Top 5 customer segmentation examples and benefits to boost your marketing strategy

You can offer the best products on the market, but it won’t mean much if you’re not reaching the right people when you’re promoting those products.

That’s why customer segmentation is a must for any high-performing marketing strategy.

When you divide customers into groups based on shared traits, you’re set up to personalize your approach through messaging tailored to their needs. This is how you achieve relevance in marketing, which is worth its weight in revenue.

To do this right, you’ll need to know how to segment your customers and for what purpose. As you become more familiar with segmentation, you’ll be able to get creative with segments.

But for now, here’s a basic primer on segmentation and the high-level segments that matter most to an ecommerce marketing strategy.

What are customer segments?

Customer segments are groups of customers with shared characteristics or behaviors.

For example, grouping customers who have made more than 5 purchases might give you a “frequent buyers” segment, while grouping those who purchase only during the holidays might lead to a “seasonal buyers” segment.

Customer segments are built on data—about people’s online behavior, demographics, preferences, and pain points. Before you can break your audience out into segments, you’ll need to set up a mechanism for collecting that data, such as a customer data platform.

Why is customer segmentation important?

People are more likely to act on messaging that’s relevant to them—and customer segmentation is the first step in creating that relevance. More specifically, customer segmentation has the potential to:

Is customer segmentation the same as market segmentation?

No. Market segmentation includes people who aren’t your customers—it’s a representation of how you want to split up the market at large into different target audience personas. Customer segmentation, on the other hand, involves dividing up your existing customer base.

The goal of customer segmentation is to gather data about people who purchase from your brand so you can offer them more personalized experiences.

5 types of customer segments to try

There are dozens of data points and criteria that can help you split up your customer base. Before you begin to play with your data in a more advanced way, here are some basic customer segmentations to start with:

1. Demographic segmentation

As the most common segmentation type, demographic segmentation is a foundational element of a good sales strategy, whether you’re targeting your customers or trying to acquire new ones. It’s often the first step in your segmentation practice.

Based on data gathered from surveys, quizzes, website forms, or third-party ad platforms, you can divide your audience by:

• Age
• Income
• Marital status
• Occupation
• Gender

While broad, demographic segmentation can still lead to some creative campaigns. For example, LGBTQ+ brand The Spark Company promotes a new product collection called “Millennial Movies,” which uses age segmentation to target millennials who are especially nostalgic for movies from the late 90s and early 2000s.

2. Geographic segmentation

A subset of demographic segmentation, geographic segmentation groups customers based on their location. You can capture your audience’s location data through:

• Online forms and surveys that collect location after you’ve collected email address
• Shipping or billing addresses provided during transactions
• Geolocation services on your website or app that detect locations

If your business has a physical location in addition to an online store, geographic segmentation becomes important. Through targeted promotions for customers in your area, you can drive more foot traffic to your store and create an in-person sense of community.

Geographic segmentation can also:

• Notify customers in specific areas about shipping delays.
• Identify market trends by region.
• Localize your messaging by local dialects, customs, or interests.

3. Behavioral segmentation

Behavioral segmentation divides customers based on how they’ve interacted with your brand online, whether through your website, emails, SMS messages, social media, etc.

For example, your website analytics and marketing automation data can help you create customer segments based on:

• Purchase history
• Abandoned carts
• Browsed product pages
• Purchase frequency
• Engagement with your emails and SMS messages

When you create these segments, you can either send them personalized offers via campaigns, or set up flows that contact them automatically after they’ve taken a certain action on your website.

Sparkling water brand Aura Bora, for example, sends this automated message when a customer adds an item to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase. But the brand takes the standard abandoned cart reminder a step further by including a survey at the bottom of the email. The survey asks people what kept them from completing the purchase, such as potential issues like price, flavor availability, or shipping concerns.

This behavioral data—knowing who left their cart and why—empowers Aura Bora to adjust their strategy based on specific customer actions and feedback. This way, Aura Bora can use segmentation and automation to increase cart recovery rates and prevent abandoned carts in the future.

4. Psychographic segmentation

Psychographic segmentation divides customers into groups based on:

• Interests
• Beliefs
• Values
• Lifestyles

Capturing this kind of data can be a challenge. You may be able to send surveys to loyal customers to capture a lot of it at once, or you can use forms to capture smaller amounts of data through select fields. For example, if you’re a pet brand, you might want to ask people if they’re a “dog person” or a “cat person.”

You can also observe how your customers interact with your brand, then infer their psychographic profiles from there. It’s important to acknowledge that this kind of inference is imperfect, but it can still be helpful to approximate your customers’ beliefs, lifestyles, etc.

The psychographic factors you choose to focus on should align with your product offers. Here are a few quick examples:

• Fitness brands might target customers who value health and wellness, focusing on interests related to exercise and nutrition.
• Eco-friendly companies could segment customers based on their environmental beliefs, tailoring messages that resonate with sustainability-minded shoppers.
• Luxury retailers may identify segments based on lifestyle and attitudes toward wealth, appealing to customers who prioritize exclusivity and status.

For example, shoe brand Kizik divides shoes into 3 categories:

1. Active
2. Relaxed
3. Explore

Now check out one of the company’s emails, which promotes streetwear that will “keep you moving through the city.” Despite its varied footwear range, the email doesn’t seem to promote shoes to hikers or runners, for example.

Lifestyle segmentation is helping Kizik focus on customers living in urban areas who want a casual pair of shoes they can wear daily.

5. Technographic segmentation

Technographic segmentation tailors messaging and experiences to technology-related characteristics.

For instance, drawing on the data you collect from website and app analytics, surveys, and social listening, you can segment based on:

• Operating system
• Device type
• Applications used

Let’s say most of your customers access your store via mobile devices. You might incorporate features native to specific operating systems—like Apple Pay for iOS users or Google Pay for Android users—to streamline the check-out process and optimize the mobile shopping experience.

Segment your customers the right way

Klaviyo helps brands create customer segments through purchasing behavior, online interactions, and forms.

Segment your customers based on factors like:

• Purchase history
• Email and SMS engagement
• Discount shopping
• Seasonal shopping
• Average order value
• Customer lifetime value
• Cart abandonment
• Browse abandonment

Once you’ve segmented your customers, you can use Klaviyo to set up automated flows and send personalized messages triggered by customer actions.