What are customer segments and how to use them
What you’ll learn with this guide
This guide will walk you through customer segments in Pimcore and different ways of using customer segments.
What are customer segments?
Customer segments represent groups of customers that share certain characteristics relevant to marketing, such as location, age, gender, interests, and so on. These groups are formed during the process of customer segmentation, which can happen automatically, or we can manually intervene.
What kind of customer segments are there in Pimcore?
Essentially, there are 2 different types of customer segments - calculated and manual.
Calculated segments are added during the segment building process. For example, a customer can be assigned to a certain customer segment if we define it in a customer automation rule.
On the other hand, we can add manual segments with the Pimcore backend UI by simple drag-and-drop. For example, we could add a segment as a manual one to this customer in the image below, but we couldn’t add a segment as a calculated one.
Usually, we use customer segments when defining our customer automation rules, so let’s check out a few examples.
How to use customer segments in Pimcore?
We use customer segments mainly in customer automation rules, and we’ll walk you through all instances where we can effectively use customer segments.
As seen in the image above, when defining triggers for our customer automation rules - we can use Segment building as a trigger. This trigger is usually used when we’re building a new calculated customer segment.
Next, you can see the use of customer segments in setting up the conditions for a customer automation rule. We can include or exclude a specific customer segment from our customer automation rule and combine this condition with various others.
On the image above, there is another condition that involves the use of customer segments. We can use our information on customer segments to track users who belong to one or more segments. Also, we define these customer segments in this condition so we can create a much more specific customer segment we want to track.
Lastly, we can use customer segments when defining actions for our customer automation rules. One of the actions, as seen in the image above, refers to adding certain customers to a chosen customer segment, based on the previously set triggers and conditions.
Also to mention, we have 2 more options to choose from when we use customer segments to define actions. We can choose to track a certain segment and add a customer to the customer segment or add a customer to a segment that’s connected to the target group.
Finally, customer segments have another important function. We can link specific target groups to customer segments. Meaning, we can personalize content for specific customer segments, depending on which target group they belong to. This gives us the ability to get to know our customers even better and approach them with the right communication.