Carta has a wide range of products and services, many of which are tailored to different types of companies. For instance, the needs of a seed-stage startup are much, much different than a Pre-IPO company.

Carta's website, however, was a one-size-fits-all site which spoke to no one because they were trying to speak to all of their target audiences at once. As a result, their conversion rates suffered and they weren't driving as many Marketing Qualified Leads as they needed.

Carta has unique product offerings geared toward early stage startups, late stage startups and an entirely separate line of products for Venture Capital firms (VCs). 

The Carta team hypothesized that if they could message to each audience in a bespoke and relevant way, they would increase their overall website conversion rates and generate more qualified leads.

Define your segments 

The Carta team had a good sense for their customer segments, but needed a clear way to define each for accurate targeting. VCs were easy - anyone from the VC industry. However, they needed to figure out how to differentiate an early stage startup from a late stage startup. 

The Carta Team then looked to their internal CRM data to align customer plan types with different company attributes. They found that using number of employees and amount of funding raised was a reliable way to split these groups. 

Interview the experts to develop custom messaging

Interview your sales & CS teams, customers and prospects to deeply understand the needs of each segment. Find out the biggest problems each segment seeks to solve before buying your product. Work with your product/customer marketing team and your sales team to understand which reference customers resonate most when selling to each segment.

A deep dive on the process the Carta team followed and their interview template can be found here.

Build out the segments in your personalization platform

Accurately identifying each segment is critical to your success in personalization. The Carta team used a combination of data sources to define each segment. They used industry, number of employees and amount of funding raised from Clearbit Reveal to de-anonymize unknown visitors. They combined this with first-party data from Marketo and Salesforce for known visitors, and augmented with visitor behavior data from website navigation patterns using Mutiny. 

Through this combination of first-party, third-party and intent data, the team was able to maximize their audience sizes, making sure as many people as possible saw personalized experiences. 

Build & launch unique experiences for each segment

Mutiny’s ability to integrate with first- and third-party data was a game-changer. Now, they could provide each segment with specific messaging. A seed stage startup, a pre-IPO startup and a VC could finally receive entirely different value props and social proof, and even entire website journeys.

In addition to personalizing content on the homepage, they also customized the pricing page so that early stage startups don’t see plans that were made for more mature companies and larger companies don’t see plans meant for early stage startups. And because they had five pricing plans on the website, this eliminated the decision paralysis that was so often plaguing their conversion efforts.

Learn from Grace Kleaveland Kupczak at 6sense how to personalize your landing pages by industry, strategies for writing relevant content for your core verticals, and the importance of moving fast while experimenting.