I was approached by
a client some weeks ago to present at
conference some work we did on Developer Loyalty. Now there are a lot satisfaction type surveys out there, but my
client presented a very specific challenge. She was new in the role as the
Director of the Developer Community and needed to understand very quickly
"Who are the developers?" What do they care about? What is their impact on the
business? What investments would most improve their productivity? and increase
their usage of the company's service and thus increase ROI to the company?
At the outset we
knew we had a very diverse community, we needed to segment that community and
understand what made each segment unique.
Technical
Segmentation:
We found an entire
spectrum of technical skill: intrepid amateurs to industry experts. We found a
corresponding spectrum of commercial influence: one time implementors to serial
implementors. This enabled the client to differentiate technical support and
documentation for different segments. Targeting the more sophisticated (and
costly) benefits to the serial implementors who could best drive repeat
business.
Geographic
Segmentation:
Where developers
were located did not correlate one to one to market penetration of commercial
services. For example, not surprising India represented the third
largest geography of developers, but the client had almost no commercial
business there.
That finding
prompted more specific developer marketing to India where there corporate
marketing was not reaching a key community. Additionally, a key growth trend
was spotted in Australia which became a focal point for new market development.
Vertical
Segmentation:
Another actionable learning was in identifying non-traditional vertical market segments that could
represent opportunities for growth. Vertical segmentation revealed a large
number of developers in the non-profits sector signaling a growing market for
the client services.
Beyond the straight
forward segmentation that enabled better targeted benefits delivery, we also
segmented by Loyalty Profiles, using the Apostle model. This model provides
much deeper insight into behavior and motivations than a Satisfaction Index or
the popular Net Promoter Score. More on that in the next blog - Part II!.
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