can expect to find on the publication’s website, they hope to entice readers to become paid subscribers.

How do email marketing campaigns help nurture audiences?

Regularly sending communications to your email subscribers (without flooding their inboxes) helps keep your brand top of mind and gives you the chance to position yourself as a thought leader in your space.

Newsletter content is not solely about selling to your audience—it’s about helping your readers understand the voice of your brand. Newsletters (starting with your subject lines!) are a place to have discussions with subscribers, asking questions, telling stories, and helping them relate to your brand to build a loyal following that eventually leads to a conversion or sale.

For creators, newsletters are appealing because they typically deliver a high ROAS. They are cheap to make and send and tend to pay off, reportedly seeing an estimated ROI of $40 for every $1 spent.

Know what to say: Define your email newsletter goals and guidelines

As with any marketing strategy, email marketing requires thought behind what each email newsletter will entail. To maintain consistency with each email newsletter you’ll send, you must define your goals and guidelines.

Before you create an email, ask yourself questions like:

• Where will my email signup forms live?
• What do I want to accomplish with this newsletter? Will this newsletter be another avenue for monetization?
• When do I want to send my newsletter?
• What do I want my email frequency to be?
• How can I use my subject lines to hook newsletter subscribers from the start?
• What will the tone of my newsletter be?
• Will my newsletter feature curated content or original content?
• What is the unique value proposition I can offer in my newsletter versus others in my industry?
• How will I segment audiences?
• Do I want to use my newsletter to increase my website traffic?
• What key performance indicators will I use to measure the success of my email marketing campaign?

The most successful email newsletters create a lasting impression with attention-grabbing, thought-provoking, and interesting (and quick) to-read content. They are not too sales-driven, impersonal, or corporate. And their subject lines succeed in setting expectations.

When you figure out what resonates with your leads and how you want to portray your brand through your email messaging, you can use that as a foundation or template to build your newsletter time after time.

Once you start consistently sending out your email newsletter, you can analyze your campaign metrics and understand where iterations can be made – perhaps your monthly cadence is not enough and a weekly newsletter will perform better. Maybe an earlier- or later-in-the-day send time will result in a better click through rate. Perhaps your subject lines are too long and are misleading your audience.

Let’s dive deeper into your email marketing strategy.

How to develop an email marketing strategy for a newsletter

After identifying your goals and your KPIs, here’s what you need to do to develop a comprehensive email newsletter strategy:

• Choose an email management system. The right email marketing tools can make a big difference in the success of your campaigns. Email marketing software can run the gamut from informal to sophisticated, depending on your budget and your needs (if you’re just getting started, a free version of email marketing tools might be worth trying). An email management system will ideally enable you to plan and organize your content (similar to an editorial calendar), deploy your content to your distribution lists, and give you insights into the performance of your email campaign.

  Think you can get by without an email service provider? Before you decide that this is something you’d rather take on on your own, understand that email marketing software makes it more likely that your newsletter will actually end up in your subscribers’ inboxes instead of in spam and gives you a reliable way to be consistent with your sends. An email service provider can offer peace of mind, especially if you have a large number of subscribers on your lists.

• Provide value every time. Think of how many emails we all receive on a daily basis. Our inboxes are saturated. If people are taking their time to complete signup forms, you want to ensure your newsletter content is worth their time and will help them somehow.

  Because you are ultimately trying to drive conversions, you should create an email that includes call-to-action buttons to nurture your lead further down your funnel. We recommend connecting all email offers with a dedicated landing page that has cohesive messaging and allows your readers to get what they need quickly and effectively.

This Salesforce Marketing newsletter aims to educate readers on how to grow customer journeys, with more information available in a downloadable guide.

Clicking the email newsletter CTA for the guide brings the reader to a dedicated landing page where they see the same messaging about those customer relationships and can easily find the CTA button to download the guide. Plus, additional related CTAs give readers even more opportunities to convert.

• Segment your audience. Email segmentation is important because you want your readers to see the right message at the right time. When you segment your audience, you can create an email that is more targeted and increase your potential ROAS.

  Various factors can affect how your email will perform and you can use these factors to build your distribution lists. Segmentation factors include:

  – Demographics
  – Geographic location
  – Consumer behavior
  – Buyer personas
  – Stage of the funnel/customer journey
  – B2B or B2C

• Run A/B tests. Think of your newsletter content, especially in the beginning stages, as an experiment. Iterations are key. To figure out what is working and what can be improved, keep every detail in mind.

  Did you use the most engaging subject line? Are you showcasing your most dynamic content? Are your readers using both desktop and mobile devices? Trying out a different subject line, different layout, or bolder design, making sure to optimize for mobile devices, and testing out different high quality content are all ways to experiment and figure out what resonates most with your target audience.

  Using an email marketing tool that allows you to A/B test will give you the deep insights you need to maximize performance of your campaigns.

• Track your metrics.Once you create a newsletter, it’s time to get down to business. Tracking your KPIs and making changes to your email newsletter content based on data will help you create highly effective campaigns.

  Specifically, metrics like open rate, click through rates, number of clicks, number of subscribers, completed sign up forms, and more will give you an idea of what your readers are finding most engaging.

10 email marketing newsletter examples from DTC and SaaS brands

Here are 10 email newsletters that provide valuable content to their subscriber list:

1. Welcome email newsletter

Food52 is a website that curates recipes, home goods, and crafts for anyone who likes to be in the kitchen. When new subscribers sign up, they are greeted with a welcome email that outlines what they can expect from Food52 and offers a discount code to use in their shop.

This email newsletter does a good job of immediately making the reader feel like they are part of the community and enticing them to convert into a paying customer.

2. Speaking to the right subscriber list

In this example of an email newsletter from Buffer, the copy is clearly written for a specific segment of their target market. Using slang like ‘stan’ and a pop culture reference to Zendaya make it clear that the audience for this newsletter skews younger and shows that Buffer creators have done their due diligence to create a newsletter that resonates.

We also like that they include a breakdown of what to expect in that day’s newsletter.

3. Thought-leadership content

SEO experts at Moz understand that despite the fact that people are so busy, they need to stay in the know. Especially when it comes to something as ever-changing as optimal SEO practices.

They created their semi-monthly email newsletter called Moz Top 10 to share the 10 most valuable articles about SEO and online marketing that they source from around the web. By offering high-quality thought-leadership content, they hope to gain the trust of their readers and convert them into loyal customers.

4. Mobile-friendly news

A lot of people wake up, grab their phone, and start reading emails before they’ve even had their morning cup of coffee.
Marketing Brew wanted to create an email newsletter that capitalizes on that by serving industry news and updates on a daily basis. The fact that their designs are easily viewable on mobile devices makes it highly likely that readers will commit to that email newsletter every day, regardless of where they are.

5. Blog round-up

Want to get more eyes on that well-crafted blog post you wrote? A weekly newsletter rounding up recently published articles from your website is a good way to ensure that your readers don’t miss any valuable content.

Grammarly employs this tactic with their email newsletter, which also includes writing tips, grammar facts, and more. And, from their very first welcome email, they make sure to stick to their brand ethos mixing grammar lessons with a good dose of humor.

6. Daily content

Not every email newsletter will benefit from having a daily cadence. For many companies, that volume of email sends can backfire, feeling too spammy for readers and getting too overwhelming to manage for creators.

The Skimm gets it right. They provide a highly popular daily newsletter that curates top news stories of interest to readers. It is an effective email campaign that educates people about what’s going on in the world while building a reputation as a credible, reliable source for daily news. Plus, it’s equally skimmable on desktop or mobile devices.

7. Leading with visuals

The marketers over at The New York Times know what they’re doing. Whether it’s delivering news, introducing fun ways to exercise our brains, or helping us decide what to make for dinner, they know how to attract new subscribers with one successful email campaign after another.

With The New York Times Cooking newsletter, they let images do the talking. Large, vibrant photos of drool-worthy dishes are accompanied by recipes and anecdotes that leave readers eager for more.

8. The reader chooses the cadence

People turn to TechCrunch as a dependable source for important tech news. And they have plenty of news to share. Knowing that, they offer 10 newsletters to opt into, some with a daily cadence, some with a weekly cadence, and all tailored to a specific topic (think fintech, crypto, or morning updates).

This puts readers in control of the content they will receive and makes the experience feel more personalized, which is a smart way for the publication to communicate their general approach to interacting with their subscribers.

9. Mixing business with pleasure

Bloomscape is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand that uses their newsletter to support their ecommerce business. They send plants directly to their customers’ doorsteps and use their newsletter as an opportunity to educate them on how to become better plant owners while also introducing new and available products that are for sale.

Their email campaign is done in a visually appealing and easy-to-digest way, keeping potential and existing customers coming back for more.

10. Bottom-of-the-funnel content

General Assembly is a company that offers next-level tech training for careers in software engineering, UX design, and more. Their email campaigns move engaged subscribers to the last stage of the funnel, where they can purchase a seat to an upcoming event.

In addition to offering industry expertise and educational content, they lay out titles, dates, and times for upcoming events and make it simple for readers to register for them. This strategy works well for subscribers who are consistently engaged and interact with your content regularly.

Dedicated landing pages that maximize your newsletter campaigns

As you contemplate your own email newsletter, remember to take your time. There are a lot of factors that play into whether someone will fill out your email subscription form and take the first step to becoming a loyal customer. Whether they come from your social media accounts, website, or paid ads, your goal is to keep them in your ecosystem by serving valuable information.

You may aim to focus on a specific niche, get existing content out to more eyeballs, or increase your ecommerce business, and choosing the right tools can help you meet your goals.

It’s good to remember that a successful newsletter often has dedicated landing pages as part of the strategy, as landing pages reinforce your message and can be that extra push in driving a conversion.

Instapage is the most powerful landing page builder on the market, with high-valued features like a drag and drop editor, pre-existing templates, an analytics dashboard, an AI content generator, and in-app A/B testing.

Instapage users love the ability to conduct A/B testing with Instapage Experiments. It is an intuitive feature that allows users to test variations of their landing page elements to understand what resonates best with their visitors. With Instapage Experiments, users can:

• Access heatmaps that provide a visual image of scroll depths, mouse movement, and on-page clicks. Using heatmaps, you can track your visitors’ behavior and improve element placement on your landing page accordingly



• Rewrite headlines and page copy using an AI generator based on the existing text, target audience, product description, and recommendations from API
• Compare elements like on-page videos, images, or text to see which is most engaging
• View deep A/B analytics in an easy-to-use dashboard

See more successful campaigns when you pair your emails with Instapage landing pages. Start a 14-day free trial of Instapage today.

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Whether you operate in the B2B, DTC, or ecommerce space, one thing is certain—there’s a lot of competition out there, and things are only getting more crowded.

Case in point, there are currently 502 email marketing platforms fighting for attention and subscriptions from the same pool of customers. This is how congested the category is:

It’s hard to get noticed when you’re in a sea with fish that look like you, taste like you, and sing like you. So, how do you stand out and make target customers take notice when you and multiple others are offering them the same thing?

That’s where product differentiation comes in.

Product differentiation: definition

Product differentiation is a marketing strategy that helps you highlight the unique traits that make your product/service special and unlike others already available on the market.

Establishing a product differentiation strategy in your chosen category gives you a competitive advantage over every other brand fighting for customer attention.

For example, this is what happens when there’s no product differentiation:

Can you tell the difference between the two platforms? They use almost the same brand colors, the headlines talk about “business growth,” and up for offer on both pages is a free trial.

This is why it’s essential to differentiate yourself and stand out in a sea of sameness: if you don’t, you’re just one more brand getting lost with the crowd.

Product differentiation and positioning both help you do that, but they take different approaches to get there.

Positioning vs. product differentiation

What’s the first brand that comes to mind when you think about ketchup, Heinz? How about tissues, Kleenex? How about search engines or streaming services?

If you thought of the same services (which we’re willing to bet you did), these brands have successfully positioned themselves as category leaders in your mind and the minds of other consumers.

Here’s how two of the greatest minds in positioning define the strategy.

Jake Trout defines positioning as:

“Positioning starts with a product. A piece of merchandise, a service, a company, an institution, or even a person. Perhaps yourself. But positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.”

While April Dunford explains the concept as:

“Positioning is the act of deliberately defining how you are the best at something that a defined market cares a lot about. Positioning is a fundamental input into every tactic we execute, every campaign we launch, every piece of content we create, every sales pitch we make.”

Product differentiation is the process of defining and highlighting what makes you unique and demonstrating that to your target audience through your product messaging throughout the marketing funnel.

Positioning, on the other hand, is the place a product occupies in consumers’ minds relative to competitors’ products. It’s about how a company wants its target market to perceive its product compared to alternatives.

Product differentiation vs. market segmentation

Market segmentation, or customer segmentation, is the data-fueled strategy of dividing your broader target population into smaller groups or subsets with similar needs, interests, preferences, and characteristics.

There are different types of segmentations you can use to target customers and get the most out of your marketing messages, such as demographic, behavioral, geographic, and psychographic segmentation.

This ASPCA ad is an example of psychographic segmentation. The ad copy and design speak to socially conscious people willing to help everyone around while not seeking benefits for themselves.

The Oatly brand is an excellent example of product differentiation done right—they stand out among other oat milk competitors based on their brand story, packaging, and customer experiences.

While market segmentation is about dividing and conquering subsets of audiences based on their collective experiences, needs, and wants, product differentiation is about highlighting your brand’s distinct characteristics compared to others in your space.

How do you create a product differentiation strategy?

The challenge with product differentiation is that with all other competitors offering almost the same features and offers, it’s hard to find an angle of differentiation.

To zero in on the type of differentiation, you should go after, you need to focus on your existing and future customers. Ask them the following questions, either through user surveys, customer interviews, or go review mining if your brand is new-ish and doesn’t have a lot of customers yet.

• What do they want from your product that they’re not getting from their current solution?
• What frustrates them about their current solution?
• What difference would they see in their lives if they got exactly what they wanted from your product?

The answers to these questions will help you understand what your target audience wants and which product differentiation strategy will work best for your brand.

Four types of product differentiation with differentiation examples

Price differentiation

Price differentiation involves setting yourself apart based on how affordable your solution/service is for your customers compared to competitors in the space. In his book “Positioning”, Jake Trout explains price differentiation with Little Caesar’s example.

“Little Caesars became a powerful pizza brand by elevating its “two for the price of one” promotion into a positioning strategy. Their “pizza, pizza” refrain became one of the most memorable advertising programs ever run and made the Little Caesars brand into the fastest-growing pizza chain.”

Quality differentiation

Quality differentiation sets your brand apart by focusing on product quality, making it superior to your competitors.

Apple is the best example of quality differentiation.

Feature differentiation

With feature differentiation, you highlight unique features and functionalities of your product that others in your market don’t offer.

Cal.com differentiates itself from Calendly, the biggest competitor in the scheduling space, by highlighting features such as workflow automation and routing forms.

Design differentiation

When you differentiate based on design, you make your product’s aesthetic appeal and visual uniqueness the distinguishing factor to help elevate the brand in your customers’ eyes.

Liquid Death sells water in aluminum cans. Their brand vision, unique voice, and packaging all shout, “take notice”.

They have taken a strong stance against plastic pollution. This is their mission statement:

Use product differentiation to tower above the competition and ensure your landing pages follow suite

Successful product differentiation helps your brand understand what customers need and gets them to notice you over the sea of your category competitors. It helps you lead with your product’s strengths and make an instant impression in the minds of your consumers.

Product differentiation is powerful, yes, but it is only a strategy. To make sure the strategy works for you, you need to ensure that all your marketing messages— landing pages, ads, and emails consistently use differentiation.

This also means scaling your marketing campaigns to fulfill your advertising needs. You can use Instapage’s Global Blocks and Instablocks™ to quickly and easily create a high volume of optimized landing pages as fast as you create ads.

Global Blocks makes it easy for advertisers and marketers to manage and update your landing pages in a single click. All you have to do is create a custom block, use it globally across all your landing pages, and update all those pages with one click—helping you with high-volume, high-velocity campaigns to create, manage, and update global brand templates at scale.

Want to see this feature in action and scale your landing page creation process without additional team help? Sign up for an Instapage 14-day free trial today.

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Customer segmentation provides brands with critical insights into the specific needs and preferences of different customer groups.

A better understanding of customer needs allows you to tailor your customer acquisition strategies to align with the specific preferences of your customer base, resulting in improved customer satisfaction and engagement.

So, what is customer segmentation? Let’s dive right in.

What is customer segmentation, and why does it matter?

Customer segmentation is the process of dividing your audience into categories or segments based on shared characteristics, such as demographics, geographic locations, behaviors, or interests.

Customer segmentation gives you a deeper understanding of the needs and motivations of customers. You can then use this data to provide a superior customer experience and launch more impactful and revenue-generating campaigns.

Implementing a personalized approach across your marketing funnel ensures your messages resonate more strongly with each customer segment, leading to higher engagement, increased conversions, and, ultimately, more growth.

Customer segmentation vs. market segmentation— what’s the difference?

When talking about dividing up customers and markets, it’s essential to understand the difference between customer and market segmentation.

While market segmentation looks at the whole marketplace, customer segmentation focuses on a specific market subset.

For instance, if you sell vehicles mainly to businesses, you can segment the market into categories like small businesses, large enterprises, and government organizations. Each of these segments may have distinct needs and preferences when it comes to vehicle purchases.

Within the “large enterprises” market segment, the company might perform customer segmentation based on the types of vehicles they are interested in—some may require a fleet of sedans for executive use. In contrast, others might need trucks or vans for logistics, allowing the company to tailor its sales approach and services to meet the unique requirements of each subset.

Targeting specific customer segments can get better results than trying to appeal to everyone at once. This way, you can better understand and meet the unique needs of your target audience, leading to happier customers and more success for your business.

Benefits of customer segmentation

Personalized marketing

Segmentation helps you create marketing messages and offers tailored to each customer’s unique persona, helping you make an elevated user shopping experience.

Imagine sending out emails that speak directly to the recipient—their interests, purchase history, and preferences. This level of personalization is the competitive edge, allowing brands to foster deeper connections with their audience through tailored content and offers.

For example, this Calendly email not only contains the recipient’s first name but also addresses the challenges a new user might face during onboarding and walks them through the key steps to improve scheduling.

Improved customer retention

Catering to the unique needs of different customer segments can significantly boost customer satisfaction, leading to improved loyalty and higher retention rates. Keeping your current customers is more cost-effective than finding new ones. Research suggests that boosting customer retention by just 5% can spike profits by 25% to 95%.

Competitive advantage

Using customer segmentation to create a more personalized and satisfying customer experience can help you differentiate yourself from competitors. This can help you establish a strong brand identity and build a competitive advantage over time.

Optimized marketing messages and offers

By categorizing customers based on specific traits or behaviors, you can create more compelling marketing messages and precise offers that resonate with different segments, maximizing your return on investment.

Improved customer experience

Aligning your products, services, and touchpoints with the preferences of your various customer segments ensures that each interaction is enjoyable and leaves a lasting impression.

A study involving 1,300 organizations across 80 countries found that 84% of those prioritizing customer experience saw revenue growth, with 79% reporting notable cost reductions.

Enhanced brand awareness

Customizing marketing communication for different customer segments can lead to a better connection between the customer and the business, ultimately increasing brand awareness.

For instance, BMW’s “Generation of Joy” campaign, launched in 2022, specifically targeted millennials and Gen Z, referred to as “new luxury consumers” expected to fuel future growth. The campaign sought to expand BMW’s brand awareness beyond its traditional premium segment customers and resonate with younger audiences.

Types of customer segmentation: How to target different customer segments

Marketers need to identify new customer segments and target existing customers to get the most benefits from customer segmentation. Each segmentation approach is based on specific key variables.

Demographic segmentation

Demographic segmentation identifies specific consumer groups based on age, gender, marital status, family size, income, education, race, occupation, nationality, and/or religion. It’s one of the four primary types of marketing segmentation and is widely employed due to its effectiveness and versatility.

Mom Store segments audiences by marital status and gender—they target women looking for baby gear and maternity goods.

Behavioral segmentation

Behavioral segmentation categorizes consumers based on their behavior patterns when engaging with a brand. Behavioral segmentation focuses on studying various customer behaviors, such as consumers’ knowledge of, attitude towards, usage of, preferences for, or response to a product, service, promotion, or brand.

Medik8, a UK-based professional skincare brand, highlights the advantages of its products in combating aging and pigmentation.

Benefit segmentation can help skincare brands like Medik8 identify the different pain points of their customers, segment them accordingly, and match the segments with suitable products.

Psychographic segmentation

Psychographic segmentation sorts consumers into groups based on psychological factors affecting their purchasing decisions, such as lifestyle, interests, values, personality, social class, etc.

Nissan Leaf connects with consumers based on their desire to have a lifestyle and values like using an environmentally-friendly vehicle to prevent pollution:

Geographic segmentation

Geographic segmentation divides customers based on geographic units such as countries, states, and cities. It also considers factors like climate, cultural preferences, population demographics, and other geographic attributes extending beyond simple geographical boundaries.

Location can significantly influence buying habits, product preferences, and positioning. Like many global brands, KFC uses geographic segmentation to ensure that their offering is aligned with local market needs:

Firmographic segmentation

Firmographic segmentation involves categorizing businesses based on characteristics like industry, company size, revenue, location, and organizational structure. Unlike consumer-focused segmentation, firmographic segmentation is used in B2B marketing to identify and target specific types of businesses.

By analyzing firmographic variables, companies can effectively tailor their marketing strategies and offerings to reach their target audience within the business sector. This approach lets you target your resources on the most promising market segments, leading to more efficient marketing efforts and higher ROAS in B2B marketing initiatives.

Firmographic segmentation helps businesses understand the unique attributes and needs of different business segments, enabling them to develop targeted approaches that resonate with their target audience in the B2B marketplace.

Customer segmentation examples

H&M

H&M is a global clothing brand that uses geographic segmentation for first-time visitors to forward them to a local H&M website in their country to show location-specific offers.

GAP

GAP uses a benefit-sought behavioral segmentation by showing a pop-up offering a discount to first-time visitors of their website.

Jabra

The headphone brand Jabra uses lifestyle-based psychographic segmentation. The Jabra website is built to make it easier for customers to select the right headphones based on their personal or professional needs.

How to segment customers and target them effectively

1. Define your goals: Clearly outline the objectives you aim to achieve through customer segmentation. Whether it’s increasing sales, improving customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, or enhancing marketing efficiency—setting clear goals will guide your segmentation process.
2. Gather data: Collect relevant data about your customers, including demographics, behavior, purchasing patterns, preferences, and interactions with your brand. Use both quantitative data (e.g., sales records, website analytics) and qualitative data (e.g., surveys, customer feedback) to gain comprehensive insights.
3. Identify segmentation variables: Determine the criteria or variables you’ll use to segment your customers. These variables can include demographic (age, gender, location), behavioral and psychographic data (lifestyle, interests, values, purchase frequency, buying preferences), etc.
4. Segment customers: Analyze the collected data and segment your customer base into distinct groups based on the identified variables. Use segmentation techniques like clustering analysis, RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) analysis, or personas to divide customers into meaningful segments.
5. Validate segments: Assess the validity and relevance of the identified target groups by evaluating factors such as distinctiveness, measurability, accessibility, and actionability. Ensure each customer segment is sufficiently large and homogenous to warrant targeted strategies.
6. Develop segment profiles: Create detailed profiles for each customer segment, outlining their characteristics, needs, preferences, and behaviors. Use qualitative insights and market research to enrich the profiles and understand the motivations driving each segment.
7. Prioritize segments: Determine the priority or importance of each segment based on factors such as profitability, growth potential, and alignment with business objectives. Allocate resources and efforts accordingly, focusing on segments offering the most significant value creation opportunity.
8. Tailor marketing strategies: Develop customized marketing strategies for every segment based on their unique profiles and preferences. Personalize messaging, offers, channels, and experiences to resonate with the specific needs and interests of each segment.
9. Implement and monitor: Execute the segmented marketing strategies across various channels and touchpoints, consistently monitoring performance and feedback. Track key metrics and indicators to assess the effectiveness of your segmentation model and make adjustments as needed.
10. Use customer segmentation software: Use customer segmentation tools like Segment, LeadLander, Userpilot, Baremetrics, Heap, and Kissmetrics to automate the segmentation process and gain deeper insights into your customers.
11. Iterate and refine: Continuously review and refine your customer segmentation strategy based on ongoing insights, market dynamics, and business objectives. Adapt your segmentation criteria and techniques to accommodate changes in customer behavior and market trends.

Where to get customer data for customer segmentation?

You’ll need to gather data from both direct and indirect sources to segment customers properly:

• Direct sources involve collecting customer responses through satisfaction surveys, post-purchase feedback, and brand tracking.
• Indirect sources gather data from various channels like social media, website analytics, and frontline feedback, providing insights into customer behavior from third-party sources.

Once you’ve gathered and analyzed this data, you can identify patterns and create customer segments. These segments are crucial for shaping your brand’s messaging, positioning, and overall strategy, which ultimately helps improve your business performance.

Understanding how different customer segments behave allows you to customize their experience, making it easier for them to navigate and complete their journey with your brand.

It’s essential to align your customer segments with your business objectives. For example, your segmentation approach may differ if you’re facing competition or launching a new product. Asking critical questions about your goals will help determine the level of detail needed for effective segmentation.

Elevate your customer segmentation strategy

Prioritizing customer segmentation is essential for building meaningful connections with your audience. By understanding different customer segments’ diverse needs and preferences, brands can cultivate loyalty and achieve a higher return on investment. It’s important to recognize that customer segmentation is an ongoing process requiring continual adaptation to evolving customer behaviors and preferences.

The key insight here is straightforward: the deeper our understanding of our customers, the more effectively we can meet their needs. By prioritizing customer-centric strategies, we not only earn their trust and business but also foster long-term loyalty and satisfaction.

Discover how customer segmentation can be seamlessly integrated into your marketing efforts with Instapage.

With Instapage, you can create personalized experiences in minutes—quickly build unique landing pages for each campaign and attach experiences to specific audiences using UTM parameters.

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Customers crave personalized experiences, whether in the form of abandoned cart emails based on past purchases or personalized automation rules tailored for their specific workflows. The more personalized the experience, the more value customers receive.

The days of broadly targeted old-school marketing tactics are done and dusted—marketing is no longer a numbers game. You don’t need to cast wide nets of billboards, telemarketing calls, or mass mailers to grab the attention of the masses. Personalized marketing is all about cultivating brand messages that speak directly to specific customers’ interests and demographics and induce buying behavior.

Now, marketers skillfully use data to craft highly relevant and timely messages for each prospect, aiming to catch their interest exactly when they’re most likely to engage.

It’s all about personalized marketing now.

This is exactly what we’ll discuss today. We’ll cover what personalized marketing is, examples of personalized marketing, and how you can leverage it to increase your conversions and ROAS.

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What is personalized marketing?

Personalized marketing, also known as marketing personalization or one-to-one marketing, is a strategy that utilizes segmentation data points to target and retarget leads with ads and landing pages. The goal is to create a more focused and relevant experience for each customer, increasing the chances of them getting involved and making a purchase.

Research from McKinsey reveals that companies that excel at personalization bring in 40% more revenue from these efforts than those with average performance. Additionally, 76% of consumers expect personalized experiences and feel disappointed when they don’t receive them.

On the flip side:

• 41% of consumers stop supporting brands that fail to provide personalized experiences
• U.S. businesses risk losing as much as $756 billion in revenue yearly due to a lack of trust and poor personalization

A crucial part of personalized marketing involves collecting and analyzing customer data, including demographics, past purchases, online habits, and real-time actions. This data helps businesses understand each customer’s specific needs and likes, allowing them to create personalized messages, suggest products, and offer promotions that resonate with individual customers.

Personalized marketing happens through various channels, like email, social media, websites, and mobile apps. Imagine an online store using a customer’s browsing and purchase history to recommend products they might like. Email campaigns can also be tailored to include content and promotions that match a particular person’s tastes.

But here’s the thing – even though personalized marketing can turn customers into enthusiastic supporters, it also raises privacy concerns. Striking the right balance between enhancing content and respecting customer privacy is crucial for engagement and conversions. This means adhering to data protection rules and being transparent about using consumer data is essential for successful personalized marketing, especially now when consumers value privacy and customized experiences.

Marketing personalization strategies

Identifying what your customers want at any given moment is challenging. While data informs what shape your marketing personalization strategy should eventually take, there are three common strategies that every brand can build off of to ensure they always create a strong personalized marketing plan:

1. Identify and understand customer needs

Every customer expects you to know their needs. When they punch a long-tail query into your search bar, they expect content that answers it. If they’re shopping in a brick-and-mortar location of yours, they probably want details on a product. At every touchpoint throughout the funnel, ask yourself, “What does the customer want here? What are they looking for?” Or, even better, ask them. Surveys and user testing are an easy way to discover these answers.

2. Remember who they are and their actions on any channel or device

Brand communication that exists in disconnected siloes is what frustrates customers.

For instance, if they’ve coordinated a date and time for a demo of your product via phone, and they get an email aiming for a demo sign-up the next day, that constitutes a bad user experience.Not only is it annoying, but it can potentially confuse prospects. They may think: “Did something go wrong? Was my demo canceled? Are they trying to reschedule?”

Your advertising personalization strategy should span every device and channel, and your CRM should reflect anything you’ve learned about your prospect along the way. Avoid scenarios like those above, and instead, aim to know exactly what your prospects have done, the kind of messaging they’ve responded to, the type of content they like, their communication preferences, and more.

3. Anticipate their future needs

Access to customer data and browsing behavior allows you to predict what’s coming next. Think of when you book a flight somewhere. Airlines don’t stop after selling you a ticket. They ask if you want travel insurance, if you want to book a hotel room, if you’ll need to rent a car, etc. They know you’re traveling, and they also know the experience is more than just flying. The same goes for your product or service. What add-ons might they need? What upgraded versions might they consider? This extends before and after the buying stage, too.

If you know your target audience reads a lot of your content on social media marketing, send them more content about social media marketing. Send them blog posts, podcasts, ebooks, and tip sheets. If they’ve already bought your product, make them aware of newer versions, bug fixes, and use cases that help them maximize your product’s full potential.

Think of a successful personalization in the funnel similar to playing chess; you have to think several moves ahead and predict behavior.

How to create a successful personalized marketing strategy

To create a successful personalized marketing strategy, you must carefully combine data analysis, technology use, and customer-focused methods into a cohesive plan. Here’s everything you need to develop a successful personalized marketing strategy:

Collect relevant customer data

Tap into various sources, including demographics, purchase history, and online behavior, to learn more about your customers. Use data analytics tools to extract meaningful insights from the collected information.

Do psychographic segmentation of your customer base

Group your customers based on their personality, lifestyle, hobbies and interests, social class, and values. Identify distinct customer personas to tailor personalized content and offers for each segment.

Use marketing automation tools to streamline and scale personalized interactions

Automate personalized emails, recommendations, and content delivery based on customer actions.

Utilize AI and machine learning

Use smart algorithms that predict what your customers might like. Continuously refine personalized recommendations and content based on real-time data.

Create personalized content

Develop content that resonates with each customer segment. Tailor product recommendations, promotional offers, and messaging to match individual preferences.

Optimize multi-channel experiences

Ensure consistency in personalized experiences across various channels, including email, social media, websites, and mobile apps. Optimize the user journey for a seamless transition between channels.

Respect your customers’ privacy and build trust

Communicate how you use customer data and prioritize privacy concerns. Obtain explicit data collection and use consent, adhering to relevant privacy regulations.

Implement A/B testing to assess the effectiveness of different personalized approaches

Continuously iterate and refine the personalized marketing strategy based on performance metrics and customer feedback.

Monitor and measure the performance of your campaigns

Use analytics tools to track and measure key performance indicators (KPIs) such as engagement, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction.

Stay agile and adaptive

Keep abreast of evolving customer preferences and market trends. Stay agile and adjust your personalized marketing strategy accordingly to remain relevant and effective.

With these steps, you’re not just marketing – you’re having a personalized conversation with your customers.

The benefits of personalized marketing

Personalization is a valuable asset for marketers, fostering stronger connections with customers, optimizing marketing efforts, and ultimately driving business growth.

It allows marketers to enjoy a handful of benefits.

1. Enhanced customer engagement

Personalization enables marketers to create content, offers, and messages that resonate with individual customers. This tailored approach enhances customer engagement by providing relevant and meaningful interactions, capturing their attention, and encouraging active participation.

2. Increased conversion rates

Marketers can significantly boost conversion rates by delivering personalized content and offers aligned with a customer’s preferences and behaviors. Customers are more likely to purchase when they feel connected to the products or services presented.

3. Improved customer satisfaction and retention

Personalization demonstrates that a brand understands and values its customers. Positive perception of the brand increases when customers receive personalized recommendations and experiences. Satisfied customers are more likely to become loyal advocates. Also, by consistently providing personalized experiences, marketers can build long-term relationships, making customers more likely to return for future purchases rather than exploring alternatives.

4. Optimized marketing spend

Personalization allows marketers to target specific audience segments more effectively. This targeted approach ensures the efficient allocation of marketing resources, reaching the most receptive audience and minimizing wasteful spending on broad, non-specific campaigns.

5. Data-driven insights

Collecting and analyzing customer data for personalization purposes provides valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. Marketers can use this data to refine their strategies, make informed decisions, and stay ahead of market changes.

6. Cross-selling and up-selling opportunities

Personalization enables marketers to recommend complementary products or upgrades based on a customer’s purchase history and preferences. This opens up opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling, increasing the average transaction value.

7. Effective email marketing

Personalized emails addressing a recipient by name or suggesting products based on past purchases can significantly improve open and click-through rates. Tailored content makes emails more relevant, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

8. Adaptation to customer lifecycle

Personalization allows marketers to tailor their strategies to different customer lifecycle stages. From attracting new customers to nurturing existing ones, personalized approaches can be adapted to meet customers’ specific needs and expectations at each stage.

9. Competitive advantage

Brands that effectively implement personalization gain a competitive edge. In a crowded market, offering personalized experiences sets a brand apart, attracting and retaining customers who appreciate the extra effort to meet their needs.

Personalized marketing examples

“Personalization” is a term we hear all the time – in blog posts, in reports – perhaps even to the point of overuse. It’s turned into a buzzword that’s lost some of its clarity. To some, it’s as simple as adding a name to the subject line of an email. To others, it evokes the image of sophisticated algorithms that can predict life events like pregnancy based on shopping patterns. Effective personalization falls somewhere in the middle. Here are some standout examples to spark your creativity:

Video

At first glance, you might think video isn’t the kind of format you can easily personalize, but with a bit of ingenuity, it’s entirely achievable. Consider, for instance, the customized onboarding video created for a new customer as he’s introduced to a new Ahlsell store:

The video uses a conversational approach to engage the viewer, directly addressing a customer by name and giving him a virtual tour of the Ahlsell store’s layout. It provides a sneak peek at the products and the careful setups for a top-notch shopping experience.

This personalized onboarding video achieved a click-through rate (CTR) of 53%. On top of that, of those who followed the link, 78% stayed to watch the entire video.

Digital advertising

Personalization is critical in crafting relevant and value-focused digital ads.
To align each campaign’s ads with their corresponding landing pages, ensure consistency in headlines, visuals, logos, and brand colors. When these elements are unified, they strengthen your brand’s identity and confirm to visitors that they’ve landed where they were meant to, all the while delivering on the ad’s initial promise.

Here’s a great example of a message match from Monday.com:

Email

Businesses can harness the power of email to perform marketing wonders. This medium offers non-intrusive, easily digestible, and highly customizable messages. Email subscribers can get promotions uniquely tailored to their demographics, interests, behaviors, and company attributes through dynamic content. Take a look at the personalized recommendations email Brooklinen sends subscribers based on their browsing habits:

Social media

While it was once a one-way photo and text-blasting to followers, social media has become highly personalized. You’re likely familiar with the emoji slider feature in Instagram stories, which allows account holders to poll their followers.

Most recently, Instagram added polls in the comments section under posts to increase engagement.

The addition of polls in the comment section could dramatically alter how creators and followers engage. Now, creators can directly gauge the consensus through real-time results from questions they ask.

Before this polling option was available, sifting through a high volume of comments to discern the most favored response was quite a challenge, as creators had to count each reply manually.

Facebook’s targeted ads are another great example of personalized marketing. Social media caters to users by showing them ads corresponding to their preferences and interests. For instance, a frequent reader of The Wall Street Journal will surely find this New Year Special Offer useful:

Personalized marketing challenges and the tools to overcome them

The biggest challenge of personalization is scaling it effectively. You can’t manually create an email for every customer. You can’t manually create an ad for every prospect. But you must maintain that appearance, which requires the right tools.

For starters, here’s what you’ll need:

1. Analytics platform: Analytics platforms aid in collecting data, which every marketer relies on to create personalized campaigns. As opposed to the self-reported data like name and email address — the “who you are” data — the data collected by most analytics platforms is behavioral. The “what you do” data can be even more valuable than the former. Platforms like Google Analytics, Heap Analytics, and Crazy Egg are popular in this category.

2. Data management platform: Data management platforms (DMP) hold audience and campaign data from sources involved in programmatic ad buying. For marketers, it’s a one-stop location where they can manage user data to create targeted user segments for digital advertising campaigns. The data you collect That user data could be, for example, age, household income, browsing habits, purchasing behavior, demographics, location, device, and more. Then, the DMP can analyze those segments’ performance and assist in optimizing future campaigns.

3. Customer relationship management software (CRM): Your CRM is the hub of customer information. Anything you learn about a prospect—from lead capture forms, sales calls, or third-party data providers—should be logged here. When connected with the rest of your marketing stack, it will allow your other tools (like a landing page platform) to feed it with prospect information, and, in turn, it can provide that information to an email marketing platform, which will help personalize your emails even further.

4. Landing page platform: Everything else falls apart without the correctly optimized final destination. This is your best way to capture prospect data today, so without it, you can kiss personalization goodbye. It’s also the best tool you have to move customers to the next stage of the funnel. Unlike regular web pages, landing pages are designed to drive prospect action — to get them to sign up, download, buy, etc. They accomplish this with a 1:1 conversion ratio, message match, a lead capture form, and several other use cases for personalization. And because every landing page needs to match the ad it comes from to maximize personalization, scaling landing page creation with manual coding dries up far too many resources. Landing page platforms like Instapage help you create and manage these pages in a fraction of the time and cost it would otherwise take.

5. Email marketing platform: Today, email marketing platforms are a staple of every marketing technology stack, as the channel is the number one most profitable for businesses. That’s not surprising, considering email addresses are a piece of information easily offered up by prospects. Through this channel is how most people prefer to be contacted. And according to research, getting emails opened comes down to personalizing it.

Consumers say they’re more likely to respond well to an email if it looks like it’s made for them. Dynamic content can accomplish this, as can segmenting or sending emails based on behavioral triggers, say, after an ebook is downloaded or your pricing page is viewed. And it doesn’t even have to be that complicated. You can send a gimmick-free birthday email to prospects on your mailing list using simple data like name and birthday. It sounds simple and maybe even useless without a CTA, but more and more customers appreciate brands who treat them like the people they are over the money they have.

6. Tag management platform: Marketing tags help you collect information from your prospects when they land on your website (among many other things). These little pieces of JavaScript, like the Meta Pixel, are added to the code of your web pages. When a visitor completes a specified action, that tag fires. The problem with these tags is that they’re tedious to manage, easily forgotten about when they’re no longer needed, and they can also greatly slow down a web page (which significantly impacts bounce rate and conversion rate). Using tag management software like Google Tag Manager allows you to add, delete, and update all your tags from one place. It also means your page load times won’t get bogged down by tag after tag, as the code for GTM only needs to be added to the back-end of web pages once.

7. Demand-side platform: Demand-side platforms work with supply-side platforms and exchanges to deliver your ads to prospects who are most likely to click them. The process is called programmatic advertising and is done primarily in real-time. You specify who you want to reach with your ads and how much you’re willing to spend. Then, a bidding war occurs between you and all the other advertisers trying to reach the same audience. A prospect lands on a page, and before that page loads fully, algorithms determine which ad to display to them. These algorithms take things like browsing history, time of day, and IP address into account. Whoever has bid the highest for the impression when all’s collected wins the placement. Their ad is published when the visitor’s page loads fully.

Start implementing your personalized marketing strategy

Personalized marketing is a game-changer, forging deeper connections between brands and their audience. Marketers can craft campaigns that speak directly to individual preferences by employing savvy strategies and tools like data analytics, customer segmentation, and dynamic content.

But let’s zoom in on a vital piece of the puzzle—landing page personalization. This marketing strategy ensures that each visitor gets a tailored journey based on their behavior, demographics, or preferences, skyrocketing the chances of turning clicks into conversions.

Want to start personalizing your landing pages? You can start with Instapage.

Instapage empowers marketers to reduce costs, grow conversions, and deliver highly personalized landing page experiences that increase brand trust, customer loyalty, and conversion rates. With Instapage, marketers can build, deploy, and optimize landing pages that convert—no developer needed.

Sign up for an Instapage 14-day free trial and start building highly personalized landing pages today.

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It’s no secret that user segmentation is an absolute must-have for targeting, engaging, and converting prospects and leads. While demographic, geographic, and behavioral segmentation understands individuals as consumers, psychographic segmentation takes it a step further and focuses on who they are as people.

What is psychographic segmentation?

Psychographic segmentation is a marketing research approach that categorizes consumers into groups based on psychological factors influencing their buying behavior, personality, values, beliefs, lifestyle, attitudes, interests, activities, and social class. Simply put, using psychographic segmentation, you can learn not only who your buyers are but how they think and what drives their lives.

Why is psychographic segmentation important

Psychographically segmenting your audience, when combined with demographic and other data, allows you to know more about your audience and helps marketers:

1. Understand customer motivation. Identifying people’s life patterns allows you to get inside the minds of your target market. It helps you to not only better understand their needs and wishes but also know their motivations for choosing specific products and tailor your messaging accordingly.
2. Personalize marketing communications. Today, customers expect a personalized experience from brands. By leveraging psychographic segmentation, you can deliver targeted and personalized marketing campaigns that speak directly to your audience’s individual needs and desires.
3. Improve online advertising and audience engagement. With psychographic segmentation, you can create highly targeted ads speaking directly to the values and interests of your audience so they are more likely to engage with your brand. This can include sharing your content, participating in discussions, and becoming a loyal customer base.
4. Increase conversion rate and effective lead generation. Considering your customers’ values in life, their pain points, and why they act the way they do, you can create more effective landing pages and ads with offerings, messaging, and design aligned adequately with their psychographic traits. This brings more conversions and attracts leads that are more likely to purchase, as your messaging will resonate with them on a deeper level and compel them to take action.
5. Gain competitive advantage and differentiation. In a marketplace crowded with generic messages, personalized communications capture attention and foster stronger relationships with the audience.

Psychographic segmentation examples

Let’s look at some ads created by companies that mastered psychographic segmentation and successfully implemented it in their campaigns.

For example, this Wild Clean ad resonates with consumers based on value—like using environmentally-friendly products to save the earth.

Meal delivery service is another good example of a psychographic-targeted ad. Such businesses should market first to those who enjoy spending time with their families since a meal delivery service will free up time. They also may target those who value their health, exercise regularly, have dietary restrictions, etc. Daily Harvest is another example of psychographic segmentation that does a great job targeting several interest segments, all of whom would likely enjoy their meal delivery service. They promote time efficiency in the description and video and then follow up with more information on healthy, nourishing food in the video.

Take a look at this ASPCA ad that speaks directly to socially conscious people willing to help everyone around while not seeking benefits for themselves:

This Intercom ad is a perfect psychographic segmentation example directed at top-middle-class members who may be interested in growing their business:

This Carnival ad speaks to several psychographic segments – people from middle to upper-top social classes as they are the only ones who could afford a cruise. It would be careless to show it to someone in either of the lower classes because there is little chance they would even consider spending their little money on a lavish vacation.

Business giants have greatly mastered psychographic segmentation art. For instance, Nike addresses their messaging to customers passionate about sports at all levels, whether they are professional athletes or just people who love to go to the gym or train outdoors in fashionable sportswear.

Psychographic segmentation variables

Several psychographic targeting variables highly correlate with a customer’s buying behavior – personality, values, lifestyle, hobbies and interests, and social class. Each of them is broken down into subcategories. Let’s take a closer look at the five psychographic segmentation variables.

1. Personality

Personality is the first factor to define one’s buying preferences. Psychographic segmentation, by this criteria, considers people’s beliefs, morals, motivations, and overall outlook on life to create a buyer’s profile. This segment may have various subgroups. Here’s how one company suggests to divide customers by personality type:

• Belongers are the most common psychographic personality type in the US. They are more “mainstream” than people in the other categories, always wanting to fit in with their families, friends, and community. They don’t want to stand out in a crowd, feel isolated, or experience change.
• Achievers are very ambitious, always busy, need to constantly be productive, and dislike anything they feel is a waste of time. They tend to be materialistic and purchase luxury items to symbolize their success in life.
• Emulators want to be Achievers, but they’re either missing the skillset or work ethic to get there. Instead, they often make large purchases they can’t afford or buy knock-off products to appear successful.
• Saviors  aim to achieve greatness for the world instead of just for themselves. They’re socially conscious people who go out of their way to help others and the world around them and rarely (if ever) ask for anything in return.
• Doomsdayers  are the exact opposite of Saviors, seeing nothing but doom and destruction for the human race. They try to be as self-sufficient as possible and tend to have a strong opinion about almost anything.
• Integrators  are Achievers plus Saviors. They strive to earn as much money as possible but then spend it on philanthropic efforts rather than themselves. This is the least common psychographic personality type, with only 1-2% of people fitting into this category.
• Survivalists  struggle to earn a living wage, working paycheck to paycheck, either through their own choices or because they were raised in a poverty-stricken environment. They don’t plan purchases or spend money haphazardly because they fear losing everything.

Your company’s data might warrant creating different personality subcategories to define individual customers and implement psychographic segmentation into your advertising strategy. Either way, the point of segmenting consumers into these categories is to determine which subcategories are most likely to see value in your product or service.

2. Lifestyle

Lifestyle is the most specific insight into what someone truly values or how they spend their time and money. It comprises daily habits, like morning coffee routine, living with pets, etc. For a clear picture of this, you must analyze three dimensions of their life—activities, interests, and opinions—commonly referred to as “AIO Variables.” Activities and interests are a large psychographic segmentation group, so we’ll discuss them separately.

A person’s opinion determines whether they consider particular products useful and important. People often have strong views on religious, political, environmental, and cultural topics, which can significantly impact the products and services they buy and how they respond to your advertising messaging.

3. Hobbies and interests

Interests and hobbies are important characteristics of an individual, revealing what they like and dislike doing, what excites them, their passions in life, and, therefore, what they are willing to spend on. Sports, music, books, arts, community events, media preferences, entertainment, etc. – everyone’s interests and hobbies vary, and knowing this can bolster your marketing efforts. When researching a prospect’s interests, start broad, then narrow your focus as you begin to understand more about them.

Activities are also significant for psychographic segmentation. They cover what a person enjoys doing (and will spend money on), how often they engage in those activities, and the purchases they make based on them. For example, someone interested in playing soccer needs to purchase a soccer ball. However, depending on how much they plan to play, they might buy cleats and shinguards. They might also invest in private lessons or a local league membership if they plan to play frequently or competitively.

Two people with the same activity level might also vary in how they make purchases related to the activity. While one person might research which type and quality of cleats to buy, another might consult a peer or a specialist. The amount each person spends on different cleats could also differ.

4. Social class

Psychographic segmentation considers social hierarchy when setting targeting because of social classes’ different purchasing power. If you target the wrong group, they won’t be able or willing to purchase from you. This idea can also be applied to account-based marketing. For example, if an enterprise software company wants to reach C-suite executives, they need to segment and target higher authority employees.

Here are the most common social classes the population is divided into:

1. The top-upper class or the richest of the rich, who likely never had to deal
2. The bottom-upper class, who have earned their wealth, know how much effort it takes to reach their level. They buy what they want but never spend money as lavishly as the top-upper class.
3. The top-middle-class people are in a comfortable financial situation and are focused on their career growth. They can afford “finer things in life” without spending recklessly.
4. The bottom-middle class can provide the basics for their families (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) and occasional extras. Still, large purchases are made with careful consideration based on finances and logistics.
5. The top-lower class consists of blue-collar workers who earn just enough money to get by – and nothing extra. These people always want to work hard and save as much as possible.
6. The bottom-lower class consists of either underemployed or unemployed who live well below the typical standard of living. These people spend what little money they make on the bare essentials and sometimes must even forego these.

5. Values

Family upbringing and cultural background make us who we are and determine our attitude to life. The individual’s attitude to a particular event or product may affect their purchase behavior. For example, people raised in conservatism and economizing will not invest in risky projects, so targeting them for such projects is doomed to failure in conversions. Each prospective customer will have a different attitude toward the product based on their life values and background, and marketers should also consider this as a variable for psychographic segmentation.

The above patterns are not the only psychographic factors marketers should consider while working on psychographic segmentation for effective audience engagement. Consumption patterns and customers’ spending habits also make the difference. These refer to how people search for products and services, purchase, and consume them. The habit means that an individual spends the same amount of money within the same framework of conditions (for example, buying souvenirs on vacation, going out for dinner on a payday, or donating on a specific day to a particular organization). Such regular actions may come from our society, family traditions, or media.

Many of the described categories and subcategories coexist and overlap with one another. Successful psychographic segmentation provides an ideal customer profile based on the combination of various variables. Let’s see how to make a target audience investigation.

Research methods for psychographic segmentation

Businesses require in-depth, quality data about their target audience to conduct psychographic segmentation. Here are some of the most commonly used research methods in psychographic segmentation:

1. Surveys and questionnaires. These straightforward tools help gather information about customers’ preferences, opinions, and values. Surveys shouldn’t be unnecessarily long and combine closed-ended and open questions for qualitative richness. Surveys and questionnaires are cost-effective so that you can simultaneously cover large groups of people.
2. In-depth interviews and focus groups. By asking the right questions during direct one-to-one communications, you can learn about your customers’ personalities, what they enjoy doing in their spare time, their lifestyle, what they value most in life, and lots of other information that can be used for segmentation. By arranging small focus groups, you can explore individual perspectives and group dynamics, uncovering emotional aspects of decision-making and nuances often missed in quantitative approaches.
3. Observational studies and ethnographic research. This psychographic segmentation method watches consumers in their natural environment. It involves documenting their real-life interactions, habits, and environmental influences that capture the essence of consumer lifestyles. It’s a more time-consuming approach compared to questionnaires and interviews, but it offers rich, qualitative data.
4. Social media analysis and online behavior tracking. Digital analytics helps evaluate people’s online browsing habits and social media behavior, such as likes, retweets, and shares. They offer insight into what content resonates with the audience and their online activity patterns.

To get the most up-to-date and accurate data, companies often combine several psychographic segmentation methods, as each research approach contributes a unique thread, providing a nuanced profile of your audience.

Implementation of psychographic segmentation in marketing

The first step in implementing psychographic segmentation into marketing campaigns is to collect psychographic data using the above-outlined research methods. The next step is to analyze the collected data and categorize customers accordingly. Divide your base into smaller groups with common characteristics. The in-depth segmentation is a key to well-targeted campaigns with higher customer engagement.

Once completed with psychographic segmentation, create customer personas representing each segment – it will help you visualize your typical consumer as a real person and better understand their motivations. Personalization is critical in creating personalized product positioning and brand messaging tailored to each customer persona. This means creating unique content and design that will resonate and make a meaningful connection with every particular segment of your audience, motivating them to purchase.

Psychographic segmentation data and customer personas help tailor company messaging to every customer group and create unique value propositions for them – what is special about your product and how it helps a specific segment meet their needs. For example, if you appeal to business professionals, you should focus on the product’s efficiencies. And make your messaging sound green and eco-friendly to resonate with the environmentally oriented customer segment.

Psychographic segmentation is not something you do once and for all. To ensure effective marketing campaigns, you should constantly check if your data is still relevant and make new research and analysis now and again. Conversion rates and customer engagement metrics will help you see if your segmentation messaging works.

Psychographic segmentation vs. behavioral segmentation

As mentioned, a holistic understanding of your customers is paramount for driving successful sales. However, simply knowing who your customers are is not enough – understanding how they behave and why is essential. Though both are valuable, psychographic and behavioral segmentation differ in their approach.

Psychographic segmentation groups individuals based on their inner values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle choices, giving an understanding of what makes them tick and what motivations and reasons they have behind their purchase decisions. On the other hand, behavioral segmentation focuses more on the actions and behavior of the customers. It groups individuals based on their purchasing behavior, product usage, interactions with the brand, and their response to different marketing campaigns. Behavioral segmentation can reveal patterns such as customer loyalty, buying frequency, benefits sought, and readiness to purchase.

While psychographic segmentation helps see the ‘why’ behind consumer decisions, behavioral segmentation sheds light on ‘what’ the consumers do. Combining both strategies gives a holistic view of your audience, enabling you to create more effective, personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with your audience’s values and interests and align with their behavior and interaction patterns with your brand.

Key takeaways on the role of psychographic segmentation in marketing

Digital relationships between prospects/customers and brands can often feel disconnected and inhuman. More than ever, marketing teams need to implement sophisticated techniques like psychographic segmentation in their advertising efforts—because the better you know a person, the more personal value proposition you can offer.

Well-conducted psychographic segmentation serves as a base for personalized brand messaging tailored to each segment, which improves customer engagement, attracts more leads, and drives sales with higher revenues.

If you’re ready to launch effective personalized marketing and power your campaigns, sign up for a 14-day free trial with Instapage today and streamline your business!

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People in different locations display distinct characteristics and have unique wants and needs. This is why marketers use geographic segmentation to determine market positioning and product sales.

What is geographic segmentation, and how can you use it in your marketing strategy?
Let’s find out.

What is geographic segmentation?

Geographic segmentation is a powerful strategy that allows marketers to effectively cater to the unique needs of customers in specific locations. This segmentation technique involves dividing the target market based on geographic units, such as countries, states, cities, and more. However, it goes beyond mere geographical boundaries and takes into account various factors like climate, cultural preferences, population demographics, and other geographic attributes.

All of these factors can be important to consider when you’re designing for your micro-audiences or specific segments of your audience.

By employing geographic segmentation, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts precisely to the preferences and demands of each distinct area, ensuring a more personalized and relevant approach. This not only enhances customer satisfaction but also drives improved engagement and ultimately boosts the overall success of marketing campaigns.

For example, this came up after searching for “Solar Power.” Despite not searching for a specific location, the searcher’s location was discovered and they were served this ad:

And, this ad is connected to this landing page which continues to highlight how this service is specifically catered to those who live in Washington, DC

In addition to knowing the geographic segmentation definition, it’s even more important to know why it’s necessary for marketing.

Knowing your customers well allows you to offer a more personal value proposition that addresses specific topics and needs. This all begins with where they’re located, but it can grow from there. Let’s dive into a few different geographic segmentation types!

Difference types of geographic Segmentation

Incorporating various kinds of geographic data into marketing campaigns is important for several reasons. Leveraging this data allows businesses to gain deeper insights into their target audience, enhance customer engagement, and optimize marketing strategies for greater success.

Understanding the importance of geographic segmentation and its impact on consumer behavior enables businesses to stay competitive in an increasingly globalized and data-driven market. So, let’s dive into the major kinds of geographic segmentation and how you can leverage them in your various marketing campaigns.

Location

Product relevance and advertising effectiveness often depend on different geographic variables. Matching those products and advertising techniques to specific geographic locations means you’re reaching more relevant audiences and not wasting your time or budget.

This is especially true for large, multinational businesses because it helps them understand the location-based attributes of a specific target market, which enables them to better address the varying wants and needs of customers in these different regions.

Compared to other segmentation types, demographic segmentation, psychographic, or behavioral segmentation, geographic segmentation is relatively easy to implement.

It’s much easier to identify someone’s location than it is to determine the different elements of their psyche or their behavioral tendencies. While geography is objective, personality traits, interests, and behaviors are all much more subjective.

Remember, geographic segmentation is not based solely on units of geography, like location as mentioned above. You also need to consider other variables. Let’s take a look at those now.

Climate

As its name suggests, climate-based segmentation involves marketing products based on a particular region’s climate.

For example, brands that typically sell winter apparel (such as Burton or North Face) should market their products in areas that are cold all year round, because they’d probably fail to profit by marketing to warmer climates.

Swimwear brands, on the other hand, should target warmer climates— areas with beaches, resorts, etc. because that’s where they’ll generate the most business:

Products can also be considered more seasonal, instead of regional. For instance, a retailer in the northern United States that sells products for multiple climates and conditions (e.g., Target or Walmart) should advertise their winter gear in the fall and winter months, and their summer gear in the spring and summer months.

Cultural preferences

Many companies practice cultural-based geographic marketing, recognizing the significance of cultural nuances in shaping consumer preferences and behaviors. Brands that incorporate culture-based geographic segmentation into their marketing campaigns can tailor their messaging, imagery, and product offerings to align with the values and customs of specific regions, which is especially helpful for brands with a global presence.

Some examples of culture-based geographic marketing would be running campaigns during festivals, traditions, and local customs, which can inspire targeted promotions, fostering a sense of authenticity and connection with the local audience. By acknowledging and respecting cultural diversity, these companies not only strengthen their market position but also build trust and credibility within each unique community they serve.

Interestingly enough, fast food and restaurant businesses are prime examples of how companies can market to specific cultural preferences.

McDonald’s serves beer in German restaurants but not in the US. It reflects the difference in drinking preferences between the two cultures. They’ve also incorporated local foods on their menu in some locations—the McArabia in the Middle East, banana pie in Brazil, and the McVeggie, salsa bean burger, and other unique items in Poland:

Seafood is heavily marketed along the east and west coast in the US. since there is a constant supply of fresh seafood throughout the year.
In Asian countries, eating habits are highly dependent on religious ceremonies. So marketing strategies would correlate to that.

This is what Instacart does:

Population type and density:

People living in urban, suburban, and rural areas often have contrasting wants and needs, so to make advertising more personalized, geographic segmentation makes sense. An interesting example is a brand marketing bikes to different communities. Here’s how they might market their varying product line:
Urban areas: Lightweight bikes with skinny tires, for riding among traffic and commuting to work.
Suburban areas: Comfortable, long-range, race bikes.
Rural areas: Durable mountain bikes with thick tires for uneven terrains.

As you can see from the example above, each area has a population with varying biking needs and should be addressed in such a way.

Population type and density

People living in urban, suburban, and rural areas often have contrasting wants and needs, so to make advertising more personalized, geographic segmentation makes sense. An interesting example is a brand marketing bikes to different communities. Here’s how they might market their varying product line:

• Urban areas: Lightweight bikes with skinny tires, for riding among traffic and commuting to work.
• Suburban areas: Comfortable, long-range, race bikes.
• Rural areas: Durable mountain bikes with thick tires for uneven terrains.

As you can see from the example above, each area has a population with varying biking needs and should be addressed in such a way.

New territory

Geographic segmentation can be leveraged effectively if used when an organization launches a product or service in a new geographic location.

Shipt uses the following Facebook ad based on popular grocery stores in the user’s residential area:

Since grocery delivery services are still a new market, the company is likely looking for customer growth in many different areas. Embracing geographic segmentation during market expansion ensures that businesses can effectively connect with their target audience, ultimately paving the way for sustained success and growth in various territories.

Start incorporating geographic segmentation today

The addition of geographic segmentation tactics strengthens a marketing strategy. Whether you’re using it in coordination with the other types of segmentation or on its own. It is important to target products or services based on where your consumers reside. Since the better you know a customer, the more personalized offer you can provide, and the higher the chance your campaign will result in the desired outcome.

Geographic segmentation and personalization don’t stop with an ad click. Sign up for an Instapage 14-day free trial and see how our platform allows you access to a suite of tools to significantly improve your advertising ROAS and streamline your landing page-building process.

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As technology continues to transform the education landscape, it becomes increasingly vital for companies in the edtech industry to create landing pages that resonate with their target audience. As a hub for personalized learning resources, IXL’s landing page serves as an excellent example of how personalization can significantly impact student conversions and engagement.

To help you optimize your landing pages and achieve better results, we have distilled some key takeaways from IXL’s successful approach. By incorporating these strategies into your edtech landing pages, you can effectively increase conversions and create a more impactful user experience.

Three of our favorite elements of the IXL Landing Page (and why you should add these elements to your landing page!)

Maximize the Above the-Fold Section:

The top section of your landing page (visible content without the need to scroll down), plays a vital role in capturing users’ attention and engaging them right from the start. This can be achieved by presenting information clearly and concisely and avoiding overwhelming or confusing text.

Be sure to place important elements such as call-to-action (CTA) buttons, social proof, and customized geographic examples above the fold, so that visitors can easily comprehend the purpose and value of your offering without having to navigate further. This approach enhances the user experience, increases the likelihood of conversions, and maximizes the impact of your landing page.

Add Personalization Elements:
In the education and edtech sector, prioritizing the addition of personalized elements to landing pages is of utmost importance as it immediately builds trust with the visitor. This strategy allows you to connect with your target audience more individually, increasing engagement, relevance, and ultimately, conversions.

On IXL’s landing page, they go beyond generic messaging and incorporate a personalized element in the above-the-fold section. Specifically, they include the line “IXL helps DC schools excel,” which is tailored to a target geographic location. This personalized touch instantly resonates with individuals in that area by addressing their unique needs and context, creating a sense of familiarity and relevance.

Simplify Detailed Information:
An essential aspect to consider when designing a landing page is the ability to condense important information in a way that is scannable and easily digestible for visitors. This approach significantly improves the user experience, increases engagement, and enhances the likelihood of conversions.

IXL’s landing page, below the fold incorporates a fantastic infographic that effectively highlights what IXL offers to school administrators and provides a concise overview of their solution. By using visual elements, such as icons, charts, and graphs, the information is presented in a visually appealing and easily understandable format. This enables visitors to quickly grasp the key benefits without the need to read through long text blocks. Additionally, condensing content reduces scroll depth, making the page more accessible on mobile devices.

What we would experiment with:
At Instapage, we believe that constant testing & experimentation is necessary to achieve the best landing page conversion rates. With that in mind, here are some elements we would test on the IXL landing page:

• Test replacing the video with a static image of the product in the above-the-fold section to see if it has more impact.
• Experiment with different Headline variations that are more benefits-driven or personalized to different target audiences.

By incorporating the key takeaways we have distilled from IXL’s successful landing page strategy, you can optimize your edtech landing pages and achieve better results. Remember, personalization is not just a buzzword—it is a powerful tool that can significantly impact conversions and engagement.

As you embark on refining your landing pages, take the time to understand your audience’s unique needs, challenges, and aspirations. Focus on your above-the-fold section, incorporate personalization elements wherever possible, and, work on simplifying complex information. By doing so, you will position your offerings as indispensable solutions in the ever-evolving education landscape.

If you’d like to see the impact these tactics could have on your campaigns, sign up today for an Instapage 14-day trial and see the impact a powerful landing page platform can have on your campaigns. You can also watch the full IXL landing page review here.

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