What is Behavioral Segmentation?

Have you ever gotten emails from a B2C company that felt tailored just to you?

Products and messaging that are perfectly aligned with your specific needs and pain points, SMS messages that seem to know exactly what offers tempt you, and Facebook Ads that seem to speak to your soul.

The emails may seem general, but they’re so intensely relevant? The copy couldn’t be better.

This is thanks to behavioral segmentation, which should be a core aspect in every part of your marketing and sales strategies.

In this post, we’re going to go over what behavior segmentation is, why it matters, and a few tips to get you started.

What is Behavior Segmentation?

Behavioral segmentation is the practice of breaking down your target audience into unique segments that you can then market to individually based on specific actions they’ve taken.

This includes breaking users down by the following:

Use or need of the product or service based on site or social activity
Which products or services they use
Stage of the buyer’s journey, including contacts, leads, and customers
Specific behaviors they take on a website, like which pages they view

What This Looks Like

Each brand will have a variety of different audience segments, including those based around trackable behavior.

An online grocery delivery company selling fresh fruits and vegetables might have the following segments:

Some customers choose the retailer because it’s convenient; a few clicks and their order is on their way, without the shopper needing to get dressed, get their kids in the car, and hit the store; they may be more likely to have high average order values they place regularly and within a few minutes of starting
Others might take several weeks to plan an order; they might be using the service to supplement their needs due to lack of access, and take their time to only place an order when it’s relevant or worth the cost of shipping
Some may be budget-conscious, clicking on emails that promote sales or shopping predominantly discounted items on the site

Each segment will respond best to different types of messaging and offers.

Why Behavior Segmentation is So Important

Behavior segmentation is a must-have for all marketing and sales teams.

It allows you to create truly relevant messaging that will appeal to different members of your target audience.

It’s much more effective to use this divide-and-conquer approach to marketing than to send out a single general message. By showing the right audience messages that hit their specific pain points and show them hyper-relevant products, you’re much more likely to be successful.

This is true for every marketing platform out there.

Let’s look at a real example. I currently live in Florida and all three dogs sleep in bed with my husband and I, so finding lightweight comforters is crucial to being able to sleep comfortably at night. I’ve browsed and purchased lightweight comforters from Buffy before.

A few days ago, I got an email reminding me to “stay cool” this fourth of July, with product information about the newest lightweight comforter that I haven’t purchased yet. They know from my purchase and browsing history that this is the sort of product I’d want. They’re taking quantifiable data about my specific behavioral actions and going from there.

Another example: When I get emails from pet supply sites like Petco or Chewy, I almost exclusively get emails about dog products. They know that showing me cool aquariums for a gold fish or new cat collars wouldn’t result in a sale, so I don’t get those messages in my inbox.

3 Tips to Identify & Define Behavior Segments

Segmentation is obviously important for every part of your marketing strategy.

The most difficult part of behavior segmentation, of course, is defining what exactly those segments are.

Sometimes the audience segments you actually have vary from those you thought you might have. It’s important to be able to identify them so you can target them with the right messaging.

Here are three easy ways to start to identify and define your core customer behavior segments.

Get Information Directly From Your Customers

Send out post-purchase surveys to learn more about who your customers are and what makes them tick. There are plenty of accessible tools that can help with this, ranging from low-cost and simple (Google Forms, SurveyMonkey) to some that are more advanced and tied in with growth analytics SaaS tools (Userpilot).

You can send them out through email, or have them pop-up after a user makes a purchase.

Possible questions include:

What made you decide to purchase with us?
Which product did you purchase?
How did you find us?
Have you tried any other products before?
How big of a household are you purchasing for?

Consider which questions users will be most likely to answer, and what’s most useful for qualifying audience segments.

Read Reviews

Social listening can be invaluable when it comes to gaining insight into your customer segments. Reading reviews published online (including on your site and third-party review sites) can also be invaluable.

Sometimes people won’t say things to you, but they’ll say it about you.

Here’s an example of two reviews from Branch’s own website.

This first review mentions a back injury that causes a great deal of pain in low-quality office chairs, and the user was able to find relief with Branch.

This one provides plenty of customer segment information. You’ve got a single woman who mentions the affordability/quality benefits twice, but who also mentions she wanted a chair that looks great and had good support.

This can help you understand why different users purchased, what they were looking for, and why other customers might choose to purchase in the future.

Utilize Analytics Tools

There are plenty of digital analytics tools that can help you learn more about who your audience is.

Google’s Universal Analytics has some basic audience segmentation data that can give you a basic idea of what audience segments or traits are visiting your site.

Social media tools all have their own free native analytics for Business Pages (like Facebook Insights), which can also give you a ton of insight into who is following you and interacting with you on social media.

These are a good place to start for free tools. There are also a variety of high-cost customer analytics tools that can help you learn more about different audience segments; a quick Google search can get you started there.

Final Thoughts

Behavioral segmentation should be a cornerstone of your marketing plans, especially since we have so much trackable data today that can help us determine which customers need to receive what messaging.

With the right strategies in place, this can take your campaigns— and your ROAS— to the next level.
Need help setting up email, ad, and full-marketing funnel campaigns that implement behavioral segmentation? We can help. Get your free marketing audit today.