3 Tried-and-true Tips Of App User Segmentation
App user segmentation provides excellent benefits to both businesses and users. For app marketers, mapping out user groups will help them optimize marketing campaigns for the best ROI. Consequently, app users will get more personalized content and a better user experience. This ultimately can boost user retention and the app’s overall performance.
But app user segmentation is easier said than done. App marketers need specific skills and experience to build successful segmentation. And even if it is perfectly made, changes can come in the future full of uncertainties.
In this article, InAppStory team will show you three tried-and-true tips for app user segmentation. Hopefully, they will provide you with some good insights.
1. Make sure your custom segment is effective
You can choose a segmentation method depending on the specific business, such as demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavioral segmentation. But no matter what methods you’re implementing in your app, a good segmentation analysis should always follow critical criteria to be effective. Here are some rules that can be applied to make sure you’re on the right track.
- Measurable
A measurable segmentation means that you should be able to calculate the amount of money a customer group will likely spend on your product. For example, one group may be inclined towards sales and promotion deals than the others. - Accessible
Understanding your customers will help you find the best opportunity to approach them. For example, you may find a segment as tech-savvy who loves technology and spend a big part of their days scrolling TikTok. They socialize, communicate, and buy stuff via their mobile phone. Meanwhile, another segment is best reached via radio ads and may not even have a Facebook account.
- Substantial
A substantial segment means when your segment is not only interested in buying but can actually be converted into buyers. For example, if you’re running an app for a high-end retailer, you want to find people who have a high level of income who prefer premium products. - Actionable
When you have an actionable segmentation, each group will have a distinguished response to your marketing campaigns. This means each group holds a specific set of traits that distinguish them from each other.
2. Don’t drown in data
App user segmentation shouldn’t be based solely on intuition. Instead, it should be a data-driven process when data helps marketers gain valuable insights into user behavior, taste, habits, etc.
However, being too data-driven can cause more harm than good. You can spend time and money collecting an enormous source of data but still failing to create effective segmentation. After all, data is just data. Data doesn’t give you the ultimate competitive advantages. Actually, it’s the way you use data that can bring the results. So, what fool-proof method helps marketers not cross the line and get drowned in data?
Let’s try the three-adjective rule. This rule says that if you are using more than three adjectives or three dimensions to define a segment, chances are you might be overthinking. The three-adjective rule also helps you avoid the trap of being too specific. When you see too many sub-groups, ask yourself if these groups are worthy to receive particular marketing campaigns or not. Is the group big enough to be treated as a separated segment? If the answer is no, you better merge it to another group so that you can focus on a better marketing campaign. Eventually, practicality is what you’re looking for in an effective app segmentation.
3. Acknowledge that your user segmentation may change over time
Heraclitus, a prominent Greek philosopher, once said: ‘Change is the only constant in life’. This is true to many things, including app user segmentation. Many marketers once craft out the segmentation and then leave it for good. This action may put your marketing efforts and even the whole business at risk.
If there is one thing we all learn about 2020 after COVID-19 struck, no matter how good we understand our segmentation, things may change unpredictably. This is easy to understand because, ultimately, user segmentation is all about categorizing people by their core values. These values are hugely impacted by factors such as social crisis, economics, public healths which completely changed as a result of the pandemic. This also put enormous pressure on marketers and app creators.
Suppose that the next global pandemic will wait for another 100 years to come, there are still many reasons why we must frequently upgrade segmentation plans. Here are 3 outstanding reasons:
- Lack of information: you may miss out on core information about particular customer segmentation.
- Outdated segments: Your current segments are either too similar to each other or defined by irrelevant, obsoleted factors in your industry.
- Major shifts in group demand: some users may no longer belong to segmentation, and some come in. It is crucial to analyze who they are, what matters to them, how to keep the new users, and how to rebuild the relationship with prior users.
These recurring issues may happen, and it seems that there is no way to prevent them. Marketers need to have some preparations to tackle these problems and move forward. First, start smart. Conducting user surveys will help you gain deep insights into what isn’t working well, what are customer expectations so that you can incorporate these values into new marketing campaigns. Besides email marketing, mobile app Stories is a creative way to run in-app surveys. Stories feature has the power to make the survey fun, engaging, and leverage the overall communication between business and users. Second, magnify the insights by using multiple data streams. With specific data analysis skills, you and your team will be able to identify the new segments. Third, think beyond the analysis. Once your segmentation is done, it’s crucial to prepare future-proof plans by constantly updating microtrends and cultural shifts that can influence your segments.
Create winning app user segmentation
Even though it may require different practices among different industries for the same types of mobile app user segmentation, some common rules can be widely applied. Yet, make sure you constantly revisit your segmentation at least twice per year and update the latest trends that can impact your user behavior. By continually keeping track of the segmentation shifts, marketers can quickly and minimize the damage of changes.
Illustrations for the article – Olya Kuzevanova.
