Instead of sending one message to thousands of customers, speak to each group in its own language
In retail, the number of customers is counted in thousands, often in hundreds of thousands; yet none of these customers shops for the same reason, at the same frequency, or with the same budget. The customer who makes one large purchase a year and
the customer who comes in regularly every month, the customer who appears only during campaign periods and the customer who is the first to buy the new collection without looking at the price are not the same person. Segmentation is making these differences visible and dividing customers into meaningful groups according to purchasing behavior,
value, frequency, product preference, channel, and demographic characteristics. Each segment deserves a different offer, a different communication, and a different level of service.
When segmentation is not done, marketing sends everyone the same message, and that message fully addresses no one. The loyal customer is offered a new-customer discount, the customer who buys only on sale is introduced to the full-price collection,
and the school campaign goes to a customer who has never bought a children’s product. The result is falling open rates, rising communication costs, and the most valuable customers quietly drifting away. The second common mistake of segmentation is doing it once and
leaving it; yet customer behavior changes, and the “loyal” segment of six months ago may be the “at risk of churn” segment today.
In Minerva, retail customer segmentation is based on real transaction data collected through stores, e-commerce, and the loyalty program. The customer’s purchase history, shopping frequency and recency, spending level, preferred product groups,
channel habits, return behavior, and demographic information come together in a single customer record; segments are defined on this data and update themselves as transactions occur. With user-defined fields and tagging,
company-specific segment criteria can be added. The defined segments are carried directly into marketing’s campaign, promotion, and loyalty programs, into store and call center screens, and into reporting;
in this way, which segment is growing, which is being lost, and which campaign resonates in which segment can be measured.
Manage your customers not as a list, but as groups you know by their behavior; offer each segment only the offer that suits it.