Explore Customer Segments
Learning Objectives
After completing this module, you’ll be able to:
- Explain the importance of customer segments.
- Describe Loyalty Management and Data Cloud integration.
Create Customer Groups
Cloud Kicks manufactures stylish and comfortable sneakers. It recently added sports and outdoor shoes to its portfolio. Cloud Kicks runs a loyalty program called Cloud Kicks Inner Circle, which offers members well-thought-out loyalty rewards and exclusive benefits.
Mary Levy, the Loyalty Program Manager, is responsible for the program’s success. She tracks program performance and its members, promotions, and partners.
Mary always looks for ways to optimize loyalty strategies to meet growing customer expectations, especially because customers today seek more than just loyalty points. They trust companies that prioritize them and form relationships with brands they can connect with emotionally. Customers also want personalized and unique experiences. But it’s not practical to determine each and every customer’s interests, needs, and preferences. So companies group customers based on similar characteristics to optimize their interactions.
Mary wants to maximize customer value and improve customer experience and satisfaction. She analyzes the Cloud Kicks customer base and broadly categorizes them into the following groups.
-
Athletes: Serious fitness enthusiasts who train at least five times a week
-
Casual runners: People who exercise occasionally, in this case, up to twice a week
-
Amateurs: A growing customer base of beginner runners who started running seriously in the past 12 months
Mary further categorizes these customer groups based on common characteristics such as their purchase contribution, average transaction value, growth, and so on. Here’s what she finds.
Measure |
Athletes |
Casual Runners |
Amateurs |
|---|---|---|---|
Share of Customers |
35% |
55% |
10% |
Share of Sales |
60% |
30% |
10% |
Share of Transactions |
55% |
40% |
5% |
Average Value Per Transaction |
$105 |
$75 |
$200 |
Customer Segment Growth Rate |
6% |
2% |
8% |
Customer Segment Retention Rate |
95% |
65% |
15% |
Mary uses these statistics to identify key member traits and plan targeted rewards and communications. She wants to create the Athletes customer segment in Salesforce to run a loyalty promotion especially for them. Now, what’s the best way to do it?
In this module, Mary creates one segment from the Athletes customer group. In reality, however, businesses may create several segments from a customer group based on different characteristics.
Get a 360-Degree View of Customers
Cloud Kicks uses a suite of Salesforce CRM solutions, including the Loyalty Management app. Mary’s happy to learn about the integration of Loyalty Management with Data Cloud and digs deeper to learn how it works.
Data Cloud
This platform links customer data from different sources and creates a single record for each customer. It reconciles all the acquired data about the customer and creates a unified customer profile so businesses can deliver personalized and connected experiences. You can also create customer segments in Data Cloud, to use across different communication channels.
Loyalty Management Integration
Data Cloud uses information from Loyalty Management and other systems to create dynamic segments that utilize real-time data to stay up to date. Mary uses these segments to create personalized promotions to target members.
A prerequisite to creating promotions for segments is to ensure that Loyalty Management and Data Cloud are communicating with one another. Mary works with Linda Rosenberg, loyalty program admin for Cloud Kicks, to set this up. Linda manages the loyalty processes on a day-to-day basis. She’s responsible for enabling many system operations, applying configurations, providing support, and performing regular internal system audits.
In this module, you follow Linda as she sets up the integration and uses Mary’s requirements to create segments and promotions. Mary wants to use these promotions in a communication journey created in Marketing Cloud Engagement. To facilitate this journey, Linda prepares the integration for Marketing Cloud Engagement with the Loyalty Management and Data Cloud-enabled org.
In the next unit, you watch how Linda enables system settings, permissions, and other tasks required to create segments and activate experiences.
Resources