10 Segments Ecommerce Businesses Need For Success

Almost everybody has experienced answering their phone only to have an automated message babble irrelevant information at them. Part of the reason such a phenomenon is so annoying is that it is really depersonalized. The listener assumes it isn’t crafted for them specifically so much as designed as a catch-all. As a result, most people hang up or ignore such calls.

In a digital age with so many things vying for customers’ attention, ecommerce businesses cannot afford to have customers tuning out. If the above calls only went out to specific people with specific messages tailored to them, the automated phone calls would approach what marketers call segmentation.

Creating segments is all about figuring out how to keep a customer — or potential customer — engaged. To that end, some segments are more effective than others. Some capture behavior and demographic in ways that make them essential for ecommerce.  

Slicing and Dicing

Segments break down into two main categories: behavioral and demographic. The latter deals with who the customer is, while the former captures what they do.

Everybody belongs to various demographics based on their age, sex, location, race and so forth. Broad data allows marketers to know things about the preferences of certain demographics.

And, of course, ecommerce businesses often cater to certain demographics. A clothing store would likely want to segment their men’s and women’s lines accordingly, a supplement company might target senior women with calcium supplements or a beverage company would want to send out differing messages based on the legal drinking age.

Either way, these broad categories allow ecommerce marketers to break down audiences by these identifiers to show them information that is likely relevant to them. However, this narrows the segment but also has its drawback. In the example of a clothing store, if you only send men’s clothing to men, you are excluding women who might be shopping for their husband or their father or women who prefer to dress in men’s fashions.

This is part of the reason that the second way to segment — based on behavior — is usually more effective. Segmentation based on behavior uses information those interacting with a brand have already divulged to the company. In this way, marketers need to do less guesswork in teasing out the customer’s preferences. All they need to do is create a segment based on the behavior, and the results speak for themselves.

However, some segments are more effective than others. Keep reading to learn which segments are low-hanging fruit and pay dividends for ecommerce.  

The Workshop

But before we get to the top segments, it is important to know how marketers craft them. Creating segments is a combination of making use of a business’s customer relationship management system (CRM), like Salesforce, and the savvy of its marketers. However, which Salesforce suites the company is using determines how marketers go about that process.

In short, it is really about the company’s goals and key performance indicators (KPIs).

That said, there are a few common denominators germane to creating any segment. Marketers need to have a handle on how they want to slice a customer base, which criteria are likely relevant to his or her company’s needs. It might be open rates, clicks or purchases.  

Like a countertop, Salesforce acts as a staging area for marketers to pull in data from disparate systems and assemble it in a meaningful way. A CRM allows marketers to layer different markers atop one another. Maybe the marketer wants to create a segment that is both people who browsed for swimwear and also live on the west coast.

That is possible, but as already mentioned, there is a cost to going granular. Doing so allows marketers to focus their segments in a more desirable way, which in turn typically means fewer people unsubscribing or reporting the message as spam. However, it also excludes potential customers who might fall outside the designated parameters.

Knowing which segments to layer over one another is key. Luckily, there are some tried-and-true segments that resonate for almost any e-commerce business.  

The Heavy Hitters

Abandoned cart: The easiest way to capture customers is to target ones a company already knows are interested in their product. If someone has already browsed the site and placed something in their cart, marketers know they were as close as someone can get to making a purchase. With this segment, marketers can give potential customers that little extra nudge they need to convince them to pull the trigger on the purchase.

Abandoned browse: This segment is similar to the abandoned cart segment. The difference is that the person browsing the site never placed the item in a cart. However, just as above, they are clearly interested enough to view the item and might just need an incentive to follow through. This segment should exclude those in the abandoned cart segment so as to avoid oversend messages.

Welcome: Maybe an obvious segment, but if someone is new to an ecommerce brand, welcoming or thanking them for choosing the brand, apprising them of the promotions available or simply letting them set their preferences for message frequency adds that extra touch that makes customers feel that the company sees them as a person.

Post-purchase: The other end of the spectrum from the welcome segment. Content for this segment includes thanking the customer for the purchase, showing them items other people who made the same purchase bought, informing them of the status of their order — shipping details, etc.. — or perhaps a survey.

Re-engagement: These customers likely haven’t opened or clicked on anything from the business in a while. Creating this segment allows businesses to incentivize former customers to resume their previous habits. This segment can get a bit tricky, running the risk of an unsubscribe or a spam complaint if marketers push too hard to get a customer to return by ignoring their preference to distance themselves from the brand.

Lapsed purchase: Similar to re-engagement, customers in this segment simply haven’t made a purchase in a while. If the customer is still engaged, it is easier to incentivize them to make a purchase. This segment runs a lower risk of an unsubscribe or spam complaint, because the customer is still clicking and opening promotional messages so there still is some level of interest.

Birthday: There is no better feeling than getting something on your birthday. Corporations know this and generally on sign up forms ask customers for their birth date in order to send them a unique offer when their birthday rolls around.

Geographic: Online retailers often have brick-and-mortar stores, so narrowing who lives near those stores — especially when they are having sales — can keep customers interested in the brand.

Warranty reminder: Many products, such as electronics, come with a warranty. Naturally, that warranty expires. Companies can also leverage data they have on how often their customers replace existing products. Creating a segment that reminds customers that their warranty is about to expire or it’s time to repurchase/upgrade can prompt them to purchase another product with a new warranty.

Favorite product: Depending on the business, customers may purchase the same product repeatedly, such as consumable items like chocolate or tobacco. They may have a favorite non-consumable item such as a certain style of T-shirt or trainers. Either way, this segment can be leveraged to alert customers on the status of their favorite products. If it is clothing, maybe it is available in a new color or on sale. Maybe stock is running low or the product is back in stock.  

A Helping Hand

An experienced partner can help ecommerce businesses better understand how to create segments in line with their goals. But it is more likely that a business already knows which segments are effective toward its ends. In that case, a partner can help chart out the journeys for those segments and transport an already effective campaign into the new CRM.

Whatever an ecommerce company’s goals, making use of these relevant segments will position it for success and avoid customers hitting the proverbial “ignore” button the way they do with auto-dialers.