Are you intimate with your prospects?
Once you’ve segmented your data, scrubbed it and grouped your prospects in your database, your work is not even close to being done. The next step is to personalize your messages to add relevance and engagement.
You never want to make your prospect work to figure out how to do business with you.
How are you optimizing your landing pages? Have you ever gone to a website that featured something you were ready to download or even buy only to have to search around for their contact us page or order form or whatever random page you thought would help? Then when you finally found that page, they wanted to collect field after field of information from you just to send you their brochure? That kind of frustration can end the relationship with your prospects before it starts; however, if your landing pages are customized and have the appropriate number of fields, you will greatly increase the odds that a prospect will complete the form and begin engaging with you.
Your customers and prospects are as individually different as the colors in a rainbow. If you understand how to target and communicate to them based on those differences, your response rates will be just as beautiful. If you try to mix your messages for the masses, the colors will run together and you’ll have a less-than-beautiful muddy mess.
Last week I fired off a post suggestion that we should all be looking at data segmentation in our lists to improve response rates. I had some great feedback on the post from readers wanting more detail, including this email from a friend:
I completely agree that segmentation will improve response rates. What do you suggest we look at as segments?
So here are some thoughts to get you going.
I’m surprised how many companies take their databases for granted.
They did a good job at one point collecting leads from purchased lists, trade show badge swipes, web hits and referrals. But then the data starts to suffer from a lack of attention, no new investment of resources or energy and just some poor data management. A lot of companies never clean the data and most companies just copy the data from a hodge podge of lists randomly into their CRM system or their email marketing program.
But a lot of the literature shows that companies who invest time and money into deduping their lists and segmenting their prospects into groups like industry verticals, job titles, job functions (which are often different than titles), associations and the like see much better response rates.