How to optimise your personalisation efforts with segmentation

Most companies are exploring personalisation as a marketing strategy, but many are finding it difficult fitting it into the marketing mix.  

Here is one interesting way to do it.

Econsultancy recently held roundtable discussions in Jakarta, Indonesia about The Rise of Customer Experience & Customer Journey, sponsored by IBM.  

Client-side marketers brought experiences from many different companies and industries and they openly discussed their success stories and challenges with the group.

One of the three tables discussed personalisation and arrived at an interesting way in which marketers can implement their customer experience strategy.

Why personalisation?

At the table, participants first discussed why companies were so interested in personalisation.

They determined that one of the marketer's most important roles was to engage with customers through the whole customer lifecycle.  

With so many communication channels available, though, it is hard for companies to grab and keep their customers' attention.

Attendees agreed that by personalising communications, marketers were far more likely to be able to maintain a high level of engagements, so personalisation was a very useful strategy for marketers.

Barriers to personalisation

But in order to deploy a new strategy, marketers need to convince management of its value. 

One participant noted that it was particularly difficult to do this with personalisation as implementing it is resource-intensive and expensive.

First off, personalisation requires creating a single view of the customer which means tackling the data silos in place at most organisations.

Next, marketers had to do some channel automation so that the personalisation initiative could scale to their whole customer base.

And finally, there is a non-trivial amount of data cleaning and testing required so that your efforts to greet your customer using their name does not fail spectacularly.

Participants agreed that even simple email personalisation can be difficult to implement with a large customer base.

How to overcome barriers

One marketer described, in detail, their approach.

First off, he suggested, marketers need to look at their customers in three segments which typically fall into a normal distribution, or bell-curve.  

The horizontal access is the size of the customers typical order and the vertical is the total revenue you get from the customer.

This allows you to segment your customers into three 'value areas' so that you can use the best strategy for that particular group.

Small customers: Content

Customers who only buy a small amount occasionally will on the left. Because their orders are small and infrequent, the revenue gained from them will also be small.

Because of this, it is not worthwhile to spend extraordinary effort on marketing to them.

Instead, as one participant noted, use a broad content strategy to keep them aware of the company and encourage them to buy more frequently.

Bread-and-butter customers: Automation

Customers who makes significant purchases regularly will be in the middle. This is the largest group of customers and the strategy is to get them to stay where they are.

Participants argued that offering discounts, offers, and special treatment were all useful ways to keep a company's mass market buying more.

Another suggested that marketing automation including recommendation emails based on past purchases are good strategies for this group.

Elite customers: Personalisation

Finally, on the right you have customers who have large orders, but only buy occasionally. 

Because they are not frequent buyers, the total revenue gained from them is not nearly as much as you get from bread-and-butter customers.

When they do make purchases, though, they 'move the needle' on revenue and profit, typically.

Participants noted that this is the group which should be the focus of personalisation initiatives.

Because one buyer's individual contribution makes a difference to the the top-line performance of your marketing, it is worth tackling the barriers to deliver a personal service to them.

Initiatives can be as simple as including their name and other personal details on all communications and as extensive as offering a concierge service with a unique contact number and named representative.

The purpose of personalisation for this group is to make the customer feel special, so extensive effort will need to be made to do so.

The ROI of such strategies, one participant noted, must still be measured and considered, however.

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17 Keys To Success In Social Media PPC

If you haven't jumped on the social PPC bandwagon yet, it's time you gave it some serious thought. While social PPC won't replace Google AdWords any time soon, it's become an effective source of incremental leads and sales for savvy businesses.

What follows are 17 keys to running successful social PPC campaigns. The first four apply to all social PPC, then we'll talk about keys to success for each major social PPC engine.

Social PPC Keys to Success

1. Identify Your Target Audience

In search, the target audience is "anyone who searches using my keywords." In social, much more thought must be put into the people and personas you'd like to reach. Are they consumers? Business owners? Teenagers? What do they like to do? Where do they work, shop, play?

Defining your audience is critical to success in social PPC.

2. Identify the Marketing Challenge That Paid Social Solves

Think about why you want to use paid social in the first place. Are you active organically in social media, but need a larger or more engaged audience? Are you struggling to reach a B2B audience because consumers also search on your keywords? Do you need awareness of your product, service, or company?

All of these can be great reasons to use paid social – the key is to think about what problem social PPC will solve for you.

3. Define Your Paid Social Strategy and Objectives

If you've done the first two steps, this will be easy.

If your audience is B2B decision makers, and your objective is lead generation, then you'll want to define your strategy and objectives as such. If your goal is audience growth, build that in to your strategy.

Mapping strategy out ahead of time sets you up for good results.

4. Segment Your Audience Based on How You'll be Posting

This is an overlooked and yet important part of social PPC setup.

It isn't unusual for advertisers to have multiple segments within their target audience. You might have different types of businesses that you want to reach, or you may be targeting both men and women, for example.

Look at your current social posts to see what audience they're intended to reach – and then set up your social PPC campaigns accordingly.

LinkedIn Keys to Success

5. Carefully Identify Your Target Companies and Job Levels

LinkedIn's targeting options are great for targeting individuals at specific companies and job levels; it's especially effective for B2B. But think carefully about how you want to target.

Do you want narrow targeting with specific job titles and companies, or do you want to cast a wider net and focus on categories rather than specifics?

Be especially careful about seniority targeting. If you need to reach decision-makers, you'll probably want to exclude entry level people. But be aware that the higher level you target, the higher your minimum CPC will be.

6. Be Ready to Pay $5+ Per Click

Speaking of minimum CPCs, LinkedIn's CPCs run much higher than other social PPC channels. The results are often worth it, but be prepared to pay $5 or more per click and optimize accordingly.

7. Use Sponsored Updates if Possible

LinkedIn Ads have two types of campaigns: sponsored ads and sponsored updates. In my experience, sponsored updates perform much better than sponsored ads. Sponsored updates show in a user's news feed, giving you premium placement.

If you're actively posting updates to LinkedIn, use sponsored updates whenever possible.

8. Segment Your Audience Based on How You'll be Posting

Think about how you'll be posting, and segment your audience accordingly. The LinkedIn user interface isn't very user-friendly, so it's more efficient to set up segmented campaigns at the outset.

Twitter Keys to Success

9. Carefully Identify Your Target Accounts or Keywords

Twitter Ads often feel familiar to those used to Google AdWords and Bing Ads, because you cantarget using keywords. You can also target individual user accounts. It's important to decide which option makes sense for you.

If you want to reach consumers, for example, make sure the keywords or accounts you target are focused on consumer content.

10. Use Images and Hashtags With Caution

It's important to note that Twitter Ads are a pay-per-engagement, not pay-per-click, program. You pay for anything that can be clicked (links, @ handles, hashtags, and images), as well as for each reply, follow, and retweet.

Twitter Ads are great for driving engagement and leads, but be aware that you'll pay for much more than just clicks to your website.

11. Test Lead Generation Cards

Twitter lead generation cardsenable advertisers to create a virtual "card" that attaches to a tweet. Users can take an action with one click, without leaving Twitter. The options for lead gen cards are nearly endless, and in my experience they perform very well.

12. Segment Your Audience Based on How You'll be Posting

You'll notice that segmentation is a theme here, because it's important. The Twitter Ads interface isn't much better than LinkedIn's, so it's easiest to think about targeting up front.

Facebook Keys to Success

13. Have at Least 1,000 Users in Your Custom Audience

Much has been said about Facebook custom audiences. They're a powerful way to reach specific users on Facebook.

Having a big enough audience is key to a successful campaign, though. We recently ran a test with about 150 users in a custom audience, and we got very few impressions and clicks. Hitting the minimum number of users is really important.

14. Use Sponsored Posts in Newsfeed When Possible

Similar to LinkedIn, Facebook offers both right-rail and sponsored post ads. Facebook has become so large that I'm not sure anyone looks at the right rail ads any more – and they don't even show at all on most mobile devices. Make the most of your advertising efforts by using sponsored posts whenever possible.

15. Relentlessly Test Images

It's common advice for Facebook ads, and with good reason. The image is what really attracts the attention to your ad – the actual copy is almost irrelevant if you have a good image.

Aggressively test images to learn which ones work best.

16. Use Lookalike Segments

An added bonus of using custom audiences is the ability to build lookalike audiences. A lookalike audience is a larger audience that Facebook builds of users similar to your custom audience. You can further customize the lookalike audience with exclusions.

If you aren't getting the results you expected from custom audiences, try using a lookalike audience.

17. Use Custom Audiences to Build Lookalike Segments

I've heard from a number of people that they create custom audiences not for ad targeting, but for the sole purpose of creating lookalike audiences. This is a creative way to have both specific and broad reach.

Conclusion

Social PPC is becoming an important part of the online marketing toolbox. Use these tips the next time you launch a paid social campaign.

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