When your company uses market segmentation in their SMS campaigns, it allows you to bring that same level of intimacy and connection into the tone of the texts you send to your audience members. 

In a noisy, always-on world, it’s important for brands to tailor the message and the channel based on audience segments. You should implement market segmentation so your brand can reach groups in the ways they prefer to be reached,  about the topics they care about most—resulting in stronger and more personal conversations.

Whether you’re a business or an individual using Community’s platform for SMS marketing, you’ll want to provide customized messages to which your members will want to respond. Community has the tools and features to help you easily segment your audience and engage at scale, in creative ways that fit your brand’s message and goals.. 

Let’s talk about how customer segments can benefit your SMS marketing strategy, how Community’s features can help you create meaningful campaigns, and some of the different types of segmentation you can use.

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Benefits of Using Segmentation in Your Audience

Why is segmenting your audience important? Experts say that customers are beginning to expect personalization in their interactions with companies more and more, with 71% of consumers reporting that they feel frustrated when an experience with a company is not personalized. 

Your audience members will appreciate you sending relevant SMS messages based on their buyer persona, encouraging brand loyalty. Segmenting also helps your business organize customers into groups categorized by the traits and characteristics that influence buying behaviors. 

A market segmentation strategy helps you understand your customers’ personality traits and helps you better provide for them via your products, services, or resources. Here are some more benefits to using audience segmentation. 

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You Improve Customer Retention and Satisfaction

Market segmentation is vital to connect with your members personally. Building real connections will lead to higher retention and satisfaction rates among your audience as they get to know your company on a deeper level. 

Audience members that are sent personalized messages based on their interests, lifestyle choices, and other characteristics will be encouraged to stay engaged with your company. Use the Insights Feature of Community to manage each segment’s data and see if they’re remaining satisfied with your notifications. 

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Efficiency for You and Your Customer

The use of segmentation helps your marketing efforts become efficient for both you and your message receivers. Easily target the Members who will find your text messages the most relevant so you can make better use of your time and theirs. 

Your audience will be happy to receive the content they want, and you’ll be able to connect with more people with less effort. 

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Easily Track ROI

Statistics show that data-driven campaigns can have five to eight times higher ROI than those not based on data. Understanding your different segments and targeting the right group will help you increase your ROI in your SMS marketing campaigns. 

Are you launching a new product line or hosting an event? Let your Members whose interests most align with the product or event be the first to know.

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Identify Which Segments are Your Sweet Spot

By analyzing the Insights and feedback from your different audience segments, you can see which groups are most interested in your company’s offerings. 

Knowing which segments enjoy your products and interact most frequently with your brand can help you find higher-quality leads when crafting your next marketing strategy. 

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Community Makes Segmentation Easy

The Community dashboard and Mobile App make it easy to apply Inbox filters and sort your audience into smaller segments called Communities. Whether you’re accessing your Community account through the web dashboard or mobile app, our user-friendly design helps you stay organized so you can plan out which segment of your audience would be interested in different types of content. 

At Community, we understand your customers are human, and they each have their personal preferences, needs, and desires. We’ve used that knowledge as the foundation of our platform’s design by incorporating the functionality of a CRM system with features that enable you to treat your members as individuals.

Here are some tips on ways to implement market segmentation into your audience based on the characteristics and lifestyles of each Member. 

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Four Types of Segmentation to Consider Using

There are dozens of ways to categorize your audience members. Here are four of the most popular types of market segmentation that your company can consider using. 

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1. Demographic Segmentation

Merriam-Webster defines the word demographic as the statistical characteristics of human populations often used to identify markets. 

To utilize demographic segmentation, sort your Members by the outward aspects of who they are. These aspects include categories such as age, gender identity, family size, occupation, education level, and location. Some demographic information is collected when a Member completes the Community registration form upon signing up to join your SMS audience. 

The Community Demographic Filters will segment your Members based on their answers to these questions in the registration process.

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2. Psychographic Segmentation

Psychographic segmentation refers to the internal psychographic traits of potential customers that affect the “why” behind buying behaviors. This includes characteristics like personality, beliefs, values, lifestyle choices, and hobbies. This sort of data is best collected through surveys or text polls. Assign Keywords to segment Members into their corresponding group automatically. 

For example, suppose you’re a food company looking to create a segmented group that consists of vegans. You could text out a message asking Members to reply with the keyword “Vegan” if they consider themselves to hold that characteristic. 

Community’s platform will group all responses containing that keyword into an audience segment so you can send them the types of vegan-specific messages they’d be interested in. 

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3. Geographic Segmentation

Segment your audience based on their geographic location. Community’s Location Filter gives you the option of sending text messages to groups based on their City, State, or Radius within a designated area. This feature is especially helpful for companies looking to promote live events to a local audience in local neighborhoods.

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4. Segment by Join Date

The Join Date Filter in the Community platform will let you filter your customer base by the specific date they joined your audience. This is a great way to engage with people who signed up after a certain event, holiday sale, or other promotion that your company hosted.

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Other Ways to Implement Segmentation

By sending out convenient text polls, you can segment your audience in various other ways using Community’s Keywords function. Assign Keywords for segmented Communities within your audience and then ask your Members to reply using the ones they identify with most. Here are a few examples.

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Segment Based on Life Stage

The life stage that a Member is currently in can greatly influence the products they’re interested in, the topics of conversation they find stimulating, and their overall goal of communicating with your business. 

Sort your audience by various life stages such as whether they have children or are pregnant, if they’re married, dating, or single, if they are retired or working, and other seasons of life that can impact their interests. 

Assign relevant Keywords to create segments in your audience and then ask your Members to text them in. Keywords like Pregnant, Mom, or Retired are a few examples. 

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Generational Segmentation

Sorting your audience by the generation they were born into can help craft relevant content with the right tone. The age that a Member is in influences the language or slang they like to see in messages. 

Using this information to structure the wording of your texts can help Members feel seen, thereby increasing their desire to engage and connect with your company. Have Members text in Keywords you designate for each generation—you can even set these Keywords to be emojis.

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Interaction-Based Segmentation

Create Communities in your audience based on the level of interaction your Members give your texts. You can use the Insights Feature to see how often members respond, click, and open your messages. 

Your business might find it useful to segment the Members that interact less often into their group so you can create a campaign to reach them specifically and encourage them to increase engagement.  

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How to Engage with Different Segments

Once you have determined your audience’s lifestyle, interests, and characteristics, you can use this data to engage with them in meaningful and relevant conversations. Send your segments the personalized content and text responses that they’ll most relate to. 

If your company offers multiple products, you can send information on the ones each segment would most likely want to purchase. Segmentation can even be helpful when determining the time of day you send texts (for example, teachers or students may be more easily reached in the afternoons than in the mornings).

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Summary on Segmentation Tips

You'll better understand your audience through the market segmentation process. You can hold meaningful conversations and see better ROI when implementing segmentation into your SMS marketing. Send your audience Members information relevant to their demographic, life stage, and interests. Use the Insights Feature of Community to track the success of your text message variables and advertisements within each target market segment so you can keep customers engaged and intrigued by your brand’s offerings. 

Community makes it easy to organize your audience and engage with each segment in the best way so you can build brand loyalty and increase customer satisfaction. 

Sources:

50 Stats Showing The Power Of Personalization | Forbes.com 

50+ Digital Marketing Statistics You Should Know for 2021 | Marketingevolution.com 

Demographic | Definition of Demographic by Merriam-Webster | Merriam-webster.com

Photo by Bagus Hernawan on Unsplash