There is an epidemic in our industry of unusable segmentation models. While it’s easy to point fingers, we’ve found it more productive to first ask, ‘What is the business objective you’re trying to achieve with segmentation?’ The underlying business objective should drive the selection of methodology and type of analysis employed.
We recently sat down with a client who had been struggling for some time to apply a market segmentation to their brand. A little insightful digging revealed the problem—the brand’s strategic objectives were completely focused on driving adherence, while the segmentation model was focused on garnering acquisition. A little more digging—turns out there were a fair number of retention-related variables collected in the original study. So with some additional cross-tabs, re-profiling of the existing segments, and a presentation in a digestible format the brand team now had a segmentation solution their vendor partners could put into action.
Does your segmentation story have such a happy ending?
