Giving away too much revenue due to a segmenting mistake

The other day I received an offer to fill out a survey to get 10% my next order at a store I buy from frequently.

Minutes later, I got a second offer but this time for 15%.

Same email.

Same survey.

Sent to my same email address.

Different discount.

Of course I used the 15% off one but I would have been happy with the 10% one. That's 5% less revenue for the company (multiplied by the number of customers who redeem it).

Something probably got screwed up in their email software so I was emailed twice. Perhaps my account happened to be in two different segments or it could have been a logic error and many/all customers were sent the larger offer. Mistakes like this happen all the time.

But at least the company is trying to send segmented offers to their list. That's the first step that many ecommerce stores don't get around to, even though it can improve responsiveness to whatever you offer.

If you'd like to get started with segmenting, Repeat Customer Insights creates a number of segments for you automatically. If you want a quick option, use the 5 customer grades for your segments. They've been updated and work well for sending different offers to.

Eric Davis

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Topics: Customer segmenting Discount Email marketing

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