Customer segmenting is the process to group customers that are similar in some way.
Uses of customer segmenting
The main reason for customer segmenting is to send marketing messages to only part of your customer base.
This might be due to having limited stock, incentives/coupons that are relevant to only some people, or as a way to test an offer before everyone can see it.
The other use of customer segmenting is on the metrics-side, specifically measuring how a group of customers perform. They can be compared to your overall customer base or other groups as an easy way to benchmark.
Customer segmenting strategies
There are a lot of strategies to segment by. Simple ones include:
- location
- demographic data (e.g. gender, language)
- visit/click behavior in your store
- number of orders
- amount spent
The last two touch on some more complex segmenting options, ones around customer behavior.
Using customer behavior to segment is nice because if you pick the right behaviors, the system can self-adjust which makes optimization easy. e.g. segmenting customers who buy the most to send more marketing messages will cause them to buy more, which causes more marketing messages...
Getting start with customer segmenting
If you're getting started with customer analysis, customer grading is the easiest to understand and make decisions based. It works well for small stores all the way up to mid-sized stores (say under 100,000 customers). With larger stores it becomes limited and something like RFM should be used.
Articles for further reading
The newest articles are at the top.
- Learn how customer groups behave over-time with a cohort report
- Customer Segmenting
- Finding your 1% customers
- Focus marketing to your customers who spend the most
- Retaining customers with RFM segmenting
- Combine RFM segments into the visual Customer Grids
- Automatic Segments give you advice to reach and convert your repeat customers
- Prepare your marketing winners and experiments
- Schedule anniversary campaigns for a regular revenue bump
- Tag customers with their customer grades in Shopify
- Customer grade filters added to Repeat Customer Insights
- Automatic customer segmentation examples
- Customer tagging comes to Repeat Customer Insights
- Using customer grades to define valuable customer behavior
- Let your customer segmenting system do the hard work
- Customer segments to watch for your best customers and defecting customers
- New release: Customer Grading report
- Boost your sales by detecting and keeping VIP customers
- RFM analysis for Shopify stores: a comprehensive guide
- Be careful sending incentives to this customer segment
- Use your existing customers to attract new customers
- Selecting the best customer segmenting model for your Shopify store
- Pair customer segmentation with advice
- Customer segment sizing for smaller Shopify stores
- Find your whales in Shopify: the customers who place large orders
- Automatic segments help smaller Shopify stores retain customers
- Starting repeat purchase analysis in Shopify
- Use your low-quality customers to better understand your loyal customers
- How to show appreciation to your best customers
- Move beyond date-based promotions and into segmented promotions
- Combine your customer analysis for the best results and unique insights
- Figure out if your store and products are sticky or if they lose customers
- Customer segmenting is the bedrock of effective marketing personalization
- Before starting any loyalty program, identify who your best customers are
- Digging into customer details to find your best customers
- Using Shopify's Customer segments to find loyal customers
- Use your data exports to learn how your store evolves
- Why RFM has no set points that determine a customer's ranking
- Measuring the results from marketing tactics from month-to-month with RFM
- Segmenting by comparing to your average customer
- Find the loyal customers who spent the most in your Shopify store
- New customer filters for RFM scores released
- New Customer Grid snapshot to be taken on the 1st
- Imperfect optimizations can yield benefits for your Shopify store
- Released: compare how your customer segments have changed over time
- Big orders are a distraction from long-term Shopify store success
- Unstick your stuck AOVs
- A checklist for building better campaigns
- Most valuable 80/20 customer segments for your Shopify store
- See how your customer segments have changed with the Customer Grid History
- Adapt your marketing to avoid your worst customers
- Using alternative customer segmenting models when your Shopify store is still growing
- How customer behavior in one sales channel can impact your other channels
- Giving away too much revenue due to a segmenting mistake
- Use customer segmenting to give customers what they want
- More powerful customer grading algorithm to better understand your customer behavior
- How your customers automatically decay with RFM
- How is a Shopify customer assigned automatic segments?
- How RFM is used by the Customer Grid to segment customers into behavior groups
- An ACME catalog of customer segmenting options
- Run a sale next week in your Shopify store
- Finding which customers are active and spending the most with your Shopify store
- Finding your consistent big spenders in Shopify
- How many customers do you need to start segmenting your marketing
- Put a name on it: naming your customer segments
- Throw your emails into the arena
- Where the Automatic Segments get their customer thresholds in Repeat Customer Insights
- The failure of using too large of a group
- Surviving the relatives
- Customer segmenting for new and smaller Shopify stores
- Better customer segmenting by looking at more than one analysis
- Finding your most loyal customers in Shopify
- Squawk, squawk, squawk marketing
- Help your customers stick around through uncertainty
- The segment types Repeat Customer Insights creates automatically for your Shopify store
- Not every Shopify store needs customer segmenting
- Segmenting your traffic into different buying groups using Google Analytics
- How to assemble a VIP customer list in Shopify
- Segment based on what customers do, instead of what they say
- Don't pass over your best customers to appease the unproven
- Give each customer segment a purpose
- How RFM self-adjusts as you sell better and more expensive products like subscriptions
- How to find the top 1% of your customers using RFM
- Be clear with your customer segmenting objectives
- Uncovering your potential best customers
- Visualize your entire Shopify customer base with the Customer Grids
- Lousy customer segmenting from Comcast
- How Automatic Customer Segmenting can help you develop better marketing campaigns
- Automatic customer segmenting, without any AI, tricks, or gimmicks
- Dangers of unsegmented marketing
- Segmenting your Average Order Value data in Shopify
- How Repeat Customer Insights uses RFM segmenting for Shopify stores
- Using the Repeat Customer Insights export data
- An illustration of why mail merges are not personalization
- Make every Friday your Black Friday
- Launch to your repeat customers on Shopify
- Why Customers Disappear After the First Sale -- and How to Keep Them
- 3 classic customer segments you should focus on
- Take advantage of every order to learn about your customers
- Shopify customers you are at risk of losing
- The segment of customers who just can't get enough
- Create your first customer segment in 3 minutes using Shopify