Market segmentation to increase attitudinal loyalty

I mentioned behavioral targeting recently on Marketing 2.0 as a way to increase marketing effectiveness. I wanted to come back on this topic in light of a datasheet that you can download from Omniture, to share with you a tip about successful segmentation as described in Wikipedia.

"The requirements for successful segmentation are: homogeneity within the segment, heterogeneity between segments, segments are measurable and identifiable, segments are accessible and actionable, segment is large enough to be profitable.
These criteria can be summarized by the word ADAMS:

• A Actionable: you must have a product for this segment
• D Differential: it must respond differently to a different marketing mix
• A Accessible: it must be possible to reach it efficiently
• M Measurable: size and purchasing power can be measured
• S Substantial: the segment has to be large and profitable enough" -- Wikipedia

I won't come back on all segmentation variables (Geographic, Demographic, Psychographic and Behavioral), you can follow the links for more, but I wanted to highlight the behavioral ones: benefit sought, product usage rate, brand loyalty, product end use, readiness-to-buy stage, decision making unit as Wikipedia refers to it in the Marketing 1.0 world. This is still valid of course, but new dimensions do appear with Marketing 2.0 especially around behavioral analysis. Thanks to web techniques you can easily track, using cookies for instance, what a prospect did before landing on your web site and what retained their attention.

More interesting, in our web 2.0 world, is the way a prospect, or for that matter, a customer expresses his relationship to your brand. This has changed significantly with the web 2.0 advent. As a matter of fact, behavioral targeting and market segmentation offers a powerful way to dialog differently with each segment. Defining your segments along the lines of attitudinal loyalty -- more on customer loyalty on wikipedia -- and remembering ADAMS rules will guide you to the appropriate solution to improve it.