Tools to Use: Customer Profiling & Segmentation
Some tools for customer segmentation and profiling that B2B businesses targeting integrators & tech pros can use to grow.
If you’re looking for more tools for customer segmentation or profiling, you should first focus on what you really need out of a solution. Do you really know the difference between the two, and what parts of your B2B customer segments should you target with certain campaign tactics?
First, let’s define our terms: the difference between customer profiling and customer segmentation is fairly simple. Customer profiling is the process of defining who your perfect — or at least average — customer is with demographics, habits, interests, etc. Customer segmentation, however, is the process of dividing up your existing client base by data gathered in CRM, emails, etc.
Before choosing the right tool(s) for you and your business, it’s important to grasp how these third-party tools will integrate with your customer relationship management system. Do you already have an app or deep integration?
David Ciccarelli, Founder and CEO of Voices, an online marketplace that connects businesses with professional voice actors, provides an example.
“As Salesforce customers, we have a requirement for vendors to have native integration that saves custom development work that inevitably breaks when the platform gets an update,” he says.
Next, it’s important to understand how the matches are made between your customer record and a third-party system.
“Typically, you’ll need a unique identifier on your side, such as an account name like Coca Cola, that gets matched to the record in a data enrichment app like D&B,” Ciccarelli says.
“Unless there’s an exact match between the names, the data doesn’t sync. Consequently, only about 30-50% of the records get matched. I wouldn’t expect more.”
Ciccarelli says they’ve found there’s three dimensions to segment at the account level:
Geography tells you which regions of the world you’re selling into. Industry data lets you know where you’re gaining traction and helps you create content and tailor solutions that meet the needs for that industry. Then there’s size, which can be measured by revenue or employees.
“I’ve found employees to be easier to obtain and more accurate. Especially for software-as-a-service businesses, knowing how many people are in a company helps estimate the size of opportunities since deals are often priced on a per user basis.”
Check out our slideshow to see some customer profiling and segmentation tools for B2B tech marketers