5 Marketing Segmentation Ideas for Asset Managers

Effective marketing segmentation is crucial for reaching the right audience with the right message. By strategically dividing your audience into specific segments, you can tailor your communications to address their unique needs and preferences, ultimately driving engagement and fostering stronger relationships. This article explores five segmentation ideas that can help asset managers optimize their marketing efforts and achieve better results.

1. Current, Prospective, and Past Clients

Segmenting your audience into current, prospective, and past clients is essential. Provide current clients with resources to facilitate high-quality client conversations. Show prospects the depth of your portfolio team's expertise through personalized insights and data-driven reports. For past clients, maintain engagement during key product launches and market events to remind them of your value and keep your firm top-of-mind for future opportunities. Leveraging CRM tools to track interactions and tailor communications can significantly enhance these relationships.

2. Asset Class and Investment Vehicle Interest

Asset managers are constantly presenting "new ideas" to advisors. To stand out, personalize and prioritize your messaging based on the asset classes and investment vehicles your audience is already interested in. Utilize data analytics to understand their investment habits and preferences or tap into data providers. By doing so you can craft messages that directly address their needs and investment strategies. This approach not only captures their attention but also positions your firm as a thought leader in specific asset classes, fostering deeper connections and trust.

3. Historical Engagement Level

Understanding your audience's engagement level can help uncover new opportunities. Segment your contacts into highly engaged, marginally engaged, and unengaged groups. For highly engaged clients, provide regular, in-depth updates and exclusive insights to maintain their interest. For marginally engaged contacts, identify barriers to engagement and test different catalysts to boost their interest, such as webinars, personalized content, or targeted offers. For unengaged segments, consider a re-engagement campaign with compelling incentives or new value propositions. By matching your communication cadence to their engagement level, you can optimize your marketing efforts and improve overall response rates.

4. Past Lost Opportunities

Look out for contacts entering new buying cycles after previous lost opportunities. Develop direct follow-up sequences for these individuals, highlighting any new developments, successes, or changes that address their previous concerns. Offering exclusive insights or invitations to special events can also rekindle their interest. Additionally, conduct a thorough analysis of past interactions to identify patterns and tailor your approach accordingly. This targeted strategy not only reignites interest but also demonstrates your commitment to meeting their needs, increasing the likelihood of converting them into clients.

5. Exclusively Marketing-Engaged or Sales-Engaged

Knowing how your contacts prefer to engage with you is crucial. Some advisors may favor traditional follow-up calls, while others, more digitally inclined, prefer conducting their research independently. For the former, ensure timely and personalized phone calls that address their specific needs and queries. For the latter, focus on providing rich, informative digital content such as detailed reports, whitepapers, and interactive tools that they can explore at their own pace. Segmenting your audience based on their engagement preferences allows you to allocate resources more efficiently and increase the effectiveness of both marketing and sales efforts.

6. CIOs and Firm Leadership

Support multi-threaded selling by ensuring that key decision-makers, like CIOs and firm leadership, are familiar with your firm well before a finals meeting. Develop a targeted communication plan that includes regular updates on industry trends, thought leadership articles, and exclusive insights into your firm's strategies and successes. Hosting exclusive events or roundtables for these executives can also foster direct engagement and build a stronger rapport. Selective, strategic messaging can lay a strong foundation for closing deals and making your firm a recognized and trusted name in the industry.

These segmentation strategies can help asset managers tailor their marketing efforts more effectively, ensuring they reach the right audience with the right message at the right time. By leveraging data analytics and CRM tools, personalizing content, and understanding the unique needs and preferences of different segments, asset managers can enhance client engagement, build stronger relationships, and ultimately drive better business outcomes.