Get Started with Actionable Segmentation

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Explain customer segmentation in banks.
• Explain the issues with building detailed customer segments.
• Describe the importance of Actionable Segmentation.
• List the key elements of Actionable Segmentation.

What Is Customer Segmentation?

Customer segmentation is an approach in which a diverse customer base is grouped into smaller groups of related customers. These groups are segmented based on criteria that include age, geography, income, and spending habits that influence the marketing of a bank’s products and services. Banks use customer segmentation to know their customers better and offer them customized products and services.

In the financial marketing landscape, top marketers recognize customer segmentation as a critical strategy to market their services. Banks have different target audiences for different products and services. To cater to the specific needs of customers, banks must duly sort them into groups or segments based on the customers’ shared attributes.

Customer segmentation is often a top marketing priority for banks, and for good reason. Segmentation solutions help banks group customers by buying behavior, so that banks can offer tailored products and services. Moreover, by better understanding customer preferences, marketers can maximize cross and up-selling opportunities, and encourage customers to explore related services. Segmentation also helps banks to:

• Decide on the correct promotional content for each customer.
• Select the correct marketing channels for the audience.
• Identify new and profitable segments, and launch innovative products and services.

The Need for Customer Segments at Cumulus

Cumulus Bank has a broad customer base and its customers prefer personalized products and services. Each customer has a buying intent that drives their buying behavior towards a bank’s product or service. If the bank delivers on the customer’s requirements, they choose the bank over the competition. Cumulus Bank needs its sales team to also segment their book of business and plan a targeted outreach so they can sell effectively. Here’s why Cumulus is looking for a solution to effectively segment its customers.

• Frontline finance professionals must search quickly, filter, manually group, and format customer data to perform client outreach on an individual basis or as a group.
• All the relevant data is spread across different entities in the object-oriented multi-tenant architecture of the Salesforce CRM.
• The finance professionals also need lists to do a timely, personalized client outreach that’s extremely effective in building and strengthening customer relationships.
• Existing alternatives such as spreadsheets provide a disjointed experience to the users.

Right now, the road is bumpy for Cumulus Bank. The entire team is struggling with customer data management, data accessibility, customer targeting, customer outreach, and customer engagement. They’re looking for a solution that can provide:

• Segmentation with cross-object filters
• Simple list curation
• Admin-configured data sources
• Collaborative outreach
• Tracking of outreach outcomes

The Cumulus Team

Meet Matt O’Brien, the trusty Salesforce admin at Cumulus. Matt has a high caliber to solve business problems by building, configuring, and automating the technology solutions.

Ryan Dobson, who’s a financial advisor at Cumulus, consults Matt for help with their client outreach and engagement requirements. Matt believes Actionable Segmentation for Financial Services Cloud (FSC) is the best solution for these requirements. Ryan loves what he hears and he’s eager to know more about the solution. Follow along as Matt gives Ryan an overview of Actionable Segmentation

The Actionable Segmentation Solution

Ryan can use Actionable Segmentation to segment similar client profiles, curate them, and design timely and personalized client outreach programs. 

Actionable list definitions and actionable lists are the key elements of the Actionable Segmentation solution. Ryan can create actionable lists for various outreach initiatives. The solution enables front-line sales teams to build rich customer segments and prioritize client engagement. As a result, they develop deeper customer relationships and grow the business effectively.

Matt lists the features that can benefit Ryan and his team.

• Build and use data sources with relevant cross-object information needed for filtering.
• Create an actionable list of clients by filtering cross-object information.
• Share and assign the actionable lists for collaborative execution.
• Track execution progress on selected clients.

Key Steps of Actionable Segmentation

Here’s a flow diagram that shows the tasks that key users perform using Actionable Segmentation.

And here’s a deeper dive into those users and the results obtained from each step.

Up Next

Ryan is impressed by Actionable Segmentation’s potential to solve Cumulus’s personalized targeted outreach needs, and avoid the pitfalls of limited client outreach and engagement. He asks Matt to set up the solution for Cumulus.

In the next unit, follow along as Matt prepares the org for Actionable Segmentation. 

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Actionable Segmentation
• Salesforce Help: Actionable Segmentation Basics