Multi-Dimensional Marketing Database Segmentation Engine – Beyond the Smart Lists
- marqeu
- Oct 12, 2024
- 6 min read
Marketing Analytics is a term that has become synonymous with the success of all modern marketing organizations and database segmentation engine is the key part of marketing analytics.
The core competency that differentiates the winning organizations is their ability to objectively evaluate the investments that drive the highest engagement and pipeline growth.
Whenever the term marketing analytics is mentioned, the first thought and rightly so is in relation to the “performance measurement” aspect of marketing – the means through which marketing teams are able to demonstrate the impact they are making on the pipeline and revenue growth. However, there is another critical aspect of marketing analytics and it is related to marketing database management.
Multi-Dimensional Marketing Database Segmentation Engine is a core capability in Marketing Analytics that powers the demand generation campaigns to create contextual customer experiences, which influences the buying decisions and accelerates pipeline.
This customer experience is the key factor that differentiates the high performing and growth-focused marketing organizations. On a day to day basis, marketing teams rely on data base management for so called “list building” efforts for their campaigns. When it comes to segmentation, most of the marketing teams pretty much rely on the lists (or smart lists) that are built inside the marketing automation platforms.
As marketing analytics capabilities are maturing across the organizations, questions are being asked to go beyond just using the marketing engagement and demographics data for segmentations.
Modern marketing teams are leveraging the data across the MarTech platforms to provide a 360-degree view of the customer/prospects and enable contextual segmentation for campaigns. This is where the
concept of “Multi-Dimensional Contextual Segmentation Engine” comes into play where capabilities are built to continuously feed data from the core business operations platforms (including finance, sales and marketing) into one central data warehouse.
Having all the relevant data in one place enables marketing analysts to cross-hatch the data from different sources across different stages of the buyer’s journey and build contextual segmentations and micro-segmentations per the needs of the campaigns both for digital and offline campaigns. Leveraging our marketing analytics services, we provide marketing teams with an intuitive visual interface (built using modern BI tools like Tableau, Looker, PowerBI, DOMO) to build multiple micro-segments on the fly that are tailored to the strategy and call-to-action of their campaigns.
This ability to go beyond marketing automation platforms to build information rich and contextual segments on the fly was beyond imagination for our customers before we implemented the contextual segmentation engines at their organizations.
We are helping all our customers think beyond the usual demographics data (like role, job level, location, etc.) when it comes to building segments for their campaigns and leveraging historic campaign engagement, pipeline history, web engagement, and most importantly, the intent data that signals buying behavior. There are a lot of hidden insights that are captured by marketing tech, CRM, and sales engagement platforms that could be used in building micro-segments. With the contextual segmentation engine, we have enabled our customers with the capabilities to build these micro-segments on-the-fly and align messaging, offers, and channels accordingly to drive higher engagement for all their programs.
When it comes to managing the marketing database and getting the most out of them, there are 3 core competencies:
The ability of the marketing organizations to have real-time insights into the health of the database via database health metrics reports and dashboards.
Operational frameworks and procedures to continuously track and optimize the quality integrity of the database, which is constantly changing.
Marketing Analytics capabilities to mine the database for segmentation to enable contextual experiences for all marketing campaigns, which in turn drive higher engagement and accelerate pipeline generation.
The real value adds for the database health insights that are powered by the database segmentation engine is to enable micro-segmentation for all marketing campaigns
especially for events, virtual events, webinars, and field marketing campaigns. When it comes to segmentation and list building for the campaigns, most of the marketing organizations still rely on explicit data (mainly demographics data). This does not seem to do justice to the massive investments that the organizations make in the marketing tech stacks. This concept of micro-segmentation is fascinating to see it in-action and this case study about webinar registrations paints a beautiful picture of the extraordinary results that can be achieved with this holistic data-driven approach.
One of our customers, a dynamic SaaS start-up, was experiencing steady but flat engagement and pipeline influence from their webinars, as shown by the comprehensive campaign performance reports we meticulously crafted. Despite their innovative product offerings, they found that their webinar strategy was not yielding the desired results, with engagement levels plateauing and pipeline contributions stagnating. They were eager to supercharge their pipeline generation through webinars and were determined to boost conversions in both engagement metrics and pipeline influence. During our initial discussions, we conducted a thorough deep dive into their webinar campaign data, where we uncovered actionable insights that they had been missing out on by primarily focusing on broad demographics for webinar registrations. With our database insights frameworks and contextual segmentation engine, we teamed up to create a groundbreaking webinar strategy fueled by micro-segmentations.
Instead of just one segment, we helped them craft four vibrant micro-segments! This approach allowed us to tailor their messaging and content to resonate more deeply with specific audiences.
One of these micro-segments included leads who were actively engaging with webinars over time, demonstrating a consistent interest in the content provided. This particular session was designed specifically for practitioners, rather than decision-makers, which led us to unearth valuable insights about the practitioner persona. By understanding the daily challenges and needs of those who use their products regularly, we aimed to captivate this audience effectively.
We went even further, categorizing the practitioner segment into three distinct micro-segments based on a comprehensive analysis of their past 90 days of web behavior, platform engagement, and pipeline history with the organization.
This nuanced approach enabled us to identify unique patterns and preferences within each micro-segment, allowing for even more targeted outreach and engagement strategies.
Armed with these insights, their team crafted unique, contextual messaging for each micro-segment, leading to an impressive 16% boost in webinar conversions!
This case study demonstrates that the marketing database is a gold-mine for any marketing organization. As the backbone of any marketing and sales playbook, database insights are crucial for all marketing campaigns and sales conversations. By leveraging data-driven strategies powered by advanced marketing analytics and embracing a more granular approach to segmentation, organizations can unlock the full potential of their marketing efforts, ultimately driving higher engagement rates and more robust pipeline growth. The success of this SaaS start-up serves as a testament to the transformative power of data in shaping effective marketing strategies and achieving tangible results.
We did not have to go anywhere to get these additional insights for the webinar micro-segments. They were right there in the marketing automation and CRM platforms that our customer was already using. We just had to understand the business questions, leverage the existing marketing analytics capabilities to mine the data accordingly to surface the insights, and make them easily available for the marketers. We started with the key (and extremely relevant) business questions from the sales and marketing leaders. We then reviewed what we could answer with the capabilities we had put in place based on earlier asks, had follow-up discussions to understand further what was being asked for, how it would be used, and then we went about building the solution with the set of tools we already had in the organization.
Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, we did not jump to get the fanciest MarTech tools and then started figuring out how to use them and if they were of any relevance for what the business needs were. Déjà vu!
We are always on the lookout for inputs and examples from the marketing community to keep adding value for our customers. We welcome the inputs and feedback from other leaders and practitioners around how you are leveraging the insights rich data across the MarTech platforms? Have you built the capabilities in your organizations to enable marketing teams to build the micro-segmentation on-the-fly for their campaigns?
Let’s discuss how marketing analytics can transform your database strategy and make it a cornerstone of your marketing success. Reach out today, and let’s build your next big win together!
With our marketing analytics consulting services, let us evaluate your current stack and give you a roadmap to advanced marketing analytics capabilities.
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