By Eric Willis, Email Marketing Specialist, Atompark

Let’s face it. In today’s digital day and age, your competitor’s solutions are one click away from your buyers. Sure, there’s the fool-proof digital marketing strategies at your side. You are free to leverage the benefits of Big Data to boost your competitive game.

With knowledge being power, data-driven marketing sounds like a foolproof plan doesn’t it?

It does…to an extent.

Despite the advanced level of insights and analytics we are gathering nowadays, understanding the needs and desires of a larger audience is still a challenge. Narrowing an audience down even further is – without a doubt – a Herculean feat.

To top things off, every standard trick from the segmentation book has lost its mojo. Basic personalization fails to engage consumers. A mere 8% say they are encouraged to interact with a retailer that used their name in a marketing message. Even fewer are likely to respond positively to a birthday deal email.

Still, when done correctly, segmentation brings in 77% of email marketing ROI. Catering a message to a narrow audience results in a 10% increase in open rates. If you were to verify email addresses and then segment an audience, you would generate double the amount of the sales pipeline.

This is one of the reasons why 62% of marketers put audience segmentation on top of their campaign management priority list.

The Pros and Cons of Traditional Audience Segmentation

With the right tools, everything from age, gender, degree, location, income and behavioral patterns  are at your fingertips, making segmentation sound particularly simple…at least on paper.

In reality, every method of segmentation has both pros and cons which you, as a dealer, have to consider. For example, demographic segmentation is much simpler than any of its counterparts. Targeting is straightforward; a group of married men between the ages of 25 and 50 is always just that – a group of men who share the same year of birth and marital status.

On the downside, demographics are extremely broad. They fail to represent the needs and desires of a particular group of people. A one-trick pony message is particularly harmful to your campaigns, as it lacks the one thing most audiences strive for – personalization.

Another example is attitudinal segmentation, which focuses on segmenting your client base into certain groups based on their emotion, attitude, and reactions towards a specific topic.

Working with a segment of an audience based on their attitude makes your message more appealing as you essentially support the same causes as they do. It’s also a great tool to see what makes people tick and gives greater detail into what separates some groups from others.

Still, despite its effectiveness, businesses rarely use attitudinal segmentation. For one, pulling it off is insanely expensive. You’ll need specialized equipment, a group of certified psychologists, and a dedicated research facility.

Then there is behavioral segmentation – a fine blend of the previous practices in terms of insights and availability. This method groups your audience based on their previous purchasing decisions, social media likes, website clicks, etc.

On one hand, you’ll have an audience that’s willing to purchase similar cars and you’ll be able to market your vehicles when and where your audience is most open to hearing from you.

On the other hand, you’ll know the “what” without the “why”. You know that there was a woman purchasing a Shelby GT, but is it her real preference? Maybe she bought it for her husband. What if she got the car for herself and regrets the decision today due to varying factors? More importantly, will marketing a similar vehicle to her do you any good?

Then, there’s the Big Data factor. It’s painstakingly easy to gather large volumes of it. Analyzing what you have gathered is the digital equivalent of searching for a needle in a haystack.

Combine and Conquer

Segmentation, by its nature, is the art of dividing and conquering. However, this only applies to your audience. As for the tools in your toolbox, feel free to use all of them at once.

A combination of demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral segmentation will help you reap far better rewards than using one practice at a time.

Firstly, narrow your marketing efforts to a particular area of interest – your city or the neighborhood. Then narrow your search criteria with behavioral insights to get a better picture of the demographics.

In simpler words, find the answer to “why” before crafting a masterpiece campaign.

Why Do Your Clients Need a Car in the First Place?

• For getting around. This segment of your audience thinks of cars as tools and nothing more. They are not affected by the status or the symbolism of more expensive models in the lineup, but they may be willing to pay extra for several quality-of-life improvements like either a powerful engine or reduced consumption of gas. These people are interested in the biggest bang for their buck but are unlikely to spend a lot of their hard-earned dollars.
• For making a point. This segment is composed of people who have significant achievements and are now desperate to let everyone know about their successes. Luxury and status of the vehicle are their top priorities. Everything else is irrelevant.
• For driving the kids to school. People with families tend to invest in larger vehicles. They are seeking to drive with their family members in comfort. As such, they are interested in the practicality of the model as well as its price-to-quality ratio.
• For exploring. This category is composed of off-road lovers and travel enthusiasts. They are typically aware of all the latest trends and advancements in off-road vehicles. They are not looking for a newsletter and/or advertisement of an automobile’s stellar performance capabilities. Off-roaders already have a particular model on their wish list. The only thing slowing them down is the price tag. Try offering them the deal of a lifetime and you’ll get an enthusiastic returning customer singing you praise in their own informational bubble.

These are merely examples of several car-buying audiences. Explore more, enhance the insights with geographic segmentation, add a pinch of behavioral factors, and you’ll segment your base of potential leads into several sets of easily convertible buyers.

About the Author

Eric is a digital marketing specialist at Axonim.com who is always looking for ways to improve his skills. He’s always traveling when he’s not at the computer. Eric likes to share his thoughts and believes that his articles will help a great number of people. Feel free to contact him on Twitter!