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What is Actionable Segmentation?

Published in Customer Segmentation 2 mins read

Actionable Segmentation is a process that focuses on creating customer segments that can be directly used to drive specific business activities, particularly client outreach.

Based on the provided reference, Actionable Segmentation enables you to segment similar client profiles, curate them, and design timely and personalized client outreach programs. It transforms raw customer data into organized groups ready for engagement.

Understanding the Components

The core idea behind actionable segmentation is moving beyond just grouping customers to making those groups useful for marketing and sales efforts.

Here's a breakdown:

  • Segment Similar Client Profiles: This involves identifying characteristics, behaviors, or demographics that clients share. This step is standard in segmentation.
  • Curate Them: This implies refining, organizing, and potentially enriching these segments to make them clean, accurate, and ready for use. It's about ensuring the segments are not just theoretical groups but practical lists.
  • Design Timely and Personalized Client Outreach Programs: This is where the "actionable" part comes in. The segments are specifically created or curated with the goal of executing targeted campaigns. This means:
    • Sending specific marketing messages.
    • Offering relevant products or services.
    • Timing communications based on customer behavior or lifecycle stage.
    • Personalizing the content based on segment characteristics.

Key Elements

The reference highlights two key elements central to this concept:

  • Actionable list definitions: These are the rules and criteria used to create the segments. They are defined in a way that ensures the resulting lists are relevant for specific actions.
  • Actionable lists: These are the actual groups of clients generated based on the actionable list definitions. These lists are ready to be used immediately for outreach or other targeted actions without further significant processing.

Why is it Important?

Traditional segmentation might group customers by age or location, but Actionable Segmentation goes further by linking those segments directly to potential actions. For instance, instead of just segmenting "customers who bought product X," an actionable segment might be "customers who bought product X and haven't purchased again in 90 days, who are suitable for a cross-sell campaign on product Y." This segment definition is inherently tied to a specific action (a cross-sell campaign).

In essence, Actionable Segmentation bridges the gap between data analysis and execution, making customer insights directly applicable to business strategy and outreach efforts.