Audience Segmentation 101: A Comprehensive Guide to Targeted Marketing
- Mahesh Balakrishnan
- May 9
- 4 min read
Relevant marketing messages targeted to an individual customer are impactful. To go beyond a one-size-fits-all approach, use audience segmentation to create personalized marketing campaigns.
What Is Audience Segmentation?
Audience segmentation is the process of dividing customers into groups based on shared characteristics, like geographical location, gender, age, personality type, skin type, health concern, purchasing history and so on. The goal is to create and send targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with each subgroup within a target market.
Audience segmentation is similar to customer segmentation, but includes prospects and leads.
The Benefits of Audience Segmentation
Shopify Plus stores benefit from using audience segmentation. These include:
Making marketing feel more personal
Building a stronger connection with the audience
Choosing the best message and best channel for each audience segment
Testing pricing options
Sending targeted promotions
Improving customer service
Upselling and cross-selling other products and services
Gaining a better marketing return on investment (ROI)
Customers increasingly expect personalized online and marketing experiences. They’re frustrated if they receive marketing materials that don’t relate to them. So, delivering relevant content is a great way to meet customer expectations.
The Different Types of Audience Segmentation
There are several ways to segment your audience:
Demographics
Demographic segmentation involves dividing a market into groups based on demographic factors like age, gender, family size, and more.
For example, a laundry detergent company could create a market segment for customers with young children to market how kind their products are to sensitive skin.
Behavior
Behavioral segmentation involves dividing a market based on how people behave, like their purchasing habits or product usage.
If customers express an interest in a product (for example, by visiting the product page or putting a product in their cart), target them with marketing materials highlighting the product and others like it.
Interests
Interest segmentation is the practice of dividing a market based on customers’ hobbies, passions, and lifestyle interests, like fitness, travel, fashion, technology, or cooking.
For example, a pet supplies brand could segment its audience based on whether they are dog or cat owners, or prefer long walks in the countryside or a stroll in the city.
Personal Attributes
E-commerce brands can also segment their audience based on personal attributes.
For example, a hair care brand could segment their customers based on their hair type, a skin care brand based on their skin concerns, and a supplement brand based on their health priorities.
Geographical Location
Geographic segmentation divides a market based on location, such as country, region, city, or climate.
For example, a skin care brand could segment its audience based on where they live, recommending SPF products to customers in warm climates and hydrating products to prospects in cold ones.
How to Segment Your Audience
Here’s how to harness the benefits of audience segmentation for your business.
1. Collect Zero-Party Data
Zero-party data is information provided directly and willingly by customers via an opt-in or user interaction, including sign-up forms, customer surveys, focus groups, purchase history, and online analytics.
A product quiz is also a very effective way to gather zero-party data. Quiz takers answer questions about themselves and their product needs to receive a personalized product recommendation. You can then use this data for follow-up marketing campaigns.
2. Segment Your Audience
Look for characteristics that separate and unite particular groups within your audience, based on your brand and product offering.
For example, a supplements brand could segment its audience by health concern, with groups for customers who want more energy, healthier skin and hair, or improved gut health.
3. Personalize Marketing Campaigns
Recommend different products or services to different audience segments via email or SMS. Tailor the marketing message for each group.
For example, a shoe brand could recommend the same product to millennial and boomer audiences. However, based on their knowledge of each segment, they might highlight the product’s style to millennials and its comfort to boomers.
Personalize promotions and discounts too, creating offers and marketing messages that are more likely to inspire action for each audience segment.
When a new product is introduced, the store could also notify specific customer segments via email—focusing on those whose past behaviors, preferences, or demographics indicate they’re most likely to be interested.
4. Personalize Website Experiences
Use audience segmentation to show relevant content, products, and popups to returning customers next time they visit your website.
Display similar products to ones they’ve browsed before, share popups with promotions that persuade hesitant buyers to purchase, or cross-sell products to customers who have already made a purchase.
5. Retarget Customers
Use segments to create lookalike audiences and retarget customers on Meta.
Using Audience Segmentation: Case Studies
These examples use audience segmentation tools to target marketing messages.
SKOON
Skincare brand SKOON uses a product recommendation quiz from Visual Quiz Builder to gather customer data. Leveraging the integration with Meta Pixel, they create and target different ads for different skin concerns.
Plum Deluxe
Plum Deluxe uses Visual Quiz Builder's integration with Klaviyo to send an email with the quiz results and a link to the result page. Quiz takers who share their emails are also enrolled in their newsletter.
Face Club
Face Club features a medical-grade skincare quiz on its Shopify website. It creates customer profiles in Shopify and assigns tags based on a quiz taker’s answers. Face Club uses these tags to segment customers and send personalized messages.
Start Segmenting Your Audiences Today
Visual Quiz Builder gives you all the audience segmentation tools and integrations you need to build a successful audience segmentation strategy.
Create engaging product recommendation quizzes, gather zero-party data, and integrate with marketing tools like Klaviyo and Meta Pixel. Then, launch more effective marketing campaigns that drive conversions.
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