Tag Archives: audience segmentation

G+ finds its audience! And it’s not who you think.

My husband never joined the infamous Book of Face… and now he never will.

At first, he was just being contrary; he actively avoided doing what everybody else was doing. But after a while, I think he was just intimidated. The thought of managing the flood of all those friend requests was too daunting and so he avoided the unpleasantness altogether.

Now, he has finally initiated himself into the ranks of social networking–without the Facebook baggage. And he’s not the only one of my friends to do so. I now have several friends in G+ who are not anywhere else. They are all male, thirty-something and have families.

I’m sure Google wanted entrepreneurial, tech savvy Millennials to flock to their new social network, and we did at first, but then we never really engaged there. Who Google is actually attracting and getting engagement from are thirty-somethings: fathers, busy with kids, who have never joined a social network before. This means that techies like me now have to update multiple social networks if I want all of my friends and connections to see my pictures, posts, and event invites.

My husband on G+

What a great opportunity for Google! They have at their fingertips a brand new audience as yet untapped by social media marketers. This demographic is ripe for opportunities for marketers of all types–sports, food & beverage, entertainment, news & weather.

G+ has won in 2 ways: Not only to they get a brand new, untapped audience of thirty-something men with little exposure to existing social networks, but they also get the tech savvy mom who just wants to see the cute pictures of daughter that dad is sharing from his ‘Droid…

Stacy Dyer on G+

Increase Your Donations through Audience Segmentation

This article originally appears on the SageWords.net blog.

Increase Your Donations through Audience Segmentation

By Stacy Dyer

Audience segmentation is something businesses figured out a long time ago. To get an idea of why segmenting your audience data is so important, watch this video about Star Trek Red Shirt Death Rates with Matt Bailey:

OK, so you’re not trying to survive the next away mission (maybe you are, but that’s a different article), still there’s a few key points to learn from this example.

  1. Different people are motivated by different things
  2. People are more likely to do what you want when your message resonates with their individual perspective
  3. Tailor your message to connect with that perspective

Let me give you an example of what this means for nonprofit fundraisers.

Pretend you run an animal welfare organization. You have both myself and my husband in your database because we both animals. But there is a key difference in our perspectives. (You happen to track this key detail in your CRM because you are a rock-star fundraiser!) What is it?

I am a cat person.

My husband is a dog person.

Now you want to send us each an email asking to give to your annual fund.

To me, your appeal features a picture of a sweet, fuzzy kitten. I am more likely to connect emotionally with your message and click to go to your donation form.  There, I see a picture of another cute kitten. Now I know I am in the right place! You are bunch of kitten-loving fools and of course I am going to support you!

To my husband, you send the same appeal, but feature an image of a dog instead. He sees your adorable puppy face and raises you another donation!

What happened here? It was the same campaign, the same message, and you doubled your responses (and donations) just by segmenting your audience.  By targeting each segment with an email and landing page specifically designed to create an emotional connection with them, you were able to tap into sources of support which you would not have otherwise.

That is the power of segmentation.

One message doesn’t work for everyone. Identify what key attributes differentiate your audience and target campaigns to emotionally connect with each segment of your donor base.

3 Personas You Have to Meet

Maybe you already know them. They certainly already know you. They are your constituents, your supporters, and donors. Want to know who they are? Keep reading…

As a product marketer, I am very familiar with the concept of using personas to help me understand my audience. At Innogive 2012 in San Fransisco, Jeff Dunlap of MobileCause, described the three key personas who interact with causes online.

First, there is the internet artist. He actually doesn’t really care about your cause. What he wants is to impress his friends. He is motivated by the number of retweets and likes he gets in social media. So he makes up something clever–like make up a t-shirt that says, “F**K CANCER.” You can’t say that, but he can! He is, in effect, a “free agent” as Beth Kanter describes in her concept of a Networked Nonprofit.

Next, the curator picks it up. She likes to put things into collections that are easy to browse. She pins that “F**K CANCER” t-shirt in Pintrest, where it gets picked up by Martha-Stewart-types everywhere, and creates a flurry! She doesn’t really care about your cause either, but loves it when her “pin” get shared around.

Now meet mobile grandma. She loves using her smartphone to share mobile photos on Facebook. She posts a picture of her niece wearing the infamous t-shirt. That post gets picked up by another mobile grandma in Denmark, who translates the t-shirt into 3 different languages (in effect, another internet artist) and the cycle starts again.

As you can see, these personas have the power to give your cause a huge boost, even though they may not actually donate cash (or buy the t-shirt) themselves. By understanding what motivates these personas, you can create (or, at least, not squash) opportunities to go viral!