Ecommerce marketing has evolved beyond a one-size fits all approach. Customer segmentation is one of the most effective marketing strategies. Why?

Customer segmentation is a way to break down your customer base into smaller segments according to who they are. This eliminates the guesswork and allows you to know what kind of marketing is most effective with your customers. This allows you to automate targeted ecommerce marketing and still be personalized. This allows you to create and operate your customer engagement services and marketing automation services virtually, which is a necessity in today’s world. It doesn’t matter if you are using mobile apps or a virtual telephone service via Video.

Segmenting customers involves dividing your customers into smaller groups with similar interests. You can personalize your marketing to these groups based upon their actions during the customer journey. This allows you to be more relevant to them and respond to their needs and wants.

How can you achieve this? For eight tips on personalizing ecommerce marketing, read the following.

Tips for segmenting customers to personalize your e-commerce marketing

Learn the models that you can use for segmenting your customers

Understanding the history and methods behind segmenting customers is important. This will enable you to approach the process with the knowledge you need to not only segment your customers but also personalize your ecommerce marketing.

You have seven options to separate your customers. Each of these models can be used to separate your customer base into subgroups. This will enable you to target your desired audience and personalize your online marketing.

Although the list doesn’t include all customer segregation, it will give you an idea of how to organize your customers.

• Segmentation of Demographics: Age, gender, income and marital status

• Geographic segmentation: Country, state, city or town

• Segmentation psychographic: Personality, attitude and values. Interests.

• Technographic segmentation: mobile, desktop, apps, software

• Segmentation of behavior: Tendencies, frequent actions, products or features use and habits

• Segmentation based on customer needs: the product or service that is essential and what customers need

• Segmentation based on Values: The economic value of certain customer groups to the company.

Define your customer segmentation goals

This is the end game. What’s the point of spending time on customer segmentation strategies? What are you hoping to accomplish with this process?

This will require you to consider the reasons why you segment your customers.

• Customizing content to meet customer needs

• Marketing campaigns that resonate with customers by targeting the right audience

• Determining the best moment to send emails different customer types

• Enhance your understanding of and prepare for customer challenges

• Brand loyalty is growing

• Understanding your most valuable customers

• The most effective channels for communication

• Identifying new opportunities for products, support, or efficiency

• Targeted Referral Marketing

The next step is to identify the outcomes you are trying to achieve so that you can develop a strategy to get there. You can build on the reasons above and create new or more personal ones. It is important to remember that this strategy will be built around your company and your customers. Segmenting customers can’t be done in a single way.

This is illustrated by looking at the number of goals you’ll be setting. Your business’s size, industry, customer base, and type will determine the number of goals that you set. They can be focused on one or more departments, or cross-team.

This is particularly important when you consider all the interactions customers have with your company. Your teams must communicate the same information for promos. If customers call your call center, and they have a multi-line phone system, then everyone they reach will be using the same hymn sheet. When assessing your goals, remember to keep your company’s specific needs and brand image in mind.

Identify your targeted segmented groups

After you have defined your goals, it is time to target and identify your segments. You will first need to decide how you want to segment your customers. You can refer back to the different types of customer segmentation models, and match them to your goals. This will depend on your business. There is no right or wrong way to do it. It will depend on the needs of your business and customers as well as the goals that you have set.

You might want to create a targeted marketing campaign that targets women who are likely to purchase menswear for Fathers Day. Your customers can be segmented by age, gender, and marital status. This will allow you to target a smaller audience and make your ecommerce marketing more personal.

Establish principles for collecting and sorting data

Ecommerce marketing strategies today are based on data. Every company has the ability to collect and analyze data from customers and potential customers. It is a skill that only the best companies are able to master.

How to handle the huge amounts of data that you have

Segmentation will be easier and faster if you establish guiding principles. This will help you set goals and target segments. It will also help you narrow down the data that you are interested in.

• You will need to establish a number of customer segments that you can work with. This will allow you to focus on your current and future ecommerce marketing efforts without the need to re-segment customers. We recommend five customers for simplicity.

• For long-term viability, you will need to be able to look back at past, present, and future performance.

• For data integrity, agree on a single source truth for segmentation inputs

• You can have subsets or overlays to provide context.

• Assure that the segments are compatible across all departments in the business (e.g. sales, marketing, product, engineering, etc.) for common reference points and to eliminate duplication of effort.

These parameters will help you reach a better solution and get stakeholder buy-in.

Recognize the special things that you can do for them to keep them interested

Once you have identified your segments and narrowed down the customers that fit in each, you can target them and personalize your online marketing. To capitalize on the group’s interaction with your marketing, you will need to analyze their behavior.

Case Study: High Spenders

Your most valuable customers could be those who shop often or place large orders. These customers spend more than the average customer. These customers are valuable because they can generate higher profits than the ones that cost the same.

These customers deserve the best treatment of all customers. They should stay for as long as they can! You should express appreciation to them and make sure that they have a pleasant shopping experience.

• Ideas to keep the “High Spenders” engaged

• You can remove out-of-stock items from your inventory. It’s important to keep stock financial records up to date and to be able to account for inventory.

• Access to new products for early bird customers

• Express / Nominated Day Shipping, Free Shipping

• Special additions and premium products

• Gift wrapping is free

• Packages include free gifts and surprises

• Support from a dedicated team

• Early bird discounts and special offers

• VIP subscription

Segmentation and anti-personalization should not be confused

Personalization in ecommerce marketing is often equated with segmentation. This misconception is false. Segmentation is a more basic stage of ecommerce marketing that sets you up to personalize your ecommerce experience. Segmentation optimization is key to true personalization.

Segmentation can only help you personalize and manage your client relationships. Segmentation will show your customers that you are flexible and allow you to move past the days of trying to force your customers.

Automation Software

It may take some time to work out your segmentation goals, principles and process. After you have done the hard work, it is time to look at the various offerings software has to offer.

Customer segmentation platforms are designed to collect customer intelligence, lifetime value, potential and other information in an easy-to-use manner. These platforms will let you use pre-determined analytics and customize models to create unlimited segments to target and engage your marketing efforts.

You should also be aware of the ability to refresh data automatically during any engagement with automation software. Once you have defined your segments, goals and workflow, it is useful to have a system that automatically sorts customers. It could be based upon the pages customers visit, what they fill out, which links they click and how many phone calls they make. You can also tap into any existing tracking you have on customer engagement.

Any automation software must be able capture all relevant data about your customers. This includes their behavior when they use targeted ecommerce marketing. Not only can you capture it, but also report on it.

Review!

It’s important to constantly review your process. This is especially true if you’re starting out with ecommerce marketing. Today’s world is changing rapidly and all aspects of the customer journey are constantly changing. You can see the changes in smaller increments, or more clearly. To review each stage, you will need to establish a time frame. You will need to establish a timeline for reviewing each stage of the process, from the initial goals, principles and segmentation through to the ecommerce marketing strategies you use.

Your results will also need to be reviewed. This will tell you if the rest of the process is working. You’ll need to make changes based upon the reporting stats if it isn’t.

You might target ‘cart abandoners’ with discounts, for example. You notice that none are being used. It is important to examine the customer journey to determine where the customer is leaving. You might find that the emails with the discount codes are not being opened. You will need to verify the source of the email that sent and received the discount.

Miscommunication of offers can be a problem by email. It’s not just an issue with email. This is why it is important to ensure that all of your employees are involved in your ecommerce marketing. All employees, from sales to call center agents, and even those using virtual phone services, need to be involved in ecommerce marketing. This is true for the entire process. Automating the process will allow you to focus more on the results and review, rather than the actual process.

Customer segmentation and personalizing your ecommerce marketing is important. You don’t want to change customers’ behavior. These are people who are already interested in your brand and you want to keep them happy without making them uncomfortable. Instead, you use what customers and potential customers reveal about themselves during the customer journey as well as their shopping habits to create an experience that is optimal for them.

Segmentation can also be a key tool in other ecommerce marketing strategies. Affiliate marketers will need to understand the details of your target audience as well as how to reach them.

This is data-driven personalized eCommerce marketing. This is the future customer engagement. It is the key to winning and keeping your loyal customers.