One of the tenets of successful e-commerce personalization is segmentation and forming a complete picture of each customer. The way to do that is via collecting, optimizing and interpreting enormous amounts of data that is well beyond anything that can be managed in a simple spreadsheet.

By now, most retailers understand the importance of segmentation and the subsequent analysis of products viewed, left in cart, and purchased. It is important to cluster your segments, too, so that you are able to detect trends; such clustering will help you make smart and accurate predictions of future shopping behavior. Proactively analyzing problematic areas helps to lower page abandonment rates, increase visitor-to-lead conversion rates, create a personalized experience and improve overall brand perception.

Defining different groups is the art of segmentation and to do it right you need both a framework and the tools to put your segments in use. So we compiled a list of 5 data-driven e-commerce segments to act as a sort of guide for how can you start segmenting your digital buyers online.

1. Non – Purchasers

Create a segment of people who have never purchased a product from you. A customer who has been browsing through your categories or product pages might be tempted to purchase a new product with a promotional code or special campaign to incentivize first purchase.

Action Tip: Leverage Email Marketing

Leverage email marketing campaigns and retargeting. Target people´s browsing behaviours and get in touch with them by offering a special discount for the products they have viewed. Their browsing activity can be used in conjunction with other segmentation criteria like personalized user data (like gender, age, or style) to get that first purchase.

2.Churning Customers

Every retailer knows that two main segments are high-frequency, repeat customers and low-value, infrequent shoppers. By analyzing your historical data about their shopping habits and patterns, you can predict when shoppers go cold and why. More than 68% of customers leave because they didn’t have a personalized experience at your store.

Action Tip:Increase Personalization and lifecycle-oriented messaging

Even if a shopper leaves you, you can win them back by focusing on specific moments when your content can once again become interesting for her. If you have her purchase history and demographic information, send them an offer for a similar product they have purchased. Even better – tie this to an occasion like a birthday. A good example of this kind of segmentation is when Uber received negative press coverage for increasing prices. They segmented customers who stopped using the service and invited them for a free ride to winning them back. Find creative ways to re-engage with your previous shoppers!

3.Your Best Customers

Segmentation options based on purchase activity are limitless. You can segment people based on specific categories, the total number of orders, the average amount spent per order, etc. These are all great options, but you should never forget to identify your best customers. That could easily be done by setting a certain threshold or identifying the number of purchases done. You want to ensure a fully optimized experience for them. Once you isolate them, treat them like the special people that they are: offer early engagement dates, special discounts, or gifts to show them your appreciation.

Action Tip: Easy Repeat Checkout Process

One of the key ingredients of fully optimized experience is an easy checkout process. Make sure to store information like payment details, shipping preferences of your top purchases to ensure a frictionless checkout process. Going forward, however, apply relevant personalized recommendations in order to upsell and cross-sell relevant products to your customers. That´s exactly the result you expect from your best purchasers.

4.Shopping Cart Abandoners

According to statistics, 67.45% of online shopping carts are abandoned before the customer completes a sale. Not completing a sale is now part of a buying process, because shoppers change their minds at the last minute, want to compare the prices or get away because of unexpected prices like shipping, taxes and different fees. Creating a segment for these shoppers is essential because there are your low-hanging fruits. Research shows that 90% of e-commerce leads go cold within one hour, but when remarketed to, spend 55% more.

Action Tip: Triggered emails

The goal of triggered shopping cart abandonment emails is to catch customers in the mindset of buying and hold a shopper’s potential interest. A good way to incentivize purchases, even more, is to include an image of the product, and perhaps offer a discount on shipping. Just be careful not to train your customers to look for these special offers every time they abandon.

5. Browse and Cart Abandoners

Retailers should focus not only on shopping cart abandonment. Browse-abandonment is also part of a good segmentation strategy. This segment contains users who are not that high up in the conversion funnel and aren´t as close to making a decision: they check category listings and browse product pages, but no more. Your goal as a retailer is to bring them back, continue to move them through the buying funnel, and to get them to finish what they started.

Action Tip: Follow up with relevant product recommendations

The main goal of every browse-abandonment campaign is to move visitors further up the buying funnel. This could be done by a number of different campaigns: reminding them of items viewed, luring them back into your site with special offers, or recommending similar products that they might be interested in.