The Scoop on Segmentation

Your HubSpot contacts list is home to anyone and everyone that interacts with your business. Inbound marketers should have a clear understanding of who is in their contact database, how they are different from other contacts, and the best way to market to each of them. This can prove challenging if you lack a segmentation and contact management strategy.

By segmenting your contacts together based on similar properties, and then building a strategy for each group, you'll maximize your contacts list potential — and your inbound marketing strategy.

What is Segmentation?

Segmentation is defined as breaking up your contacts into smaller groups with similar traits based on certain properties. Segmentation gives your marketing content the right context for each lead, prospect, and customer — while keeping your business organized and productive.

Let's say you're a loyal patient at a local dermatologist office. The marketing experience that the dermatologist office creates for you, will be much different than the experience they create for leads they are trying to get to schedule an appointment.

Segments allow businesses to cater their messaging and strategy to their contacts to create the most optimal experience.

Types of Segments

There are three types of segments in HubSpot — saved filters, active lists, and static lists.

• Saved Filters - Saved filters allow you to quickly view a segmented group of contacts using any default or custom property. This is a great tool to use when you are navigating your contact base to create lists.
• Active Lists - Active lists are dynamic, and continuously add and remove contacts to your list based on criteria that you establish. For example, you could create an active list that will automatically add contacts of a specific lifecycle stage, contacts that view a specific page, or contacts who fill out a form.
• Static Lists - Static lists do not automatically enroll new contacts. Static lists contain a group of contacts who meet a certain set of requirements at the time you added them to the list. If you want to add or remove contacts to a static list, you must do so manually.

How to Build Segments

In order to create the best experience for your contacts, you will need to select properties for your segmentation. HubSpot is built to easily accommodate segments based on lifecycle stage and buyer persona.

1. Lifecycle Stage Segmentation

Lifecycle stages describe at what stage your contacts are at in your sales and marketing processes. When a new contact is added to your database, you'll be able to select from the following default HubSpot lifecycle stages:

• Subscribers
• Leads
• Marketing qualified lead (MQL)
• Sales qualified lead (SQL)
• Opportunity
• Customer
• Evangelist
• Other

This is an ideal segment building strategy because it allows you to create lists for workflows, emails, and more that cater to the interaction level your contact has had with your business.

2. Buyer Persona Segmentation

According to HubSpot, buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers. Your personas are heavily researched and detailed, and include information like basic demographic information like age, gender, and income, as well as behavioral information like favorite places to shop and technology they use. You will typically have at least 3-4 buyer personas for your business. Each buyer persona has specific struggles, habits, and needs.

Building segments based on your buyer persona is one of the easiest ways to add context to your content. When you segment based on what type of customer your contact is, you can market to their specific struggles, habits, and needs successfully.

If you need help building your buyer personas, check out our free Buyer Persona Workbook.

3. Lifecycle Stage + Buyer Persona Segmentation

As professional inbound marketing consultants, we recommend that you use a hybrid strategy to build your segments. By combining lifecycle stage and buyer persona segmentation together, you'll be able to group your contacts based on multiple dimensions — giving you a better picture of who is in these segments, and how to market to them.

Combining lifecycle stage and buyer persona segmentation identifies your contacts goals, interests, and demographic through their buyer persona, as well as how they interact with your business from their lifecycle stage.

Where You Can Use Segmentation

When you have a segmentation and contact management strategy, you can easily monitor your contacts and create lists. From sending emails to creating content, segmentation can be used throughout your inbound marketing strategy to personalize each contact's experience.  

• Workflows - Workflows are just one of the automated marketing tools available through HubSpot. With a segmented list of contacts, you can easily nurture a specific persona with workflows to assist with a conversion or guide them through your sales process.
• Emails - Segmentation helps you set the topic and tone for your email marketing strategy. With segmentation, you can create email marketing campaigns that cater to specific lists, like those we discussed earlier for lifecycle stages and buyer personas.
• Content - Your blog content, and even the content on your website pages, should be written with a purpose. You can use segmentation to create content that caters to different personas & lifecycle stages.
• Smart Objects - HubSpot offers users the ability to create Smart CTA's or Smart Content. These smart objects can be used to target what specific personas and lifecycle stages see on your website.

Email marketing, workflows, and other automation tools are easy to use once you have a clear idea of how your contacts are segmented. If you don't have a segmentation strategy, you aren't maximizing the full potential of your contact list. Contact our team of marketing consultants to learn how The Diamond Group can help you maximize your HubSpot portal's full potential.