Build a Segment Strategy

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Describe how to build a segment strategy.
  
• Explain different segment types.
  

The Who, What, Why of Segments

Using User Segments greatly increases the impact and reach of your Marketing Cloud Personalization campaigns. Not only can you specifically target certain groups of visitors, but the trends you see in segments have far-reaching impacts throughout your marketing efforts. Before you create segments, you need to think strategically about how to use them and which ones can have the greatest impact on your organization.

Start by creating segments based on things you know are happening on your site. These segments group known personas or behaviors on your site. For example, in a SaaS application you might have registered users, nonregistered users, and trial users. Or, in retail or travel, you know you have visitors who have made a purchase and those who haven’t. Once you have a few basic segments and start to use them in personalization campaigns, you might realize you need to create additional ones.

Create segments that help you achieve your personalization goals. For example, if you’re trying to get people to sign up for email marketing, then you want to target people who are not registered on your site. You can create a segment to identify these visitors, then limit this ability in the campaign to members of the segment.

Regardless of your industry or function, segments typically belong to a few different categories.

• Demographic segmentation is the simplest of the segmentation categories and is based on factors like age, gender lifecycle stage, income, religion, race, and nationality
  
• Behavioral segmentation factors in behavior usage and decision-making patterns, such as how and when a consumer decides to spend their money on a product or service.
  
• Psychographic segmentation is similar to behavioral segmentation, but is based on lifestyle, activities, interests, and opinions.
  
• Geographic segmentation separates people based on geography, as potential customers have different needs or interests based on where they live. Consider how these different segment types affect how you market your products, services, content, or applications.
  

When you consider the segments for your site, think about how to organize them. It’s often helpful to group similar types of segments into folders so you can find them again easily. Doing so also helps you see where the gaps are so you can create additional segments to fill them. To create folders for segments, follow these steps.

1. Log in to Marketing Cloud Personalization.
   
2. Click User Segments.
   
3. Similar to the campaign list page, the segment list page contains a series of folders with your segments.
   
4. Click New Folder at the bottom of the folder list.
   
5. Enter the folder name.
   
6. Click Create.
   

Once you have some segments created, you can drag and drop them into folders to organize them. Before you create a new segment, select the folder that it belongs in, and then click New Segment to create a rule-based segment.

1. The arrow next to New Segment provides other segment choices that are not covered in this unit. Note that you are on the Setup tab. The other tabs for this segment are grayed out because you haven’t created the segment yet.
   
2. Add a name for the segment in the Segment Name field. A best practice is to make it descriptive so you know at a glance what rules apply in the segment. For example, if you add a segment of visitors to your website who are from Australia, you could name the segment “visitors from Australia."
   
3. Add segment rules.
   
   • Start by selecting the Category. For this segment, select location ads for the category.
     
   • Select the rule as in.
     
   • Select the country and keep it as one of. Another option is to select is not one of in the event you want to know all visitors not coming from a particular country or countries.
     
4. Now, enter Australia in Search for a country.
   
5. Click Save. Note: If you don’t see anyone on the user tab after a minute or two, you might need to adjust the rules.
   

Create Multiple Layers Within a Single Segment

You can create multiple layers using logic gates and groups within a single segment. Click Setup to add additional rules to the segment. Say you want to see new visitors to your site who are from Australia. You already added the location rule, now you need to add a visit rule with an AND logic gate since you want to see everyone who’s from Australia and who’s new to the site.

1. Click New Rule and select Visits as the category.
   
2. Select Visit Count and Did not visit two or more times for “all time.” This captures everyone who only visited once. Since the logic gate default value is AND, you don’t need to adjust it by clicking or at the top of the group for this example. Also, since you changed the components of the segment, it’s a good idea to update the name as well.
   
3. Click Add New in front of the segment name.
   
4. Click Save. Notice how the users list changed.
   

The Segment Compare tab works in a similar fashion. You can add segments to make comparisons. And there’s additional data around engagement products activity, KPIs, and the flexibility to look at the averages and totals. Category Affinities shows views, view time, purchases, and revenue by category for users currently in the segment. The sunburst chart represents hierarchical data in rings with the innermost ring being the top-level category, the second ring being the second-level category, and so on depending on the complexity of your site. For example, a segment on a retail site could show that nearly half of the views are for women’s clothing, with handbags getting the most views followed by tops and blouses, shoes, dresses and skirts, jewelry, pants and denim, and new arrivals.

Segments are a key component to personalization and give you more insight into customer behavior. There are different types of segments you can create, but they should always be in line with your campaign strategy and global goals. Creating a segment is easy, and you have the flexibility to add different logic gates depending on your needs. You can see details about segment membership and analyze data across multiple segments. Segments help you increase the impact of your personalization campaigns, and help you better analyze user and account behavior data from your site.

Now you know a lot about the Identity System in Marketing Cloud Personalization—from what it is to how to implement it, and how important the Identity System is in Marketing Cloud Personalization.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: About Using Segments with Marketing Cloud Personalization
• Salesforce Help: Create a Segment for Marketing Cloud Personalization
• Salesforce Help: Clone a Segment for Marketing Cloud Personalization