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The Ultimate Guide to Segmenting Your SMS Marketing List

SMS Marketing List

In order to make the most out of your SMS marketing campaigns, you need to know how to segment your database of customers and prospects. No customer wants to get irrelevant messages on their phone, no matter how text-happy they are. Eventually, your audience will opt-out of your list if you send them too many messages that don’t interest them.

Segmenting your customer SMS marketing list will allow you to customize your messages for each group of people, giving them relevant messages each time you send out a campaign. For getting the most out of your SMS marketing, you can create specialized content for each group of customers tailored just for them.

Four Steps for Maximizing Your Customer List

1. Deciding How to Segment Your SMS Marketing List

Before you get started, you need to make some decisions. How do you want to divide your customer list into subgroups? Your selections will depend on how your business is run, what types of products or services you offer and why customers buy them. While you can divide the list by generic categories such as age, gender or location, you will have more success with specialized categories such as purchasing history. Using text keywords specific to your target audience, send out marketing messages that are relevant to each subgroup.

Segmentation requires information collected from your list members. You will be limited by the knowledge you have about each customer. However, you can design campaigns to collect additional information through contests, giveaways or free downloads. Start by segmenting the list with information you already have, then as you add information you can regroup your list. You also have the option of collecting more data from your customers before you start segmentation.

Common segmentation methods include the following:

Demographics

Demographics affect people’s behavior in several ways. Behavior can be affected by age, gender, education level and more. You can tailor your lists to include factors in combination or separately. If you are selling a demographic-specific product, demographics will be your highest predictor of customer behavior. However, many products are not affected by demographics. For instance, team sports are generally supported by their local fans regardless of demographics.

Geography

Location is another large factor in buying behavior. Consumers purchase from stores nearby, items that cost less in their regional area, locally made products and support local teams. With SMS marketing targeting location, time zones can be an issue that you need to include in your message scheduling strategy.

Sales History

Tracking customer purchase history, company sales history by category and other buying behaviors are excellent ways to segment your marketing list. If you are a tech company, tracking customers who own older equipment offers opportunities to upgrade them to newer models.

Premiere Clients and Loyalty Programs

Creating a subgroup for your long-term repeat customers in order to provide the VIP treatment they deserve will help build growth and retain your customers. SMS messages can be designed to delight and engage these customers, keeping them interested in what you have to offer.

2. Creating Buyer Personas

Creating specific buyer personas for each of your subgroups is a great way to stay on track with relevant and appropriate messages for each group. Before you approve a message or campaign, you can think about the persona and whether they would appreciate this type of information. Buyer personas help you dig into the distinct personality of each segment to determine how they behave. Use these personas to role-play how each persona will behave when they receive your messages.

3. Sync SMS Campaigns with Segments

Optimize each SMS marketing campaign with your buyer personas. You want to ensure that each group is getting the right messages for them; otherwise all of the previously mentioned work is a waste of time. The goal is to convert your messages into sales. Your ROI will increase exponentially if you sync messages with the personality and needs of each group.

Part of this strategy is to build trust with your prospects and customers. New prospects should be treated differently than loyal long-term customers. For each group, different incentives will invite them to buy from you.

4. Track, Analyze and Refine

Once your plan is in place, don’t just walk away. Track each campaign and its success to tweak it further and refine your groups. You may find that some of your divisions do not work for your campaigns, and you need to change group parameters. Segmentation is an on-going process that needs to be analyzed and updated on a continual basis.

In Conclusion

You will find that taking the time to segment your SMS marketing list is well worth your time. Your messages will go to the right people returning a maximized SMS marketing ROI. Offering your customers useful and relevant messages and information will result in more sales revenue and higher profits for your company.