What are the benefits and challenges of using behavioral segmentation?

I employed the effective principles and techniques of behavioral marketing segmentation on Madison Avenue to grow audience and share-of-market (SOM) for leading national CPG and test market consumer brands. Television commercial copy was research-based and Nielsen overnight tested against each brand's strategy and value proposition for communication effectiveness. Client and agency then managed campaigns to desired data-driven outcomes of message frequency for competitive SOV (share-of-voice), positive levels of word-of-mouth (WOM), and SOM maintenance and growth vs. category competitors.

I helped leading pharma organizations in enhancing their traditional segmentation approach by applying elements of behavioral segmentation. This enabled pharmacos to hold more personalized engagement interactions with healthcare professionals and share with them tailored content that spoke directly to their motivations & behavioral drivers.

For more effective and efficient marketing add a layer of psychology and business building intel. Analyze where in the cycle registrants register/purchase (early, middle, late) and focus messaging to these segments. This worked for me as marketing director at Reed Exhibitions and as a consultant to a leading high-tech Silicon Valley electronics society where their event portfolio awareness, reg, and sales grew 6 years in a row, with a 25% increase in attendance and record sales in 2019. During lockdowns I wrote the Convention Marketer Handbook for the 2020-Decade detailing my roadmap for data-driven rules-based storytelling, network effects, and sustained growth. To get a copy of the Table-of-Contents email me at [email protected].

When scaling segmentation across counties and / or products, it is critical to define your data requirements early in the process. What are the key data that you need to collect in order to define your segments and create "typical" customer personas? Data governance and taxonomy will allow you to get consistent data flowing across territories and gain meaningful insights to act on them. When launching a new product, this will most likely require to hold primary market research to get a better understanding of your customers and their behavioral aspect. With time and more data flowing in, segmentation insights will become more accurate, enabling to dive deeper into "micro-segments".

Event marketers have a finite number of weeks to market their events and achieve desired outcomes. Key to my marketing success over nearly 100 events across sectors was to generate registration momentum early and maintain it week-over-week to generate powerful network effects that fueled increased reg and attendance. To effectively mange to this outcome I tracked 3 key data points in near-realtime for every email (opens, CTRs, links to registration page) measured weekly against industry norms. Doing so quickly identified ineffective communications allowing me to react quickly and make critical mid-course corrections to messages and maintain registration momentum. Cost of near-realtime data should be zero. This will please event organizers.

The beauty of determining the registration behavioral segmentation of your event's prospect base is you will have created a marketing model that is valid, reliable, projectable and repeatable at no additional expense in Year 2. Doing so will free up valuable time for developing more effective communications strategy and relevant messaging.

Using event registration behavioral segmentation with near-realtime tracking of email performance with analysis will allow you to actively manage your event email campaigns to desired outcomes every week to enhance overall results. I detail this technique and all my event marketing principles in the definitive Convention Marketer Handbook for the 2020-Decade. Interested event marketers can request a copy of the handbook's Table-of-Contents at [email protected] Subject line Event Marketing Handbook.