Email Marketing Tip – Audience Segments May Change

Some level of audience segmentation is a vital part of most successful marketing strategies. As with virtually every aspect of your marketing strategy, your audience segments and targeting will evolve over time. Markets change, your existing audience gets older and their needs adjust, and new and younger audience members may have different perspectives than those who are already in your database. Most of these changes are gradual, allowing marketers to systematically adjust over time. However, there are instances where an event forces a sudden shift in your audience’s behavior, interests, and needs. We are in the midst of one of those sudden alterations right now, with the impacts of the pandemic. This means that now is the time to evaluate your audience segmentation (along with many other aspects of your marketing strategy) and ensure you are addressing any required changes quickly. Here are a few aspects of your audience targeting and associated messaging strategies that you may want to review.

Geography

If you segment your list by geography (country, state, city, etc.), you may want to look at how you have defined each segment and then your messaging strategy to each geographic area. Certain countries, states, and even metro-areas are being impacted in different ways by the current crisis. You may want to consider this closely before sending out your next geographically segmented campaign.

Buying Power

You may have different audience target groups based on demographic data like household income. With the sudden changes to many people’s employment situation (short or long-term), and even just a general sense of uncertainty around the economy, people’s buying behavior may be significantly different right now.  While marketers expect this data to fluctuate over time, it is likely rare to have a significant percentage of your list impacted all at once. 

Interests & Past Buying Behavior

Your audience’s interests, often demonstrated by past buying behavior, are typically a very effective element in your targeting and messaging strategies. However, some of those interests may be on hold or made a much lower priority in the current environment. Just consider the shift in daily priorities for parents with several school-age children, who are now suddenly in home-schooling situations. It’s likely that the messaging and offers that will be of interest to them now are significantly different than just 2 months ago.

These are just a few examples of ways you may want to revisit your audience segmentation strategies in the days and weeks ahead.