What is a market segment?

A market segment is a group of people within your target audience who share similar preferences or characteristics. By segmenting the audience, you can track how they’ll react to your marketing efforts and:

  • Personalize your marketing messages
  • Optimize resources
  • Enhance customer satisfaction

Market segmentation is a crucial step in every marketing strategy as it helps you zero in on your audience and determine the best way to approach different groups.

How to identify a market segment for targeted messages

To pinpoint a market segment, follow the steps below:

1. Choose a marketing automation platform

An advanced marketing automation platform can segment your audience based on your chosen criteria. Look for an automation platform that::

  • Creates detailed segments that target customers who have made repeat purchases
  • Uses real-time data to update audience segments based on behavior and purchase history
  • Forecasts customer actions to improve marketing efforts based on predictive analytics

2. Collect audience data

Centralize information about your target audience to create a comprehensive database. You can gather the data through:

  • Forms
  • Surveys
  • Website behavior
  • Email engagement
  • Purchase history

3. Analyze the data you collected

Go through the data you collected and look for patterns and common characteristics to segment your audience. 

To stay on the right track, focus on the 4 main types of market segmentation:

  1. Geographic: Divide your audience based on their location, language, or timezone.
  2. Demographic: Categorize your audience according to gender, age, education, or marital status.
  3. Psychographic: Group your audience based on their interests, lifestyles, or hobbies.
  4. Behavioral: Segment your audience according to factors like shopping behavior, stage in the customer journey, or engagement levels.

4. Identify market segments

Develop more descriptive audience segments based on a combination of characteristics. Let’s say you run an ecommerce store selling all kinds of hats—your market segments could look like this:

  1. Young people who want a trendy but affordable accessory
  2. People who buy hats for sun protection
  3. Website visitors who visited fedora product pages more than 5 times
  4. People who only buy hats when they’re on sale

Although all 4 segments are a part of your wider target audience, you’ll create separate strategies for each.

5. Test content and adjust based on performance

Check how each market segment reacts to your messages to stay on the right track and make changes if necessary. As you receive more feedback and gather data over time, you’ll fine-tune your marketing approach and offer even more personalized content.

Want to identify market segments with laser-sharp precision? Use Klaviyo, a marketing automation platform with powerful audience segmentation features—set conditions, get dynamic updates, and target your segments with omnichannel messages, including email and SMS.

To unlock the full potential of your omnichannel marketing efforts, sign up for Klaviyo today.

Additional resources