How to create a contact management and segmentation strategy

In email marketing, the contact management and segmentation strategy is essential to get the maximum benefit from the promotion of a company's products and services. A proper organisation of contacts guarantees the success of the campaign. This is achieved by having a database managed and organised according to the stage of the sales funnel in which the users are. In this way, the appropriate content is delivered in each context to attract customers. Establishing a relationship with the right contacts serves to encourage interaction with the brand.

According to data provided by HubSpot, software for contact management and segmentation, campaigns that are based on segments decrease their desertion rate and increase their clicks. The contact management system provides greater engagement with customers and unifies information in one place. This must be accessible and understandable for digital marketers. It also allows tracking users by identifying their weaknesses, interests and needs. On the other hand, segmentation offers a range of possibilities by dividing the audience according to different criteria to achieve efficient communication. Incorporating both elements into the marketing strategy improves the results of future actions.

Advantages of contact management and segmentation

• Saving resources: Segmenting contacts allows you to work in a more organised environment, saving time and external tools.
• Automation: A CRM that performs contact management actions acts as a virtual assistant. These systems can automate their actions to speed up the sales process.
• Increased tracking: Proper contact management allows you to discover sales opportunities, i.e. focus marketing actions on those customers who interact positively with the brand.
• Increased profits: Segmentation involves working on the basis of certain criteria, which, if applied to the marketing strategy, will translate into increased sales and profits for the business.
• Accuracy: By organising customers by interest groups, emails can be targeted more precisely. Having detailed information about users allows you to send the right email to the right person at the right time.
• Optimisation: Contact management and segmentation improves brand image by increasing subscriber trust, which in turn positions the company in a good position in the face of competition. Knowing the interactions of customers with the brand also serves to encourage positive actions and improve results.

why is it necessary to segment contacts in digital marketing?

In Inbound Marketing, contacts are key to any action. Therefore, you should focus on offering them the most value to grow your business. Contact management is one of the fundamentals of digital marketing. It can be done with software such as HubSpot Marketing Hub. It should be combined with contact segmentation to have a broader picture of each user and offer the best service. By dividing the message into groups, it can be adapted to achieve a greater impact.

what contact data is used to segment contacts?

There are different types of segmentation based on the criteria by which users are grouped. These are the main ones:

• Demographics: This is the most common segmentation, allowing you to group people by location, gender or age. Other variants include the user's monthly income and nationality.
• Behavioural: Groups based on actions taken or not taken by users, such as website interactions, purchase history or open and click-through rates.
• Psychographic: This is a more detailed grouping, revealing the interests, lifestyle or values of the brand's customers.
• Geographic factors: This segmentation is fundamental in businesses with different locations, dividing subscribers by country, region, city, language or time zone, among others.

How to create a contact management and segmentation strategy in 5 steps

Every contact management and segmentation strategy must follow a series of steps to achieve a positive impact on users:

1. Define the objectives of your email marketing campaign

The first step is to find out what results I want to achieve with the campaign, i.e. what is the output I want to receive. Based on these KPIs, you decide what marketing actions to perform and who to target. For example, if I want to increase loyalty, I will focus on sending emails to existing and active customers with the brand. To do this, I will need contact management and segmentation tools.

2. Organising the database

In digital marketing, a contact is any person or entity with whom the company communicates. Contact information should be stored in a database. This should be cleaned periodically by eliminating contacts that are of no interest to the brand. In turn, it should be optimised and organised according to the needs of the business. Zendesk, Salesforce or HubSpot offer tools to organise databases.

3. Know your buyer persona

To carry out a correct strategy, it is essential to know your buyer persona. Your information must be updated and revised infrequently. This is due to the emergence of new commercial profiles that must be taken into account to ensure sales. The habits and attitudes of the buyer persona evolve over time as digital environments are constantly changing.

4. Gathering subscriber information

The database is built from information gathered from landing pages, surveys, forms, chatbots or social networks. This data will be necessary to segment the groups.

5. Define segments

Depending on the stage of the customer lifecycle, users will be grouped into different segments. These groups will be made more precise by dividing subscribers based on different characteristics.

Methodologies for segmenting

Segmentation of the database is done by following different criteria or by looking at the stage of the user's sales funnel. At the same time, segments can be divided into three methodologies. These are also known as types of scoring:

• Predictive Scoring: Uses algorithms to make automatic predictions about how likely a contact is to perform a marketing action.
• Scoring by points: This is the most common and is a scoring system that assigns points to users each time they interact with the brand, so that those who perform the most marketing actions remain in first place.
• Dynamic lists: This is an automated system that includes and excludes users from the lists according to their behaviour with the brand.