Move beyond date-based promotions and into segmented promotions

Contacting customers for a promotion is a regular tactic in ecommerce.

Typically the events are based on the calendar.

Black Friday.

First day of summer.

Back to school.

There are more reasons to contact customers than days in the year.

There's a problem with using only date-based events though. Each customer is at a different stage of their lifecycle.

You might have a brand new buyer who bought yesterday, mixed in with one who first bought 10 years ago, along with someone who hasn't bought in over a year. Emailing all of them about your Black Friday deal is going to disappoint one, interest the second, and cause the third to ignore you.

That's why segmenting your customer list and sending different promotions to each segment works so well. New buyers see something different than your long-term VIPs.

Building the segments based on customer behavior is best. Using their overall behavior is the gold-standard (that's what Repeat Customer Insights does for you) but you can DIY some alternative segments. Two really good ones are:

1. how long ago their first order was
2. how long ago they last ordered

Those two ways to segment aren't as strong as RFM but you can quickly build them and start contacting customers. That's usually the main roadblock with segmenting, getting started.

Eric Davis