Are your event attendees engaged in your current event planning efforts? Have you ever thought about trying different event formats for better event results? Audience segmentation might be an important step you’re missing out on in your event planning process. We will give you everything you need to know about audience segmentation and additional audience segmentation strategies.
Article Outline
What is audience segmentation?
Audience segmentation is the act of grouping your audience under a specific category. These groups can be under demographic, psychographic, purchase history, interests, online behavior, and more.
The purpose of audience segmentation is for marketers to create tailored content that will resonate effectively with their different audience segments. Audiences in a specific segment will most likely respond to a certain marketing message if they can relate to it.
When you successfully segment your audience you can direct your efforts and resources efficiently. Event marketers can also create targeted marketing campaigns, deliver personalized content, and create more relevant marketing messages because they understand their target audience well.
Before you start your audience segmentation process, let’s understand the different types of audience segments or segmentation criteria you can use.
Types of Audience Segmentation
Demographic
Demographics refer to statistical data relating to the population and particular groups within it. When used as an audience segment, demographics involve categorizing a market based on specific, measurable attributes of the population. Demographics are usually the easiest information to collect from your audience because it is more straightforward.
Here’s a list of the demographic categories for your reference:
Age – Common age segments include children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults, and seniors. Each group has distinct characteristics, spending habits, and product preferences.
Gender – Gender segmentation divides the market based on the gender of individuals, typically male, female, and non-binary. Understanding gender differences is important in research as it influences purchasing behavior, product preferences, and media consumption.
Civil Status – Civil Status, or marital status, refers to the legal relationship status of individuals, such as single, married, divorced, or widowed. This demographic factor affects lifestyle, spending patterns, and product needs.
Income – Income segmentation divides the audience based on their financial earnings, typically categorized as low, middle, and high income. Income levels greatly influence purchasing power and product choices. Examples of income segmentation among audiences can be in ranges of annual income salary.
Education – Education segmentation categorizes individuals based on their highest level of completed education, such as a high school diploma, bachelor’s degree, or advanced degrees. Education levels can influence knowledge, attitudes, and purchasing decisions.
Profession – Profession refers to the job or career of individuals, encompassing various roles, industries, and employment statuses such as full-time, part-time, self-employed, or unemployed.
Location – Location segmentation divides the market based on geographic areas, including urban, suburban, and rural regions, as well as specific countries or regions. Geographic location affects accessibility to products, cultural influences, and climate conditions.
Family Size – Another factor to consider is the family size of your audience. Family Size refers to the number of individuals in a household, including single individuals, couples, nuclear families, and extended families. Family size impacts purchasing behavior, lifestyle choices, and product needs.
Religion – Morals, values, and religions are big influencers to an individual’s decision-making. Understanding religious segmentation helps businesses respect and address the unique needs and preferences of different religious groups, ensuring their offerings are culturally sensitive and relevant.
Nationality – Nationality refers to the country of citizenship of your audience. Nationality affects cultural values, language preferences, and buying behavior. Different nationalities may have distinct preferences for products, brands, and marketing styles.
Example of Demographic Segmentation for an Event
A high-end fashion show in New York City uses demographic segmentation by targeting affluent women aged 25-45. The marketing efforts focus on luxury fashion enthusiasts, featuring designers and brands that appeal to this specific age and income group, ensuring the event attracts attendees who are most likely to be interested in the showcased products.
Geographic
Geographic segmentation involves dividing your audience based on their locations. This can include countries, regions, cities, neighborhoods, or even climate zones. By understanding where your audience lives and works, you can tailor your marketing efforts to meet the specific needs and preferences of different geographic segments.
Example of Geographic Segmentation for an Event
A food festival in Texas might focus on attracting attendees from within the state, particularly from cities like Austin, Dallas, and Houston. The event organizers use geographic segmentation to tailor their marketing efforts, highlighting local cuisine and famous Texas chefs to appeal to regional attendees.
Psychographic
Psychographic segmentation divides an audience into categories based on psychological traits, which can include lifestyle, personality, values, opinions, and interests. A deep understanding of your audience’s psychographic setup can help you create targeted messaging and campaigns.
The categories for a psychographic segment can include the following:
Lifestyle
Lifestyle segmentation categorizes individuals based on their daily habits, activities, and interests. This includes hobbies, leisure activities, and preferred ways of spending time and money. To segment an audience by lifestyle, businesses can conduct surveys, analyze purchase histories, and track social media activity to identify common lifestyle traits and preferences.
Motivation
Motivation-based segmentation focuses on the underlying reasons that drive individuals to make decisions and take actions, such as the desire for achievement, need for security, pursuit of pleasure, or drive for social recognition.
Motivations are harder to measure because they are often internal, subjective, and influenced by a variety of personal factors that are not easily quantifiable.
Unlike demographic or geographic data, motivations can vary widely even among individuals within the same segment, and they can change over time based on new experiences, information, or circumstances.
Social Status
Social status reflects an individual’s place within the social hierarchy, often determined by factors such as income, occupation, education, and lifestyle. Understanding social status helps marketers tailor their messages to resonate with different segments.
Social Issues
Depending on your event topic or the type of your product, you can segment audiences based on their stand on social issues. This form of psychographic segmentation considers opinions on topics such as environmental sustainability, social justice, and political beliefs.
Personal Interest
Know what your audience likes in terms of hobbies, pop culture, passions, and other recreational activities. Successfully segmenting your audience not only increases engagement but also potentially increases conversion rate, as consumers are more likely to respond positively to messages that align with their personal interests and passions
Opinion
When you have a set topic for your event, you can conduct focus group discussions to gain your audience’s opinion. For example, a tech company might segment its audience based on their opinions about innovation and technology, targeting tech-savvy consumers with messages about cutting-edge features and advancements.
These are helpful for event marketers especially when they are planning for interactive activities for their events.
Activity
Activity-based segmentation focuses on the behaviors and actions that define how individuals spend their time like daily routines, leisure activities, and purchasing behaviors. Understanding these activities allows brands to target consumers based on their lifestyle choices.
Example of Psychographic Segmentation for an Event
A wellness retreat targets individuals who prioritize health and wellness in their lifestyles. By segmenting the audience based on psychographic factors such as health consciousness and interest in holistic practices, the event can offer tailored activities like yoga, meditation, and nutrition workshops that resonate with their specific interests and values.
Behavioral Segmentation
Segment your audience based on their behavior towards your business. Behavior can be in the form of a purchase, a store visit, or even a visit to your website. The different criteria you can check for behavioral segmentation can be the following:
Purchase frequency
For event planning, purchase frequency segmentation can help organizers understand how often attendees participate in similar events. This allows event planners to identify frequent attendees and tailor their marketing efforts to encourage continued participation.
For instance, a conference series might offer special early bird discounts or VIP experiences to loyal attendees. Analyzing ticket sales data, monitoring registration histories, and utilizing event management software can provide insights into purchase frequency, helping planners design targeted promotions and engagement strategies.
User status
User status segmentation in event planning involves categorizing attendees based on their relationship with the event. This includes first-time attendees, repeat participants, and lapsed attendees who haven’t attended recent events. Understanding user status helps organizers develop strategies to attract new attendees, retain regulars, and re-engage past participants.
User status
User rate segmentation focuses on how much a customer uses a product or service, often categorized as heavy, medium, or light users. Tracking this metric is especially relevant for services or SaaS products. Understanding user rates helps businesses allocate resources effectively and design marketing campaigns that resonate with each group.
Loyalty Status
Tag your customers based on their loyalty and relationship with your business. Loyalty status segmentation categorizes customers based on their loyalty to a brand, typically divided into loyal customers, switchers, and non-loyal customers.
This segmentation allows businesses to tailor their retention strategies, such as offering loyalty programs, exclusive rewards, or personalized experiences to loyal customers.
Readiness / Customer Journey Stage
Readiness can be assessed on where your audience is in the customer’s journey. Categories can include unaware, aware, informed, interested, and intending to buy.
Understanding the customer path helps businesses tailor their marketing efforts to guide customers through the buying process. For example, customers at the awareness stage might need educational content, while those ready to buy might benefit from special offers or demonstrations. Surveys, website analytics, and lead scoring can provide insights into customer readiness.
Benefits Sought
Companies or organizations usually conduct surveys of their target audience. Survey questionnaires usually have questions on the audience’s expectations of the event or what their expectations are for future events or further improvements.
Example of Behavioral Segmentation for an Event
A tech conference might segment its audience based on purchase frequency. They offer exclusive early bird tickets to past attendees who have consistently participated in previous years. This incentivizes loyal attendees to return while also creating a sense of exclusivity and reward for their repeat participation.
Methods of Audience Segmentation
There are different methods of audience segmentation depending on your existing data and processes. We’ve listed the following methods so you can check which ones are applicable to you.
Surveys and Questionnaires
Surveys and questionnaires are a direct method of gathering information about your audience. By crafting well-thought-out questions, you can gain insights into demographics, preferences, behaviors, and expectations. Asking these questions can be at the beginning of your event planning process and can be included in your event registration forms.
Market Research
Market research involves systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data about your audience and the market they operate in. This method includes analyzing industry reports, studying competitors, and understanding market trends. Some market researchers go to forums like Reddit, Quora, or Facebook Groups to see what their target market is talking about.
By identifying gaps and opportunities, you can segment your audience based on industry needs, preferences, and behaviors. For instance, understanding market demands can help you tailor event themes and content to attract specific audience segments.
Data Analytics / Website Analytics
Data analytics involves examining large sets of data to uncover patterns, correlations, and trends. By leveraging data analytics tools, you can segment your audience based on various factors such as age, location, and past interactions.
For example, you can link your analytics tool to your event registration site to see your data about your visitors and target audience. When hosting multiple events, you can see which event page is attracting the most traffic, etc.
Social Media Analytics
People today are almost always online. Checking social media insights on your audience can be valuable for your marketing campaigns. There are sophisticated tools to track social media analytics like Hootsuite, Sprout, Buffer, and Buzzsumo.
By monitoring metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and follower demographics, you can segment your audience based on their social media behavior and interests. This method helps you understand what content resonates with different segments and tailor your social media strategies accordingly.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) involve using spatial data to segment your audience based on their geographic location. This method helps you understand regional preferences, behaviors, and needs, allowing for targeted event planning and marketing. By mapping out your audience’s locations, you can identify areas with high concentrations of potential attendees and tailor your event logistics and promotions accordingly.
When you do paid media, being prepared with your audience’s location can help you efficiently run ads by specifically adding a budget for your ads to appear in your target audience’s specific location.
Where to use audience segmentation
Ads
Audience segmentation is crucial in advertising because it allows marketers to tailor their messages to specific groups, resulting in more effective campaigns. By segmenting audiences based on demographics, behaviors, or interests, businesses can create personalized ads that resonate with each group.
For example, you can set what is called ad groups on Meta Ads Manager where you can add your audience’s interests, location, and etc to deliver highly targeted social media ads.
Emails
Event marketers can send targeted email campaigns depending on your audience segment. The common segmentation is usually labeled as new subscribers, repeat customers and loyal customers. Email marketers usually have a setup welcome, nurture, and sales sequence for different audience segments.
Events
Segmentation is also useful for event planning because it gives you insights on what attendees are looking for when they attend an event. Whether it’s a corporate conference, a product launch, or a community gathering, understanding the distinct needs and interests of various attendee groups allows event organizers to tailor sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities accordingly.
Customer Service
In customer service, segmentation helps organizations provide more personalized and efficient support. By segmenting customers based on factors such as purchase history, loyalty status, or past interactions, customer service teams can tailor their approach to meet the specific needs of each group.
Product recommendations
Audience segmentation also helps with the algorithm and can recommend specific products depending on the audience segment they belong to.
For example, an online retailer can recommend complementary products to customers who have purchased a specific item or suggest trending items to those who frequently browse new arrivals. This personalized approach increases the likelihood of purchases, boosts average order value, and enhances customer satisfaction.
Further Market Research
Market studies and research can benefit from existing audience segmentation. Audience segmentation can serve as a starting data for deeper and more For example, surveys and focus groups can be customized for each segment to gather more relevant and actionable data. Analyzing the responses from different segments helps identify trends, market gaps, and opportunities that might be overlooked in a broader, one-size-fits-all approach.
Tools to Help in Audience Segmentation
Survey Forms (Typeform, Jotform)
Survey forms, such as those created with Typeform or Jotform, are essential tools for audience segmentation. These platforms allow businesses to design engaging and interactive surveys to gather detailed information about their audience’s preferences, behaviors, and demographics.
Event Registration Forms (Event Espresso and Event Smart)
You can segment your audience once they register on your event website. For event registration tools, we recommend you use Event Espresso and Event Smart to get your money’s worth. You can enjoy features like customizing your event registration forms. By capturing data such as demographics, preferences, and specific interests, these forms help segment the audience into meaningful categories.
This segmentation enables organizers to tailor event experiences, communications, and follow-ups to each group’s unique needs, enhancing attendee satisfaction and engagement. Unlike other ticketing platforms, both Event Espresso and Event Smart do not charge any commission fees on an unlimited number of tickets sold.
Customer Relationship Management (Salesforce)
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a tool that helps businesses manage and analyze their interactions with current and potential customers. It stores customer information, such as contact details and purchase history, and tracks communications and interactions.
Salesforce is a type of tool that allows businesses to gather, store, and analyze detailed customer information, including purchase history, interaction records, and demographic data. This comprehensive view of each customer enables precise segmentation, allowing companies to create personalized marketing campaigns, improve customer service, and identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.
Data Analytics (Google Analytics)
Tracking your website visitors, profile, and online behavior can be achieved through tools like Google Analytics. Google Analytics also offers advanced features like audience reports and custom segments, allowing for more granular analysis of user data and helping businesses make data-driven decisions to optimize their digital presence.
Social Media Analytics (Hootsuite, Sprout)
Comments, shares, and the online behavior of your social media audience can be tracked with social media analytics tools like Hootsuite and Sprout. Features like sentiment analysis, trend tracking, and engagement metrics help marketers understand what drives interaction and loyalty among different audience segments, enabling more effective and targeted social media strategies.
Some Audience Segmentation Tips
Know when to stop
Effective audience segmentation requires striking a balance between precision and practicality. While it’s tempting to create highly detailed segments to cater to every possible customer nuance, it’s essential to know when to stop. Over-segmentation can lead to complexity, making it difficult to manage and execute marketing strategies effectively.
Think of your customer’s buyer journey
Different stages of the buyer journey—from awareness to consideration to decision—require different marketing approaches. You can start by mapping your buyer’s journey from their current state to where they want to be. Map out the hindrances or hesitations in every stage of their journey to reach their desired outcome and dream. From there, you can get valuable insights and start segmenting them into groups depending on their stage.
Select the right partner to aid your audience segmentation process
Choosing the right partner or tool to assist with your audience segmentation process is essential for achieving accurate and actionable results. Whether it’s a data analytics platform, a CRM system, or a marketing agency, ensure that your partner has the expertise and capabilities to handle your specific needs.
Listen to your audience segments
Some might ask, “How can audience segmentation enhance your inbound marketing efforts?” When you have an accurate audience segmentation, you can significantly enhance your inbound marketing efforts because you can create content that your audience cares about. By speaking their language, understanding their desires, and addressing their pain points, you can effectively create targeted content that can enhance engagement.
Segment your Audience and Make Effective Campaigns
The content you produce and the marketing actions you take becomes more meaningful when you are clear with your audience segments. Since events are a major part of today’s marketing strategy, you can start collecting data from your attendees that you can segment.
Use Event Espresso or Event Smart for your event registration needs. Event Espresso is a WordPress plug-in that accepts event registrations and secure payment collection. If your website is not on WordPress, you can use Event Smart.
Both platforms enable you to customize your event registration forms to make it easier for you to segment your audience. Check out our live demo now or try our 14-day free trial.