How to Achieve Effective Engagement Through Segmentation and Personalization

How to Achieve Effective Engagement Through Segmentation and Personalization cover

Curious how effective engagement through segmentation and personalization can contribute to your product growth?

By dividing your users into segments and then personalizing the experience for each group, you can create frictionless customer experiences. This leads to improved conversions, sales, and retention.

So, let’s learn tips and tricks on how to drive effective in-app engagement right away.

TL;DR

  • Customer segmentation refers to dividing your customers into groups based on shared characteristics — demographics (location, age, gender) or their in-app behavior (purchase history, website activity, app usage).
  • Personalization in SaaS is about delivering relevant experiences to relevant customer segments. Examples include showing relevant content and recommendations, personalizing the onboarding flow based on their goals, etc.
  • Combining segmentation and personalization is one of the most effective ways to drive engagement for your SaaS company:
    – Drive your conversion rate with a personalized marketing strategy.
    – Tailor product experiences to your target audience with interactive walkthroughs and in-app flows.
    – Help users stay engaged and experience the “Aha!” moment faster.
    – Increase customer loyalty and customer lifetime value.
  • Use microsurveys in your welcome screen to collect customer data from the beginning and trigger in-app flows to speed up user onboarding and product adoption.
  • Behavioral segmentation helps you determine power users and reach them with in-app modals to ask them to review your product on sites like G2.
  • Identify the highest-value segments and improve your ROI by replicating power users’ experiences in other segments.
  • Use Userpilot to collect behavioral data, create various customer segments, and personalize customer experiences.

What is segmentation?

Customer segmentation refers to dividing your customers into groups based on shared characteristics. This could be anything from their demographics (location, age, gender) to their in-app behavior (purchase history, website activity, app usage).

The goal of customer segmentation is to make it easier to target specific groups of users with personalized messages. This way, you can address their particular needs and pain points, which leads to improved engagement and conversions.

What is personalization?

Personalization in SaaS is about delivering relevant experiences to relevant customer segments. Examples include showing suitable content and recommendations, personalizing the onboarding flow based on users’ jobs to be done, etc.

You can also personalize experiences by user persona, product usage, or plan type.

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User persona template.

For instance, your user persona may have a pain point with collecting and analyzing in-app user feedback. To address it, create an interactive walkthrough to showcase in-app surveys.

Combining segmentation and personalization

Combining segmentation and personalization is one of the most effective ways to drive engagement for your SaaS company. Here’s why.

Segmentation allows product teams to group the customer base by shared characteristics. For instance, you can filter all signups who had visited the pricing page but didn’t complete the purchase.

Then, you can reach abandoned-cart segments with email marketing campaigns and in-app messages. This is an example of personalization.

SaaS personalization is about connecting users with the features they need to complete their JTBD or tailoring in-app marketing messaging.

Benefits of segmentation and personalization

Let’s examine the particular benefits of this effective combination.

Drive your conversion rate with a personalized marketing strategy

Effective engagement through segmentation and personalization is about delivering relevant messaging for your target audience. Let’s learn from Asana’s example.

Asana resorts to in-app personalization to drive freemium to premium conversion by showing upgrading popups to active freemium segments.

It’s more likely that users will turn into paying customers if they have tried premium features and know what they will get.

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Asana’s freemium-to-premium pop-up.

Tailor product experiences to your target audience

As in real life, the first impression matters a lot. When new signups appear in the product, they want a little guidance to get their jobs done with little mental effort.

A proper onboarding flow tailored to specific user needs guarantees it.

With interactive walkthroughs, you can guide your users through your product and help them discover valuable features to meet their goals.

For example, Kontentino uses a welcome survey to gather insights into signups’ roles and JTBDs to deliver a personalized onboarding flow. This tactic helps to improve the product adoption rate from the very beginning.

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Kontentino’s welcome microsurvey.

Revenue growth from segmented campaigns

Companies that send segmented campaigns see an increase in click-through rate (CTR) and revenue. Marketers can trigger in-app campaigns based on different in-app events and behavior to ensure the message appeals to a particular user segment.

For instance, you can trigger a promo code for those who checked out the pricing but didn’t convert to paying customers. Userpilot allows you to create a sequence of attributes when to trigger your marketing campaign.

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Trigger promo codes contextually with Userpilot.

Summing up, users are more likely to purchase if they connect with your company. That is what segmentation and personalization do.

Increased engagement from relevant and personalized experiences

Personalize the user onboarding process for different JTBD to help users stay engaged and experience the “Aha!” moment faster.

Userpilot offers a broad range of settings for segmenting and personalizing in-app campaigns to ensure your message is well-timed and relevant.

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Segmenting users by their JTBD.

Increased customer lifetime value

Customers expect product companies to understand their needs and deliver highly effective solutions or services.

Personalization is key to creating loyal consumers since you show that you consider users’ interests. Ultimately, personalization helps customers stick around longer, which translates to increased customer lifetime value (LTV).

Reduced customer churn

Poor onboarding and weak customer relationships are one of the main reasons for customer deviation. Segmentation allows you to create personalized in-app guidance, thus, reducing churn. Moreover, you can segment users at risk of churn and reach out to them proactively to offer help.

With Userpilot, you can run in-app microsurveys to get user feedback on particular features, or NPS surveys with follow-up qualitative questions and then segment users based on alarming responses (like “missing feature” in the image below).

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How to segment customers at a high risk of churn with Userpilot.

Improved email engagement

Email also allows you to engage your customers right when they sign up. This adds personalization to the onboarding process and helps you build relationships with your customers.

A simple welcoming email can go a long way in engaging your customers. You can also add useful resources there to help users get the most out of your product.

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Free trial welcome email example.

Importance of segmentation and personalization in your engagement strategy

Personalization and segmentation work hand-in-hand to improve customer engagement, and they’re not mutually exclusive. With non-segmented campaigns, you’re unlikely to reach customers with contextual marketing or in-app messages. The chances to foster product adoption also decrease.

An example of irrelevant experiences can be a unified welcome flow that explains how to use different features of a product not considering actual JTBDs. This leads to confused users and customer churn.

So, the more customer data you obtain, the more appealing and relevant campaigns you can create to drive conversions.

Defining customer segments

We’ve listed four main segments you can use to deliver high customer engagement.

Geolocation

Segment users based on their location to trigger campaigns in the right language. It’s also helpful in a SaaS product localization strategy. Watch how Userpilot offers localization of the in-app user onboarding flows.

How to localize your in-app messaging content with Userpilot.

Product usage

Group users by product usage to uncover how different persona interacts with your app. Analyze product usage of different user segments across different stages in the journey to understand who are active users vs. those at risk of churn.

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Track feature usage by custom events in the customer journey.

Jobs to be done

Once you have your users’ JTBD, you can divide your users into segments sharing similar characteristics. Next, offer user onboarding experiences for different segments to lead them to activation points faster.

userpilot-freemium-users-segment-effective-engagement-through-segmentation-and-personalization
How to filter new signups with Userpilot.

Behavioral segmentation

Behavioral segmentation is for dividing your customers into groups based on their interactions with the product. For example, you could segment your users based on how often they use your product or what features they use.

Get an overview of your customers’ behavior through Userpilot’s powerful insights feature.

userpilot-smarter-segmentation-effective-engagement-through-segmentation-and-personalization
Smart behavioral segmentation with Userpilot.

How to craft an effective segmentation strategy to boost engagement

Let’s learn tried-and-tested tactics of how any SaaS business can boost engagement through effective segmentation and personalization for different stages in the customer journey.

Collect data from the beginning to deliver interactive in-app experiences

Use a microsurvey in your welcome screen to collect customer data from the beginning. Use this information to trigger in-app flows that will help specific segments experience value faster.

This tactic speeds up user onboarding and product adoption since you teach new users how to get their jobs done in an effective and short way with the product features.

Postfity's welcome screen microsurvey.
Postfity’s welcome screen microsurvey.

Trigger automated flows to boost product adoption

Segment customers based on their JTBDs and trigger a flow that will help them discover the necessary features to complete their goals. In-app automation flows are highly versatile.

Use them to showcase a new feature, upsell a premium option, or gather user feedback to understand customer behavior.

Build a personalized approach through behavioral segmentation

Behavioral segmentation helps you segment the user base by different interactions with your product and brand.

You can segment your power users and reach them with in-app modals to ask them to review your product on sites like G2. This way, you can get hundreds of customer reviews.

Create in-app modals with Userpilot code-free.

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In-app modal asking for a review.

Ask your users for feedback and act on it

Use segmentation to ask for contextual feedback with in-app surveys. Group customers based on their company, location, or product usage to collect targeted feedback and improve customer experience accordingly.

By directing your surveys to power users, you’ll get sincere and comprehensive feedback on a newly launched feature. The users in this segment possess high loyalty and are more likely to share their experience.

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Power users segmentation in Userpilot.

Identify the highest-value segments and improve your ROI

Knowing what segments with the longest customer lifetime value can fuel your further revenue growth.

Invite your power users to in-person interviews to understand what they love most about your product and replicate their experience for other segments.

user-interview-slideout-postfity-effective-engagement-through-segmentation-and-personalization
How to use slideouts to conduct mass user interviews.

Conclusion

Segmentation and personalization help you deliver the right message at the right time to the right audience, consequently driving in-app engagement and customer retention. Altogether it moves the needle and leads to increased revenue.

Want to drive your in-app engagement? Get a Userpilot Demo to learn how to segment consumers and deliver tailored in-app experiences.

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