By The PhantomBuster TeamLead segmentation is essential for optimizing your sales and marketing efforts. By dividing your target audience into specific, actionable segments, you can tailor your sales and marketing campaigns, improve resource allocation, and drive better results throughout the sales funnel.
Read on for key strategies for lead segmentation, how to implement them effectively, and the best tools to buy for better lead generation efforts.
TL;DR
Lead segmentation is the process of dividing your potential customers into distinct groups based on shared characteristics, behaviors, or demographics.
Lead segments can help you focus your sales and marketing efforts more efficiently, improve the customer journey, and increase your ROI.
The best lead segmentation strategies for sales teams include:
Intent-Based Segmentation: Create highly targeted micro-lists based on a lead’s online behavior, such as engagement with specific content.
Job Change Segmentation: Reconnect with leads who have recently changed jobs within a specified timeframe.
Lead Score Segmentation: Prioritize leads by assigning scores based on criteria like engagement, company size, or job title.
Demographic Segmentation: Group leads based on age, gender, income, or job title.
Geographic Segmentation: Divide leads by location to tailor messages to regional preferences.
Behavioral Segmentation: Segment based on their actions in your sales funnel, such as website visits or email interactions.
Psychographic Segmentation: Tailor your outreach to align with their motivations.
Technographic Segmentation: Segment your leads based on the technology they use.
Lead Source Segmentation: Categorize lead segments by their source, for example, inbound vs outbound.
Supporting a lead segmentation process with the right tools is important so you don't have to do more manual work. PhantomBuster offers a range of automations to source, enrich, and segment leads to support your warm outbound strategies.
What is lead segmentation?
Lead segmentation (also known as customer segmentation, audience segmentation, or market segmentation) is the process of dividing potential customers into groups based on their shared interests, behaviors, or demographics so you can tailor your sales and marketing efforts to meet their needs.
With a more targeted approach, you can use your resources more effectively, boost conversion rates, and have a more effective sales pipeline.
Lead segmentation vs lead qualification
Lead segmentation defines the groups you’ll target with specific campaigns based on their characteristics. Lead qualification determines which leads to focus on based on their purchase likelihood.
Why should you segment leads in the sales pipeline?
Segmenting allows you to focus your resources on high-value prospects, ensuring your sales and marketing efforts are targeted and effective.
With a segmentation strategy, your team can tailor messages based on each segment’s pain points, improving engagement and increasing outreach conversion rates.
Best lead segmentation strategies for sales teams
Effective lead segmentation can improve sales activity outcomes. By categorizing leads based on various criteria, such as demographics, behaviors, and interests, you can tailor your marketing and sales strategies to meet each group's unique needs.
This targeted approach enables you to connect more meaningfully with potential customers, ultimately increasing engagement and conversion rates.
We've put together practical ways to implement lead segmentation to streamline your efforts and enhance your overall sales performance. Here are the strategies we recommend.
Intent-based segmentation
Intent-based segmentation is where you create highly targeted micro-lists based on a lead’s online behavior. For example, you can use PhantomBuster’s LinkedIn Company Post commenter and like scraper to segment based on a lead's engagement with specific content.
You only need a competitor's LinkedIn Page URL to feed it to the automation.
This will collect a list of people who have engaged with a post and details of their interaction.
You can send this list to HubSpot, for further segmentation and outreach.
Pro tip: Now you have a list of segmented leads, they should hear from you!
Use PhantomBuster's AI LinkedIn Message Writer automation to create personalized messages for each lead based on the content they engaged with.
Using an AI tool automatically generates unique outreach messages and helps create them in a tone and with content likely to appeal.
Provide the AI phantom with the list you just created and set a custom prompt to write a compelling message to connect with it.
Job change segmentation
Job changes often signal new opportunities and can be a great way to reconnect with a prospect.
You can use PhantomBuster’s AI LinkedIn Profile Enricher and let AI scan your lead list to determine who has recently switched jobs based on the data extracted from LinkedIn.
This is especially helpful if you have a large list of leads and want a prioritized plan to reach out.
Here's the prompt we recommend using or this:
"Please compare the job starting date to identify prospects who have recently switched roles. Please give us an answer in less than 30 days. More than 30 days."
A list enriched with extra intelligence will be created in seconds, and using the search function, you can pinpoint all the prospects who moved roles in a specific time frame.
You can now use this as your main outreach list.
Alternatively, if you want to continuously monitor job changes for your CRM contacts, use the HubSpot Contact career tracker automation. Select the HubSpot list to enrich and the Phantom will do the rest.
Note: your HubSpot contacts must have a LinkedIn Profile URL filled in to enable scraping and enrichment. You can enrich your list with the URLs with the LinkedIn Profile URL Finder Phantom.
You will have fresh information inside HubSpot and can use the data to create targeted segments for outreach.
Lead score segmentation
Lead scoring helps prioritize leads based on specific criteria such as engagement, demographics, or purchase history. Create multiple segments based on scores to ensure your team focuses on the highest-priority prospects.
Many customer relationship management software tools offer lead scoring, but it works best when you use the freshest data and the power of AI.
PhantomBuster’s AI Phantom can score and filter leads based on pre-defined criteria that are important to you. These segmented leads can then be contacted or sent to HubSpot for further action.
Here's a prompt example:
"Based on the profile details in each account, create a lead score for each that represents the likelihood of each profile buying a PhantomBuster subscription. Follow the rules below:
- All scores must be from 1 to 5, 5 meaning most likely to buy.- Sales and marketing Job titles should score higher.
- People who like tools like HubSpot and other sales tools should get extra points.
- People who comment on AI and automation topics should score extra points."
This AI automation will generate a lead score based on the criteria for each lead on your list. You can then use this score as a criteria to segment and prioritize leads for outreach.
Standard types of lead segmentation
Standard types of lead segmentation include demographic, geographic, behavioral, psychographic, technographic, and lead source segmentation to optimize marketing strategies.
Let's explore what's possible and give some examples.
Demographic segmentation
Segment leads based on demographic factors like age, gender, income, or job title. This is particularly useful for crafting personalized marketing messages.
How to use: You could target leads in senior roles, such as CTOs who work for enterprises with 1,000+ employees. Use LinkedIn's advanced search in combination with the LinkedIn Search Export Phantom to get precise results.
Geographic segmentation
Divide your leads based on their location. This segmentation helps tailor marketing efforts to regional preferences or target specific areas with localized campaigns.
How to use: Target leads in specific cities and offer region-specific discounts. The AI LinkedIn Profile Enricher Phantom can clean up the location data in profiles, standardizing 'NY' to 'New York.'
Behavioral segmentation
Behavioral segmentation focuses on the actions leads take, such as website visits, email opens, or product usage. This allows you to segment leads based on their engagement and conversion likelihood.
How to use: You could segment leads who have abandoned their cart in the past week and send them personalized follow-up emails with a discount offer to encourage them to complete their purchase.
Psychographic segmentation
Segment based on their interests, values, or lifestyle choices. This deeper level of segmentation helps create highly targeted marketing campaigns.
How to use: You could target leads interested in adventure travel who prioritize eco-friendly tourism, promoting sustainable travel packages that align with their values.
Technographic segmentation
Segment your leads based on their technology stack. This is particularly effective for B2B companies that offer software or tech solutions.
How to use: You could target businesses using Salesforce as their CRM, promoting how your software integrates seamlessly with Salesforce to improve data sync and workflow automation.
Lead source segmentation
Categorize leads by their source, such as social media, email marketing, or paid ads. This will help you track the effectiveness of your various marketing channels.
How to use: You could segment generated from a LinkedIn ad campaign and tailor your follow-up messages based on the specific content they engaged with, such as a whitepaper or a webinar. You can also try showcasing an event for your newsletter readers or those who've watched a video. Use the LinkedIn Event Inviter Flow to invite event attendees at scale.
Sales and marketing tools for lead segmentation
With so many ways to handle lead segmentation, using tools to automate some tasks makes sense.
PhantomBuster: Ideal for enriching and segmenting leads based on intent data
PhantomBuster is a versatile tool for enriching and segmenting prospects based on intent data. Use it to:
Extract data from social media platforms like LinkedIn.
Use AI to enrich your lead data with valuable insights.
Apply filters to segment leads into specific lists based on behavior, engagement, or job changes.
Sync the data with your CRM.
With its automation capabilities, PhantomBuster streamlines lead segmentation, allowing your team to focus on the leads most likely to convert.
Keep your HubSpot contact up to date with PhantomBuster pre-built automations. Try it free!
Conclusion
Implementing a robust lead segmentation strategy is essential for any sales team looking to optimize their efforts and increase conversions.
With tools like PhantomBuster, you can gather, enrich, and segment your leads more effectively. Try for yourself with PhantomBuster's 14-day free trial.
