First of all, let’s say that a segment is a group of users chosen by a set of criteria, like age, country or preferences. User segmentation is the process of focusing the marketing strategy mainly on those characteristics. This process will impact the entire marketing funnel from exposure to retention.
Why Is Segmentation Important
User segmentation is necessary for the efficiency of mobile marketing campaigns. Creating user segments will cause the message to reach a more targeted audience. The result is that users won’t delete the app because it’s useless to their needs. The segmentation is associated to the development of personas, which are characters that you concentrate on when you build messages and offers. You can find them by looking for patterns in users actions within your app. On the other hand, you can use tools like UserTesting where you can watch videos with participants using your app.
Another benefit of app user segmentation is that a marketer can understand the market better and can concentrate his campaign accordingly. Another advantage is the fact that advertiser can adopt a more competitive position regarding other companies concentrating on a special group of users. There are great opportunities revealed in front of him if he invests time and effort to segment users’ behavior within the app.
How To Segment App Users
It is crucial to use segmentation in a proper way. Since there are an infinite number of possibilities to combine characteristics, it is very overwhelming when you think what attributes you can select to have the best results. In this case, you can follow some of the best practices in this area:
- Set clear goals. If you want your message to reach the right groups of users you have to decide what are your objectives. First, try to understand why your valuable users like your app and why they keep using it. What are their main characteristics? Then you can attract more users like them.
- Start with the basics. Determine important attributes like gender or language. For example Zedge, a mobile customization leader improved its Push Notification strategy, after a User Segmentation based on language because marketers realized that their non – English users didn’t understand the messages they received on their phones.
- Use relevant attributes. You can use behavioral segmentation, which means that you can group users from the point of view of interaction within the app, like the purchases they make in your app, the time spent with your app or how many levels they manage to pass playing your game. There are many ways to segment users but keep in mind to use attributes that can be measured and that are useful to increase engagement.
- Don’t segment too much. Be careful not to go to the other extremity. Specialists advise that 3 attributes are a good way to get the fundamental of this process. More attributes can cause confusion which can drive to bad effects.
- Always test your strategy. If you are not satisfied with the results, change the attributes and try again. Remember that this is an ongoing work because users are so dynamic. They change their behavior and preferences as the time passes and you have to be alert not to skip some characteristics that may improve user engagement and can increase the number of downloads.
3 Examples For App User Segmentation
There are an interminable number of combinations you should focus on when it comes to app user segmentations. All it’s based on the type of the app you have in attention for marketing and improve it.
Media Apps are a category of apps that are in trend at the moment. This type of apps includes music, magazines and news apps. Media apps connect people in segments based on their content preferences. For example, a music app is expected to list the latest and the top best songs in its playlist. This way you can look for user segments like: the number of times he visited the app, the number of songs he listened and his favorite tracks, his time zone, etc. With these insights you can send messages when his favorite artist has a new song or to encourage him to share his playlist with his friends.
For a news app, you can focus on those users that read the outlines frequently and from different places. The segments that you can concentrate on are: favorite news categories, gender and age. Then you will message them the most important news and remind them to open your app. Of course, it is a good moment to remember them to share your app or to rate it.
Other mobile apps adepts prefer magazine apps. In this case, users are engaged weekly or monthly. The attributes that are in center of your attention could be: favorite section, gender, age, favorite writers. With all this information, a good approach is to send them messages when the new issue is coming up, or inform them what is the title of their favorite author’s article. These personalized messages will increase their lifetime value.
M-Commerce Apps are another type of categories that get a lot of attention from users. In this case you can segment users that look for offers and make purchases only in the sales seasons. Take this into consideration and send those coupons or push – notifications announcing some promotions, after you discover what their favorite categories of products are.
Social Media fans are the ones who share the content of an app on all social media environments. This category of valuable users is available on all kinds of apps. You have to pay attention to the number of shares on social networks and to thank those users in special messages and make them part of the entire experience provided by your app. You will make them feel special and determinate them to share your app more and convince their friends to rate your app.
FINAL THOUGHTS
To make reliable predictions and to focus your marketing campaigns in the right direction you need to take advantage of user segmentation. The point is to get the right users for your app. All depends on the nature of the app, but if you keep your eyes on users actions within your app you can increase user lifetime value.