6 Smart Strategies for Segmenting Your Dynamic CTAs

Pamela Vaughan
Pamela Vaughan

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Are you using calls-to-action in your marketing? What about dynamic calls-to-action? As far as I'm concerned, dynamic calls-to-action are the only calls-to-action.

dynamic calls-to-action: image shows chameleon on tree

Not hip to the difference? Whereas a standard CTA is the same for every viewer, a dynamic call-to-action (CTA) -- or a Smart CTA as we refer to it in HubSpot's software -- is one that changes based on the person viewing it. Dynamic CTAs can change based on a person's profile data or history of interactions with that particular company or website. Because of that, dynamic CTAs are much more personalized to the viewer.   

And if you weren't aware, personalization = more effective marketing. When we analyzed over 93,000 calls-to-action from our database of customers, we found that calls-to-action targeted to the user had a 42% higher view-to-submission rate than calls-to-action that were the same for all visitorsIn other words, if you're not taking the time to personalize your CTAs, you're leaving quite a few conversions on the table. Download Now: 28 Free CTA Templates

So what are some ways you can target your dynamic CTAs on your blog, website, or in your email marketing? Here are a few ideas to get your wheels turning.

6 Strategies for Targeting Dynamic CTAs in Your Marketing 

1) Promote Different Offers to Different Personas

If you're a savvy marketer, you've likely bucketed your target audience into different buyer personas. And as you know, different personas have different interests and needs. So why not use what you know about your audience to cater different offers to those different personas?

In our marketing at HubSpot, for example, we might show our ecommerce audience a CTA for an ebook about how to get started with ecommerce marketing, but to our nonprofit audience, we may show a CTA to sign up for our upcoming webinar about content ideas to help boost fundraising dollars. Much more effective than showing both groups a more general offer that only slightly appeals to both audiences, eh? Download this free template to help you map content to your various buyer personas.

2) Promote Different Offers to People in Different Lifecycle Stages 

When it comes to CTAs, the persona level isn't the only way to segment your audience. Try thinking about the different stages in your sales cycle. Someone who is visiting your website for the very first time is probably much less qualified to buy from you than a visitor who has already downloaded some of your content and attended a product webinar. As a result, different offers will likely appeal to each of these groups.

mapping-marketing-offers

With dynamic CTAs, you don't have to risk neglecting any one of these audiences -- you can show a different CTA to appeal to people in each of these lifecycle stages. So maybe you show a free trial offer to those more qualified visitors, and an educational ebook to those brand new visitors. Learn more about mapping content to lifecycle stages in this post.

3) Promote Different Offers Based on Pages Visitors Have Seen 

Visits to certain pages on your website can tell you a lot about individual contacts. If someone has visited your pricing page, for instance, there's a good chance they're actively evaluating your products or services and are much closer to buying than someone who hasn't explored your website past your blog. That sounds like a great opportunity to promote some of your more product-focused offers, like a product demo or a trial. 

This kind of page-based segmentation can also be great for retargeting. Say a visitor landed on the registration page for your upcoming live event, but didn't sign up. Maybe you could show them a CTA that offers a discount code for that event to entice them to register.

4) Promote Different Offers to People Who Have Already Downloaded/Signed Up for an Offer 

Once that person has registered for your live event, there's no sense promoting a call-to-action for that same event to them, right? Don't waste the opportunity -- show them something else instead! Ideally, you'd offer something that helps to propel them further down the marketing funnel, from one lifecycle stage to the next. 

5) Promote Offers Based on What People Have Already Shown Interest In

Think of it like the Netflix recommendations of CTAs. Depending on what types of content people have viewed or downloaded from you in the past, you can get a sense of what those visitors are interested in. Use that information to show them CTAs for offers that appeal to those same interests. For example, if a visitor downloaded our introductory ebook about using Twitter for business, knowing they have an interest in Twitter, we could choose to show them a CTA for our intermediate-level ebook about how to use Twitter to generate leads.

6) Customize the Messaging of the Same Offer to Appeal to Different Audiences 

Sometimes you truly do want everyone to see a CTA for the same offer. Maybe it's for your brand new, yearly research report that appeals to a wide variety of audiences, and you're trying to get it seen by as many people as possible. No need to use dynamic CTAs for that, right? Wrong. The offer may be the same for everyone, but the way you position it doesn't have to be. Personalizing the copy and messaging of your CTA can help you appeal to different audiences and generate more clicks.

For example, in promoting registration for our upcoming INBOUND conference, we might create a CTA that highlights the opportunity to attend sessions that will teach attendees how to use HubSpot's software more effectively and promote that version of the CTA to HubSpot customers, whereas we might create a different CTA that features the performance of Janelle Monáe at INBOUND and promote that version to brand new visitors. 

What other strategies do you use for segmenting your dynamic calls-to-action? Share them in the comments!

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Topics: Smart Content

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