Mirror Method Case Study: How One Health Website Segments Its Leads To Boost Engagement

So you managed to launch an opt-in offer on your website that’s working well to convert new visitors into happy email subscribers?

Good job my friend... looks like you made it to the first checkpoint in your journey to lead generation success.

But is that all there is to it?

Do you just sit back and relax now that your email list is finally growing... or is there more you can do to make your list of happy subscribers even more valuable?

Indeed, there is a next step in your lead generation journey and (SPOILER ALERT) it’s called lead segmentation. Read on to learn how you can give your email marketing this boost with a few simple strategies.

What’s Lead Segmentation?

It’s the strategy by which you not only collect new leads, but split your new followers into meaningful groups based on the needs of your business (e.g. age, sex, special interest, profession, outcome desired, etc.). Doing that allows you to send more targeted content and product offers to the people that will find it most useful.

To demonstrate how lead segmentation works, this post will break down the opt-in offer and lead segmentation strategies of a real life health & wellness website to make the theory behind lead segmentation more tangible for you.

And not only will I show you how our example site gets this done for their business, but I’ll also demonstrate how you can deploy the same sort of lead segmentation strategies using both Thrive Leads and Thrive Architect built opt-in forms.

Let’s get cracking!

Lead Segmentation Case Study: ChrisKresser.com

Chris Kresser is a functional medicine practitioner located in Berkley, California that blogs about how to treat chronic illness by addressing root causes to many important health issues:

To capture new leads, Chris deploys several opt-in forms across his site, each of which offers a free e-book on addressing a range of different health issues.

From an advanced lead generation perspective, here’s what’s most interesting about how Chris collects emails: he segments new subscribers into specialized interest categories directly from each of his opt-in forms.

Let’s take a look at Chris’s primary opt-in form (located in the “above the fold” area of his homepage) to see how he gets this done...

Chris Kresser’s Primary Lead Segmentation Strategy

The way Chris segments his leads is actually pretty straightforward.

He simply asks his visitors to select an “I want to improve my…” option from a drop down menu before they click an orange “CHRIS, I’M IN!” submit button:

From the dropdown menu, visitors can then select one of 6 health improvement interest categories that applies most to their particular situation:

1. Weight
2. Energy
3. Digestion
4. Brain
5. Overall Health
6. All of the Above

Depending on which interest a subscriber selects, an email marketing tag can then be assigned to each new subscriber. With the addition of these special interest tags to people in his email list, Chris can then send more targeted campaigns and product offers to each of those unique interest groups.

Pretty slick, right?

How To Setup A Similar List Segmentation Strategy Using Thrive Leads

If you’d like to give your new subscribers the opportunity to segment themselves for you like Chris does, let me address the elephant in the room.

There’s no drop down menu option available in Thrive Leads at the moment…

...but that doesn’t mean you can’t create something just as useful within your own opt-in forms!

To prove my point, look at this Thrive Leads opt-in form template I modified to offer a similar sort of lead segmentation option to potential subscribers:

As you can see from this example, there’s no dropdown menu necessary because all of the segmentation options are presented as their own individual buttons on a Thrive Leads multi-state opt-in lightbox.

This alternative lead segmentation strategy is actually pretty easy to set up: whatever options you’d like to present your potential subscribers with, just provide an action button for it on any multi-state form you create.

Then, when potential subscribers select the option most appropriate for them, a new lightbox state can appear showing a lead generation form created specifically for the special interest option the visitor selected:

Not only will the lead generation element capture a new subscriber’s email (using the email marketing platform that you integrate your Thrive Dashboard with), but that email will also be assigned to a specific category in your email marketing service (either through a tag, a group or on a specific mailing list).

The only additional work you’ll need to do before completing this lead segmentation setup is creating a separate lightbox state for each special interest option you offer.

Once those are all created, you’ll then assign a click action to each of your buttons to open the appropriate signup state which contains that interest specific lead generation form.

So for the Thrive Leads demo example I showed you above, you’d need to create 4 lightbox states to have a unique lead generation state available for the 3 special interest buttons offered:

1. The default state lightbox with 3 special interest button options included on it
2. A lead generation state with a “lose weight” interest tag applied
3. A lead generation state with a “more energy” interest tag applied
4. A lead generation state with an “overall health” interest tag applied

​To simplify the process of creating these new states, Thrive Leads will automatically copy the active state when you hit the "Add new State" button. This avoids having to create each state from scratch.

List segmentation really is that simple when you use Thrive Leads!

What the...?! An Upgraded Website with an Upgraded Lead Segmentation Strategy

Just before I was going to publish this lead segmentation case study post for you on the Thrive Themes blog, guess what happened?

Chris Kresser updated the design of his entire site — including all his opt-in forms!

Oy-vey... queue the facepalm emoticon  >>  (－‸ლ)

The site now looks completely different from all the screenshots above I just showed you (and spent quite a bit of time creating this post around):

Although I did end up pulling all my insanely long hair out this past weekend because of this update (or maybe just donated it to charity and am now being overdramatic...), I quickly realized that the new design didn't invalidate the old strategy and decided to showcase both the new and old designs for this post. 

On top of that, there were even more lead segmentation lessons to be learned from Chris's new site giving this article an upgrade.

Because ChrisKresser.com also changed its lead segmentation strategy in the update, it gave me the idea to showcase yet another cool example of how you can do lead segmentation using Thrive Architect page builder instead this time. 

With that, let’s take a look at what changed on Chris’s homepage.

Lead Segmentation Streamlining

Instead of using a dropdown menu, Chris now shows three Call-to-Action content boxes with “Learn More” text encouraging three different categories of visitors to click on them:

1. Health Enthusiasts
2. Health Coaches
3. Health Practitioners

What does that 3-tiered breakdown of potential subscribers look like to you?

Instead of segmenting visitors by a range of special health interests, Chris now subdivides his email followers into more valuable customer groups: Enthusiasts, Coaches, Practitioners.

That’s because those groups require different content, training and products from Chris to serve their different needs.

So what happens when you click on one of the content boxes? This:

The content boxes flip over and present potential subscribers with relevant free e-books in exchange for an email address.

I’m betting that Chris has learned over time that by segmenting his followers into these three different “customer” types, he is better able to serve each to grow his business.

So now the big question: how can you mimic Chris’s strategy by using the Thrive Architect?

Here’s how...

List Segmentation Using Thrive Architect

If you use Thrive Architect to build your landing pages or blog posts, then recreating Chris Kresser’s new lead segmentation strategy is also pretty easy.

To walk you through this alternative lead segmentation approach, I modified the “No Photoshop Homepage” template from our Thrive Architect landing page template cloud to mimic Chris’s new homepage design:

As you can see in the demo homepage from this image, there’s a header, headline, subhead, and 3 Call-to-Action cards just like on Chris’s new site. Recreating all that for yourself is quick to do in Thrive Architect, especially if you’re just modifying one of our many pro-designed landing page templates.

However, the main difference between Chris’s new homepage and my demo setup is that instead of three different lead magnet cards “flipping over” via a click trigger to reveal their customer specific offer, my version opens either a customer specific Thrive Architect Lightbox or Thrive Leads ThriveBox:

These unique Thrive Architect Lightboxes or Thrive Leads ThriveBoxes then present potential subscribers with the appropriate lead magnet offers and capture emails through lead generation forms that have unique, interest specific tags built into them.

That’s lead segmentation made easy!

Ready To Start Serving Your New Subscribers Better?

Now that you have a few new design ideas and lead segmentation tricks up your sleeve, are you ready to start sorting your new subscribers into more targeted interest groups?

As you can see, the process is pretty easy to setup with either Thrive Architect or Thrive Leads and ultimately, it will help you serve the different segments of your email list even better.

If you have any questions about the strategies I discussed here or how to deploy them with the Thrive Themes toolkit, let me know by leaving a comment below!