Customer segmentation divides a broad target audience into subsets based on common needs, interests, and priorities, and enables businesses to create personalized, one-to-one communications with prospective leads. Hitting the sweet spot with your messaging can make the difference between growing a colony of leads or producing a marketing campaign that fails to generate buzz.

HiveTracks, a client of Easyfish Marketing, is a cloud-based tool used to monitor and maintain beehives. HiveTracks used marketing automation to segment its customers, nurturing each group with the right content at the right time.

Beekeepers, ranging from backyard hobbyists to full-scale honey farmers, rely on HiveTracks to keep their bees healthy, productive, and happy.

Like many startup tech companies, HiveTracks originally launched its marketing efforts with broad-based email tactics (a.k.a. “spray and pray” digital marketing) and used a freemium-based model to sell its product. Though the company achieved some initial success with these methods, HiveTracks soon found itself with 16,000 unsegmented contacts and low rates of conversion from free to paid accounts. As a result, HiveTracks engaged Easyfish Marketing to get the hive back on track.

Easyfish developed a marketing automation plan with a straightforward goal: reach the right person, with the right message, at the right time. This included developing a segmentation strategy and implementing workflows and email drip campaigns to nudge HiveTracks’ customers down the sales pipeline.

Easyfish decided to segment HiveTracks’ users into three categories based on the size of their beekeeping operations: backyard beekeepers, sideliners, and commercial apiaries (a fancy word for a collection of beehives). This allowed HiveTracks to send its customers only the most relevant information, nurturing them further down the pipeline.

While most companies make their customers fill out a form, HiveTracks sends a series of introductory emails to customers who have free memberships. These emails contain graphics representing the three general beekeeper types and ask users to identify with a group. Once a user has been categorized, HiveTracks directs him or her to a series of landing pages customized for further segmentation.

A series of workflows adds visitors to specific lists based on their answers or behaviors (e.g., visits to specific pages). HiveTracks then emails the customers on those lists with content that is relevant to their indicated goals and preferences.

HiveTracks developed a series of automation tasks, workflows, and emails designed to further segment its subscribers and cater to their particular interests and challenges. For example, if a subscriber has a question about parasites affecting a bee colony, he or she is added to a list that receives notifications whenever an expert on colony health offers a webinar.

Much like how each bee has a specific role in the hive, each automation tactic played a very specific role in HiveTracks’ success:

HiveTracks implemented an additional rule in its automation procedure to ensure its sales pipeline is constantly moving. After a specified amount of time, unresponsive or inactive leads are added to a separate mailing list where they receive tutorial emails about the next steps to getting their hive tracking set up (a demo, features of an upgraded account, etc.). This dramatically improved HiveTracks’ conversion rates from free trials to paid accounts.

After implementing marketing automation, HiveTracks has:

By using segmentation, HiveTracks has been able to not only inform its clients and increase revenue, but also gain valuable insights into how the company can improve.

HiveTracks discovered that most of its customers were from larger businesses, so it developed a club edition of its application to better target that segment. The company also learned that 70% of its leads use iOS operating systems on their cell phones, so it has begun to create an iPhone app.