Leveraging Static Segments

Static segments are the perfect tool for tracking the effectiveness of your one-time marketing initiatives. Not only do they help you identify the right customer group to target initially, but they also allow you to evaluate their behavior post-campaign by keeping the group isolated—excluding any future changes or updates. Let's see how it works and explore some best practices!

What are Static Segments?

When creating a new segment in RetentionX, you can choose to set it up either dynamically or statically. For both segment types, you define custom conditions to identify the customers belonging to the segment. However, static segments differ in that they do not update over time; they retain the initial group of customers identified at the time of creation.

Use Cases

Let's dive into a few real-world examples where we recommend taking advantage of the nature of static segments:

1. Printed Mailers
   Print mailings, for example ahead of a product launch, can be very costly, but when executed well, they yield a high return on investment. To maximize the most bang-for-your-buck, it's crucial to carefully choose your recipients—rather than including your entire list of customers. Why spend money on customers who made a single purchase five years ago? To identify the right audience, focus on your most engaged high-value customers or those with the highest potential. To do so, you can easily use the RFM Analysis.
   
   Let's say, you decide to send the print mailing to your Top Customers, you'll naturally want to identify your current Top Customers and later evaluate the ROI of the mailing by analyzing their performance. That's where static segments come in handy.
   
   Even though additional customers may become Top Customers and others may lose their status after the segment is created, a static segment preserves the originally identified customers. This allows you to measure their behavior, without skewing the results by customers joining or leaving the segment over time.
   
   
    

2. Product Samples
   Samples aren't just for attracting new customers. Offering existing customers new samples as a special offer helps foster brand loyalty too. Once you identify which of your products drive loyalty and encourage repeat purchases, it can be an effective strategy to send customers a miniature version of your most 'sticky' product(s). For example, a skincare brand that offers free samples of its moisturizer allows customers to experience its benefits before committing to the full-price product.
   
   Before you double down and start giving samples away, it's again important to define the right audience! For instance, target customers who haven't purchased the full-price version of the product yet but focus only on those who are still active, having shopped at least once in the past 12 months. 
   
   To maximize the effectiveness of your campaign, create a static segment of recipients. This will prevent new customers, who haven’t received the sample, from being added to the segment and ensure that customers who purchase the product after receiving the sample remain part of the original group.
   
   
    

3. Community Events
   Planning a community event to bring together your best customers? Or perhaps you're opening a new store and want to host a pre-opening event for your most valuable customers?
   
   First and foremost, it makes sense to invite customers who live in or near the city where the event will take place. Additionally, given that resources are limited, it's essential to carefully select the customers you invite. This is especially true if the location has limited space or you plan special touches like snacks, goodie bags, and other perks. Consider inviting only customers who have significantly contributed to your brand's success, focusing on those with the highest customer lifetime value.
   
   By creating a static segment, you can capture the customers who live nearby and currently rank within the top 20% of customer by their LTV. This ensures your efforts are focused on the most valuable attendees while maintaining a consistent group for post-event analysis.
   
   
    

4. Subscription Offer
   If you're offering product subscriptions, you're likely already aware that the LTV of subscribers is significantly higher than that of one-off purchasers. To encourage more customers to subscribe, clearly communicate the exclusive benefits and value of subscribing—ideally in combination with a strong loyalty program that rewards ongoing subscriptions.

   To increase subscription activations, you might consider allocating some budget for additional incentives to motivate customers to sign up for a subscription before making these benefits a default part of their journey. This could include offering a free product, bonus points for your loyalty program, or a starter pack related to your subscription product (e.g., a coffee cup and spoon for customers signing up for a monthly coffee subscription).

   To test whether these incentives drive more subscription activations, start by identifying your recent repeat shoppers—customers who are already satisfied with your products but haven’t subscribed yet. Ideally, a high percentage of repeat shoppers will convert to subscriptions. However, with a dynamic segment, new customers will continuously join the group. To accurately track the impact of your efforts, create a static segment.

   
   

Success Tracking

Okay, now we know the why and how you can create static segments - that's great! After you ran your campaign, of course, you should measure the success of it, too.

Here are the most effective ways to do so:

• Added Revenue
  Track the performance metrics of your campaign by taking a look at the development of the segment where you will find the Total Added Revenue since the segment was created.
  
  

• Purchase Behavior
  All your campaigns share a common goal: fostering customer loyalty by encouraging repeat purchases, subscription sign-ups, or upsells to specific products. To monitor post-campaign purchase behavior, create a dynamic segment to identify customers who were part of the static segment and successfully engaged with the campaign. For example, you could track customers who received a sample product and later purchased the full-priced version.
  
  
   

• LTV Increase
  Use the LTV Tracker and Customer Cohorts by LTV to evaluate how the targeted segment's behavior has evolved in terms of profitability. This will give you valuable insights into the long-term effects of your campaign and how the quality of your customers is shifting/improving over time.
  
  
   

• Incentive Impact
  Once you offer your target audience an incentive unlocked with an (automatic) coupon code, you can leverage the Best Coupon Codes report to track how many codes were redeemed and, more importantly, what happens afterward. Did the incentive trigger just one discounted purchase, or were additional orders placed?

  We highly recommend checking the Follow-Up Orders metric, which shows the average number of orders placed after the coupon code has been redeemed.

  
  

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