Segmentation is the process of organizing your audience based on shared characteristics in order to customize your messages and engage them accordingly.
Targeting your recipients makes the messages you send more relevant and consequently, people will be compelled to take action.
For every product, here is what you should consider in the market research process.
ENGAGED USERS
These are the people who are logging in to your site and using it.
For example, if you run an app to generate invoices, your active users might only log in and use the app once a month. If you’re building a photo sharing app, however, it might take more activity—like sessions, likes or shares—before we call them highly engaged.
Treat your most loyal customers with the utmost respect and don’t pitch them things they already bought or are uninterested in. When you deal with an engaged customer, focus on what he or she needs to know or will find useful.
INACTIVE OR DISENGAGED USERS
These are the users who have not engaged in meaningful use of your product for a certain amount of time. This is natural and common among most businesses dealing with SaaS. People get curious, try it out, shrug their shoulders and leave without saying goodbye.
It’s not uncommon for your average user to feel like they’ve upgraded. If that is the case, there may be confusion because their impression of you or the product is probably outdated.
Content that does not mention what the customer will or can gain from your product, what news you have about yourself to share with them, or why they should come back is unlikely to be read.
You can take this even further: Not all of your disengaged users are the same. Some were power users before they stopped using your product, while others had only been using it for a few days. Some added their team, some never finished onboarding. Segment accordingly and you will improve the effectiveness of your messages.
FREE
Over the past decade, “freemium” has been the dominant business model among SaaS businesses. The goal of freemium is to attract new paying users, so your messaging strategy should be about getting people to upgrade.
It can be difficult to figure out when your company’s free package is being useful for the customer. The goal should be to see that it has become worthwhile and then clearly articulate the value of a premium product.
Free users are important sources for feedback and beta testing new features, but these customers may not be as invested.
PREMIUM
Customers who pay you a lot of money deserve to be treated differently than customers on free or $9-a-month plans. Depending on your business model, you might want to further segment your paying customers based on if they are currently entitled to use the new feature announcement that is going out.
Rather than risk a feature uniting with its target audience, it is better to craft a message to users on your basic plan about what that feature can do for them and why they might want to consider an upgrade.
Take some time to find out which customers are your most profitable and offer the free tickets, swag or office hours.
SLIPPING AWAY
When customers stop using a product, it often doesn’t happen instantly. Instead, they gradually fall out of routine with the product and stop purchasing it altogether.
This is your “slipping away” cohort, people not active in 30 days or more.
When reaching out to a customer, you should focus on reminding them of the improvements your product has undergone since they last visited it. You are seeking to persuade them that by using your product now, they will receive significantly more value than when they previously used it.
RECENTLY CANCELLED
The issue these group members have with your product may not be fixable, but at least you can prevent this from being a deal breaker for other potential customers.
And no matter how much you want to convince them that your product or service is great, the best time to do that is probably not immediately after they have canceled their account.
In order to segment an audience for engagement, it’s important to understand your marketing goals and how much data you have access to.
You can tailor your messages to individual customers by looking at data that is more granular. For example, you might start tailoring your message to a specific individual rather than just sending out general demographic messages.