Better Together: Use Attitudes, Demographics and Behavior to Improve Results

4. Once you assign the segments on your customer database, you can build models within each segment using behavioral data such as previous purchases or campaign responses to improve targeting. These behavioral models tell you which customers within each segment are most likely to respond and/or purchase. This final, critical step allows you to limit your marketing spend to just those customers and prospects within a segment who are likely to purchase.

Attitudinal data drives the segmentation, telling you how to communicate with your customers. Behavioral data and demographics improve the targeting to just those customers who are most responsive and likely to buy.

Used in combination, attitudinal, demographic and behavioral information also provides enhanced strategic insights and help you improve product positioning and market intelligence. Varied information used together leads to better targeting to grow customers and increase your bottom line.

The Data Combo in Action
Let's look at a hypothetical example:

Company: Furniture Store
Segment: Home Fashionistas; values high-end products
Attitudes: Prefers to research online, buy in-store due to online shopping security concerns and touch/feel product before buying; also likes new styles and premium fabrics
Behavior: High-value purchases, high frequency, all purchases made in-store
Demographics: Suburban, within 20 miles of a retail location, high household income, female, ages 45-55

You may find an attitudinal segment within your survey that describes a customer always on the lookout for the latest designs and fabrics. Projecting this segment onto your customer base reveals other like-minded customers. Look at past e-mail campaigns to this segment to discover the behavioral, geographic and demographic attributes that drive purchases at a local store through e-mail response. Next, develop an e-mail campaign that mentions new products added to the collection or fabrics that she needs to see in person to drive her into the store. You can see that isolating one data type over another leaves some part of the segment profile unanswered. Your ROI will be negatively affected if you talk to customers with these attitudes who don't live near a store, or who aren't likely to purchase.