Surfside Group

How much do you know about the people in your database? I’m not talking about phone numbers and email addresses. What do you know about them based upon how you have them categorized, segmented, or tagged?

Accurate, descriptive segmentation will help you to create targeted communications that help your clients and prospects feel connected and more comfortable with your company. It can also make it easier for you to sort and find information when you have a temporary memory lapse about someone’s name or company.

For example, I meet a lot of people on a weekly basis. When they are entered into our database, they are tagged according to their industry and the specific date and function where we met, or who introduced us. It makes it easier to locate that person quickly if I can not remember their name.

Here are some other ways you can tag individuals:

• Requested info from your website
• Region (South, Northeast, etc.)
• Industry
• Number of employees
• Annual revenues
• Services or products offered
• Special offers they purchased from you
• Transaction types
• Any other information that will help you understand them and others in their segmented group

Think of how you can personalize communications with certain groups of people. For example, if you have a group of prospects who are in a particular industry that was affected by a recent government or industry regulation, you can quickly identify those people and send them an email about that and how your company can assist them in some way.  When you segment based on industry, it also makes it easier to send targeted information that uses their industry buzzwords and addresses their issues.

Or, maybe you know that all of the contacts who downloaded a free report have a particular need based upon their interest in that report. You can tailor all of your emails to their interests thereby increasing the likelihood that they will buy from you.

Another example: At TSG, we work with funding sources that may only be interested in certain industries, funding requirement amounts, or regions. All of that information is stored with each contact record so that any time we need to search for a good match for one of our clients, we can make introductions sooner rather than later.

Begin thinking of how segmenting your data could help you. Then tag your data in a way that makes sense for your business and begin using the segmented data to your advantage! It takes a little extra effort, but increased sales and profits are the payoff.