Psychographic Segmentation: A Journey Into Your Customers’ Minds Leads to Marketing Success
In a world fighting for consumer attention, knowing the ‘Who’ factor is no longer helpful. You must delve deeper and understand ‘Why’ customers make certain choices and what influences them.
You can predict customer behavior based on their purchasing habits, such as the type of products they buy and the frequency of purchases. However, studying them as a whole is essential to perceiving why they take those actions.
This is where psychographic segmentation comes in — it explores consumers’ social status, personalities, attitudes, and interests. This data helps you unlock customer insights that can transform your marketing strategy.
Let’s discover the inner world of your consumers to propel your business to new heights.
What is Psychographic Segmentation in Email Marketing?
Psychographic segmentation is a market research method that divides customers based on their psychological attributes, such as personalities, interests, and social status. These traits usually influence their buying behavior.
Understanding their thoughts and motivations helps you create personalized marketing strategies and target them with specific email content. This also enables you to build stronger customer connections that significantly improve email open rates, click-through rates, and email marketing conversion rates.
For example, a fitness apparel brand may use psychographic segmentation based on audience lifestyle, dividing them into:
- Active enthusiasts: Subscribers with a focus on high-performance gear and workout challenges.
- Wellness-focused: People looking for sustainable materials and mindfulness products.
- Fashion-forward: Stylish updates and trendy athleisure for the fashion lovers.
Benefits of Psychographic Segmentation
This segmentation method also helps with:
- Increased relevance: It helps you deliver content that directly addresses the needs and preferences of the audiences.
- Improved engagement: Mentioning customers’ likes and past interactions builds better rapport and enhances engagement.
- Better customer satisfaction: By tweaking your product attributes to suit customers’ lifestyles, you can improve overall satisfaction and brand experience.
- A richer understanding of the audience: Psychographic combined with behavioral segmentation leads to a holistic view of your target audience. You can figure out their purchase decisions and the reasons behind their choices.
- Enhanced loyalty: Customers are likelier to stay with a brand that meets their needs. This includes adapting to their lifestyle changes and general principles.
- Lesser wastage of resources: By acknowledging your audiences’ expectations, you can focus on those aspects and allocate resources accordingly.
Several data variables play a key role in creating your customer segments. Psychographic variables, such as lifestyle values, personalities, and interests, significantly influence consumer buying behavior.
Let’s examine the different variables of the psychographic segmentation model in depth.
The Key Variables of Psychographic Segmentation in Marketing
The table below shows a quick overview of the psychographic variables.
| Psychographic Variable | What it Means |
|---|---|
| Lifestyle | It refers to the ways individuals live their lifestyle, including activities and beliefs |
| Personality | It includes the consumers’ traits, behavior, and characteristics that influence their buying decisions |
| Values | Beliefs and ideals that are important to an individual and which guide them toward a decision |
| Interests | Activities or subjects a customer finds engaging |
| Attitudes | It refers to the customers’ thoughts and feelings about specific topics, brands, and products |
| Social status | The hierarchical distinction between consumers based on their income, education, and occupation |
| Opinions | Specific thoughts or beliefs about particular subjects or issues |
| Motivations | The internal drives and needs that prompt consumers to take action |
| Hobbies | Regular activities that customers enjoy in their free time |
1. Lifestyle
Lifestyle is the core component of psychographic segmentation, providing insights into customers’ daily routines, interests, and values. It studies how people spend their time and money on activities or goods.
You can use the following questions to determine where to place your customers:
- What kind of activities do consumers invest their time in?
- What are they passionate about? This covers topics such as fashion, food, technology, and politics.
By gaining a solid understanding, you can send customers targeted email marketing newsletters or promotional emails to enhance conversions. For example, if a target segment loves eco-friendly products, you can emphasize this selling point and include email coupons to encourage action.
2. Personality
Recognizing a user’s personality can help you send relevant emails without overwhelming them. Every consumer is different — some may appreciate funny email subject lines, and others might prefer serious-toned emails.
Delving into their personalities can help you answer more questions like:
- What are their short-term and long-term goals?
- Are customers introverts or extroverts?
- Do they have their beliefs, or are they influenced by the media?
- What are their priorities?
Based on your business type, you can group customers depending on factors such as emotional levels, creativity, hobbies, values, and attitudes.
3. Social Status
Customers’ buying decisions can often be influenced by their background — how much they earn, what their spending habits are, and do their earnings allow them to buy their favorite products?
The needs of a middle-class consumer are different from those of an affluent consumer. Understanding this basic distinction can help you grasp their shopping habits and preferences.
Eventually, it’ll help you price your products to appeal to your target audiences. For example, Versace advertises its products to high-end consumers, while Neutrogena focuses on affordability, catering to middle-class customers.
4. Activities, Interests, and Opinions
This psychographic segmentation aspect showcases what your customers truly care about. Maybe they are into sports and fitness or love to cook during weekends. Each consumer can have different interests and opinions.
You can segregate audiences based on the following activities:
- Their work: Occupation, industry, job satisfaction.
- Hobbies: Sports, collecting, gardening, or reading.
- Social activities: Going out, attending parties, clubs, or volunteering.
- Shopping: Frequency, outlets, online vs. offline shopping.
- Media consumption: TV, radio, newspapers, internet, social media.
Similarly, you can use the following framework for knowing customer interests and opinions:
- Collect their personal, social, and recreational interests.
- Determine beliefs on social and political activities, including product and media opinions.
- Be aware of their thoughts on environmental and social justice.
5. Attitudes
Customers can have different attitudes toward the same subject. For example, customer segment A might believe in wellness, while segment B focuses on eco-friendly product attributes.
It’s crucial to decipher this diversity to target them with the right content.
You can divide customers based on:
- Eco-conscious attitude: This segment prioritizes eco-friendly products and is willing to pay a premium for them.
- Health-conscious consumers: These people look for products that support their physical and mental health.
- Tech-savvy consumers: This segment is interested in innovative products and are early adopters of technology.
- Price-sensitive consumers: This set is usually drawn to discounts and deals and wants to get the best value for money.
How to Build Psychographic Segments
If you don’t have audience behavior data, you can create customer personas to target them with different types of email campaigns. Buyer or customer personas are fictional characters that represent a specific target segment.
If you need help building buyer personas, the table below will be a starting point.
| S.NO | Steps | What to Do | Where to collect/consider |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Gather data | Collect data from various sources | ‣ Social media analysis ‣ Surveys and questionnaires ‣ Website analytics ‣ Customer interviews ‣ Purchase history |
| 2. | Identify key variables | Pick the psychographic variables that define your business | ‣ Interests, hobbies, activities ‣ Lifestyle ‣ Opinions and attitudes |
| 3. | Segment audience | Group audiences based on the psychographic variables | ‣ Create segments with distinct characteristics ‣ Use clustering techniques ‣ Ensure segments are meaningful |
| 4. | Develop buyer personas | Create a detailed buyer persona for each customer segment | ‣ Name and demographic details ‣ Psychographic profile ‣ Goals and challenges ‣ Buying behavior and decision-making process |
| 5. | Validate and refine | Validate buyer personas with real-life customer segments and refine as needed | ‣ Test personas with the target audience ‣ Gather feedback and make adjustments |
When a customer strongly believes in something, they will be willing to spend more on the same product than someone whose values differ. For instance, luxury car lovers will pay a premium to enjoy the automobile’s high-end features and safety values.
Keep a close watch on what motivates people to buy products. Motivation is a significant aspect that drives an action.
Of course, other psychographic segmentation factors can influence customer behavior.
We’ll discuss how they alter customers’ purchase decisions.
How Does Psychographic Segmentation Influence Customer Behavior?
Psychographic segmentation often involves a set of pre-defined models to categorize consumers based on their psychological attributes. Every data point is a step closer to customers’ needs, allowing you to shape your products accordingly. For example, you might alter your product features or switch pricing based on customers’ interests.
Knowing what kindles their interests will make managing their preferences and likes easier.
Here are 8 more ways psychographic segmentation can help upscale your revenue:
- It provides in-depth customer knowledge: By knowing consumers’ interests, values, and beliefs, you can craft messages that resonate deeply with specific segments.
- It allows product customization: Customer data refines products, increasing the likelihood of better product adoption and customer satisfaction.
- It helps innovate product offers: Insights from different customer segments allows you to innovate and build better products and offers.
- It improves messaging: Psychographic segmentation helps you speak directly to consumers’ interests, allowing you to be unique in your offers.
- It enhances loyalty programs: Rewarding customer behavior that aligns with your brand values can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- It promotes value-based pricing: Understanding the perceptions of different target segments can help you tailor pricing strategies and increase authenticity.
- It helps tailor customer journeys: Mapping out the email marketing customer journey allows you to identify key touchpoints and target consumers with hyper-relevant content and offers.
- It helps you choose a channel: Do customers spend more time with online or offline shopping? By knowing this statistic, you can optimize the channels to promote offers.
Customers may also use a product or service depending on their circumstances. For instance, regular partygoers may order food after a night out, preferably on the weekends.
A food delivery business can use this data to customize offers and focus on other holidays or special events to increase the chances of delivery orders.
We’ll be able to gain valuable insights from the real-world examples below.
Examples of Different Psychographic Segments
Whether you’re in the entertainment industry or the food tech business, knowing when customers are more likely to engage with your offers strengthens your marketing strategy in the long run.
Let’s review examples of psychographic segmentation for common industries.
Psychographic Segmentation for the Fitness Industry
A fitness brand’s consumers can be diverse — the health-conscious, the social butterflies, or the busy professionals. You must discover their motivation to make the same product speak to different segments.
The table below contains examples of potential target audiences for a fitness brand.
| Target Audience | Characteristics | Marketing Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Health enthusiasts | ‣ Prioritize health and wellness ‣ Follow strict diet plans ‣ Are keen on preventive healthcare | ‣ Promote the health benefits of the fitness product ‣ Highlight success stories ‣ Offer nutritional value |
| Fitness fanatics | ‣ Highly motivated for physical performance ‣ Often engage in high-intensity workouts ‣ Frequently participate in sports or competitions | ‣ Offer fitness coaching classes ‣ Emphasize advanced training programs ‣ Promote performance related products |
| Weight loss seekers | ‣ Look for balanced diet programs ‣ Motivated by weight loss goals | ‣ Create support communities ‣ Highlight weight loss programs ‣ Provide nutritional guidance Include testimonial and success stories |
Path Projects promotes its masterclass as well as training gears. This complements the project and helps fitness enthusiasts have it all in one place.
Psychographic Segmentation for the Travel Industry
The travel industry is huge, and your email list could contain various psychographic segments. Some people prefer traveling on weekends, while others prefer luxury trips.
Managing assorted segments can be challenging without a proper plan. Prepare an email content calendar and include relevant details to stay on track.
For example, your audience segments can look like the following table.
| Target Audience | Characteristics | Marketing Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Adventure seekers | ‣ Enjoys outdoor activities ‣ Loves exploring new places | ‣ Promote unique and unexplored places ‣ Highlight thrilling experiences |
| Relaxation and wellness enthusiasts | ‣ Prioritizes physical and mental health ‣ Seeks relaxation and nature-oriented places | ‣ Show serene and peaceful places ‣ Include wellness packages ‣ Promote activities like yoga and meditation |
Lonely Planet emphasizes a serene spot like Costa Rica to encourage travelers to explore the hidden gems.
Like the email segmentation strategies above, you can divide audiences based on their interests and behavior. Ensure your marketing is tailored to accommodate customers’ needs with the following best practices.
Best Practices for Proper Psychographic Segmentation
Psychographic segmentation often requires careful planning and analysis for increased accuracy.
Follow these guidelines to segment audiences correctly:
- Combine qualitative and quantitative research: Use email surveys, interviews, and focus groups to comprehend the ‘Why’ factor behind consumer behavior.
- Identify relevant psychographic factors: Use the most relevant psychographic segmentation to your business. This saves time and increases credibility.
- Develop detailed customer personas: Write in-depth customer profiles to modify your email content and resonate with the target segments.
- Look for patterns and trends: Analyze common characteristics and features inside customer segments.
- Validate insights with customer feedback: Gain customer feedback to ensure your findings align with their interests.
- Use clear and consistent segmentation framework: Have a psychographic segmentation framework and make sure everyone on your team follows it.
- Avoid stereotypes: Make decisions based on your research instead of relying on common stereotypes.
Psychographic segmentation is a powerful tool for enhancing your email marketing campaigns. You can use the data to nurture relationships and re-engage inactive customers with ultra-specific offers and content.
Let’s learn the ways to use customer data to craft compelling email campaigns.
Practical Applications for Psychographic Segmentation in Email Marketing
Here are 5 actionable ways to create highly targeted and personalized messages that resonate with audiences:
- Provide tailored recommendations: Suggest products and services that align with consumers’ goals and requirements. Create email copy that directly speaks to their motivations.
- Nurture relationships: Send relevant content and offers at different stages of the email marketing customer journey to captivate their interests.
- Build loyalty through offers: Demonstrate a deeper knowledge of their desires to foster lasting connections.
- Develop compelling emails: Utilize high-quality images, best fonts for email, creative subject lines, and compelling call-to-actions. This drives engagement and makes it easier to collect customer data.
- Regularly refine strategies: Monitor customer psychographic insights and adjust email campaigns accordingly. You can also A/B test different psychographic segments to recognize audiences’ wants and accomplish higher conversion rates.
In addition to the above best practices, you need a robust email marketing platform to help you segment audiences and monitor results in one place.
This is where Campaign Refinery can help your email marketing results soar.
Take Advantage of Campaign Refinery’s Sophisticated Segmentation Tools
Our platform offers advanced segmentation techniques to divide your audiences into distinct groups. Using our powerful email tags feature, you can create hyper-targeted segments based on demographics, psychographics, and behavior.
The latest “Audience Groups” feature helps clients combine different segments into a single group and send targeted email campaigns. By creating highly relevant segments, you’ll notice email open rates, click-through rates, and conversions increase naturally.
While segmentation improves engagement, we also understand that your emails need to reach subscribers’ primary inboxes for them to take action.
Our email deliverability ecosystem, comprising strict authentication protocols, email deliverability monitoring, and a high-speed sending engine, gives clients an up to 600% boost in inbox placement rates.
Want to enjoy the highest email deliverability rate on the market and get access to powerful segmentation, analytics, and automation features?
