Not all customers are created equal. Every business has different customer segments -- whether they've consciously identified them or not -- and the customers in these segments are of different value. Value may be measured in size of sale, propensity for repeat purchases, profitability in servicing them, length of sales cycle, potential for inspiring sales from other customers, etc.
Customers also see themselves in "segments", although they may not use that term. They have particular needs, challenges, and concerns that they feel distinguish them from other customers. These may be a function of their industry, location, and organization size and culture, but they can much more specific and unique to the particular space in which you're selling.
These two types of segmentations overlap, and there is often high correlation between the most valuable segments to the business and distinctly identifiable segments for the customers.
Given this, both you and your customers want you to correctly identify their segment. The only difference is that the customer is rarely willing to work very hard to explicitly reveal their segment. By default, they see the world through their segment-focused glasses, and either you shine in that view or your don't.
In the normal course of doing business over time, you are able to more accurately identify to which segments which customers belong. As this accuracy increases, you are able to better market your offerings to them, which strengthens the relationship, further enhancing your segmentation of them, and so on. This is a virtuous cycle, and the sooner you can get it started, the better.
The point of this blog is to beseech you to use your post-click marketing as an opportunity to establish "early segmentation". Before a sales relationship is begun, even before the prospect becomes a qualified lead, you can leverage well-designed landing paths to branch respondents according to the segments that are most relevant to them -- and most important to you. This doesn't ask too much of the respondent, especially if you payoff the segmentation choice in ways that are immediately valuable to them (e.g., targeted content, specific fulfillments, special offers).
This technique of offering several clickable choices that gently funnel a respondent down a segment-specific path is known as "directed behavioral segmentation".
By determining a respondent's segment within the first few clicks -- at least on one or two dimensions that are most relevant to the particular campaign to which they're responding -- you significantly increase the odds of converting them because you are able to match your messaging to "pop" through their segment-focused lenses.
As a bonus, you gain the benefit of rapid feedback about which segments of respondents are being pulled in by your different advertising and e-mail marketing vehicles. You can then quickly make adjustments in your placements to optimize the type of respondents you want to pull at different cost thresholds.
-Scott Brinker
