For Richer, for Poorer

How -- and why -- to segment customer lists by income and brand affinity.

If you’ve been following my advice about segmenting your databases to find nuggets of valuable customers and prospects, here’s another powerful recommendation: brand names and who buys them.

Simmons‘ spring 2004 survey presents some pretty telling findings:

Athletic Shoes
Quintile Household
Income ($)
Most Popular
Brands
First 75,000 and greater ASICS
Second 50,000-74,999 Avia
Third 30,000-49,999 Converse
Fourth 15,000-29,999 Fila
Fifth Less than 15,000 LA Gear
Athletic Shoes
Quintile Household
Income ($)
Most Popular
Brands
First 75,000 and greater BMW
Second 50,000-74,999 Lincoln
Third 30,000-49,999 Kia
Fourth 15,000-29,999 Mercury
Fifth Less than 15,000 N/A
Source: Simmons, 2004

Additional statistics from Nielsen//NetRatings reveal Internet use by those with household incomes over $150,000 grew by about 20 percent in the last year. Compared to other groups, these high earners spend more time online (76 hours) and view more pages (2,126 pages) per month.

What can we learn from this?

If you sell multiple brands in any category, you can test two things to identify which people are most likely to buy certain brands:

  • Overlay your database with household income data so records contain a code that roughly equates to the quintiles above. If your overlay shows 1,209 people in your database make over $100,000 a year, those might be your first quintile. Market higher-end or luxury brands to these customers.
  • Track, if you don’t already, which brands customers buy. If someone has purchased Armani, TAG Heuer, Prada, Bose, or other top brands, code them as your first quintile as well.

And that’s just the beginning.

Say you sell 50 different brands of apparel and know which customers purchased which brands. You can develop a series of year-round email messages for each brand based on specific trigger events:

  • Announce a new line of merchandise has arrived.
  • Run a preferred customer brand-name sale.
  • Liquidate overstock by emailing customers who’ve purchased that brand and may want to again.

If you sell books or music, you can do the same thing. In this case, the author or artist is the brand. When John Grisham comes to a local store for a book signing, you can send an event notification to people who purchased books by him and people who purchased books by other authors in the same genre.

Brand is just one example of data that may be available in your database. This strategic thought process can be applied to any number of different data variables. The key is to build a model with strong predictability to generate a positive response. Amazon.com has made billions doing exactly what’s described above. You should do it, too, and work toward your first billion!

Want more email marketing information? ClickZ E-Mail Reference is an archive of all our email columns, organized by topic.

Subscribe to get your daily business insights

Whitepapers

US Mobile Streaming Behavior
Whitepaper | Mobile

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

5y

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

Streaming has become a staple of US media-viewing habits. Streaming video, however, still comes with a variety of pesky frustrations that viewers are ...

View resource
Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups
Whitepaper | Analyzing Customer Data

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups

5y

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics f...

Data is the lifeblood of so many companies today. You need more of it, all of which at higher quality, and all the meanwhile being compliant with data...

View resource
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people
Whitepaper | Digital Marketing

Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its peopl...

2y

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. It provides expert insight on how companies can ret...

View resource
Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy
Report | Digital Transformation

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy

1m

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Exp...

Customers decide fast, influenced by only 2.5 touchpoints – globally! Make sure your brand shines in those critical moments. Read More...

View resource