Over 66% of customers expect your company to fully understand their needs. The tricky thing is those needs will be completely different from user to user, since not all mobile app customers are the same.
User segmentation can help you better understand those customers and serve their needs. It allows you to divide your users into different groups based on specific traits to tailor their mobile experience for their needs and expectations.
There are many ways to segment users, but four of the most common ways to segment your users include:
1. Demographic Segmentation
Demographic segmentation consists of segmenting users based on factors such as age, gender, income, and occupation. It’s the most basic form of segmentation most companies start with. Demographics also help define a buyer persona and why the user would want to use your app.
Another benefit of demographic segmentation is that it improves your advertising. If your mobile app has a demographic of working professionals, for example, marketing your mobile app on LinkedIn will bring you better results than Facebook. You can also A/B test different content and ads to various demographics to see what they respond the best to.
2. Behavioral Segmentation
Behavioral segmentation divides your mobile app users based on their behavior and habits. These behaviors can include the time they’re spending with your app, search history, previous actions, and where they’re at in their journey. With this data, you’ll be able to personalize the app experience and increase user engagement.
For example, YouTube and Netflix bring users back to their platforms by customizing recommendations based on previous content they’ve watched. Each time the user watches a new video or series, the companies refresh their behavioral data to keep their recommendations up to date. That way, even as the user’s interests change over time, they get recommended relevant content.
Behavioral data allows you to adapt your messaging based on where the user is at in their journey. If a segment of your users just signed up for your app, then your focus will be to onboard them and educate them on the value of your mobile app.
Your approach will be different for mobile app users who’ve been active for a while. Your focus may be to get them to upgrade their membership or to explore more features.
With behavioral data, you can also identify users at risk for churn and find ways to re-engage, like in this example from language-learning platform Duolingo:
Duolingo sends them this funny “we miss you” email to get their attention when the user has been inactive for some time. They can then click on the email CTA and hop back to the platform to complete another lesson. It's a non-pushy way to re-engage the inactive user.
3. Geographic Segmentation
As the name suggests, geographic segmentation divides users based on their geographic location (such as country, language, cultural background, etc.). It allows you to adapt your marketing and messaging based on the user’s location.
Certain apps (such as apps in the food-delivery or eCommerce space) will benefit from this type of segmentation by using it to target users with relevant offers to drive more conversions.
For example, eCommerce apps can personalize their offers based on the weather of the user’s location. Let’s say you have a segment of your users in sunny Florida and another in cold Alaska. You can target users in Florida with push notifications on your latest sunglasses and Alaska users with a promotion on coats.
If you’re managing a food-delivery app, the user’s location plays an essential role in the food you can deliver due to cultural differences. We can see it with McDonald’s — they adapt their menu based on a country’s food preferences (such as the banana pie in Brazil or the McArabia menu in middle eastern countries). You could also offer promotions for users based on the local holidays (such as Diwali for India).
4. Buying Activity
You can divide your users based on their buying activity within your app, whether through their in-app purchases or their subscriptions. Diving into this data allows you to identify your most loyal users and what leads them to become paid customers.
For example, Joe is a mobile app that offers coffee shops a way of accepting mobile orders and payments. They wanted to identify which factors and user actions impact their retention.
Throughout their research on the purchasing activity of their users, they found that users who were most likely to keep using their app purchased at least twice a week and preloaded money on their account for future orders.
Based on this information, Joe segmented their user base who were close to reaching these retention milestones and targeted them with messaging that would get them to make another purchase:
To uncover this data, you can set up different segments of your paying and non-paying users. You can then analyze each of these segments and identify common patterns that lead to more conversion and retention from your customers.
Improving the App Experience Starts with Understanding Your Users
The key to delivering the best app experience is to understand the unique needs of each user and communicate with them effectively. Segmentation helps you better understand how to customize the app experience for your different user segments, improving retention and revenue.
That said, user segmentation is just the first step. To engage the most users possible, you also need to include the right features in your app, such as in-app messaging, to communicate with users and drive them toward desired actions.
Stream’s chat API takes away the complexity that comes with integrating in-app messaging as part of your product. Our third-party solution comes with easy-to-use SDKs and flexible messaging UI kits to create in-app pop-ups that captivate your users and help them get the most out of your app.
Sign up for a free Stream Chat trial today to learn more.