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• Custom Segmentation Guide : How it Works & Segments to Test

  13 novembre 2023, par Erin — Analytics Tips, Uncategorized

  Struggling to get the insights you’re looking for with premade reports and audience segments in your analytics ?

  Custom segmentation can help you better understand your customers, app users or website visitors, but only if you know what you’re doing.

  You can derive false insights with the wrong segments, leading your marketing campaigns or product development in the wrong direction.

  In this article, we’ll break down what custom segmentation is, useful custom segments to consider, how new privacy laws affect segmentation options and how to create these segments in an analytics platform.

  What is custom segmentation ?

  Custom segmentation is when you divide your audience (customers, users, website visitors) into bespoke segments of your own design, not premade segments designed by the analytics or marketing platform provider.

  To do this, you single out “custom segment input” — data points you will use to pinpoint certain users. For example, it could be everyone who has visited a certain page on your site.

  

  Segmentation isn’t just useful for targeting marketing campaigns and also for analysing your customer data. Creating segments is a great way to dive deeper into your data beyond surface-level insights.

  You can explore how various factors impact engagement, conversion rates, and customer lifetime value. These insights can help guide your higher-level strategy, not just campaigns.

  How custom segments can help your business

  As the global business world clamours to become more “data-driven,” even smaller companies collect all sorts of data on visitors, users, and customers.

  However, inexperienced organisations often become “data hoarders” without meaningful insights. They have in-house servers full of data or gigabytes stored by Google Analytics and other third-party providers.

  

  One way to leverage this data is with standard customer segmentation models. This can help you get insights into your most valuable customer groups and other standard segments.

  Custom segments, in turn, can help you dive deeper. They help you unlock insights into the “why” of certain behaviours. They can help you segment customers and your audience to figure out :

  • Why and how someone became a loyal customer
  • How high-order-value customers interact with your site before purchases
  • Which behaviours indicate audience members are likely to convert
  • Which traffic sources drive the most valuable customers

  This specific insight’s power led Gartner to predict that 70% of companies will shift focus from “big data” to “small and wide” by 2025. The lateral detail is what helps inform your marketing strategy. 

  You don’t need the same volume of data if you’re analysing and segmenting it effectively.

  Custom segment inputs : 6 data points you can use to create valuable custom segments 

  To help you get started, here are six useful data points you can use as a basis to create segments — AKA customer segment inputs :

  

  Visits to certain pages

  A basic data point that’s great for custom segments is visits to certain pages. Create segments for popular middle-of-funnel pages and compare their engagement and conversion rates. 

  For example, if a user visits a case study page, you can compare their likelihood to convert vs. other visitors.

  This is a type of behavioural segmentation, but it is the easiest custom segment to set up in terms of analysis and marketing efforts.

  Visitors who perform certain actions

  The other important type of behavioural segment is visitors or users who take certain actions. Think of things like downloading a file, clicking a link, playing a video or scrolling a certain amount.

  For instance, you can create a segment of all visitors who have downloaded a white paper. This can help you explore, for example, what drives someone to download a white paper. You can look at the typical user journey and make it easier for them to access the white paper — especially if your sales reps indicate many inbound leads mention it as a key driver of their interest.

  User devices

  Device-based segmentation lets you compare engagement and conversion rates on mobile, desktop and tablets. You can also get insights into their usage patterns and potential issues with certain mobile elements.

  

  This is one aspect of technographic segmentation, where you segment based on users’ hardware or software. You can also create segments based on browser software or even specific versions.

  Loyal or high-value customers

  The best way to get more loyal or high-value customers is to explore their journey in more detail. These types of segments can help you better understand your ideal customers and how they act on your site.

  You can then use this insight to alter your campaigns or how you communicate with your target audience.

  For example, you might notice that high-value customers tend to come from a certain source. You can then focus your marketing efforts on this source to reach more of your ideal customers.

  Visitor or customer source

  You need to track the results if you’re investing in marketing (like an influencer campaign or a sponsored post) outside platforms with their own analytics.

  

  Before you can create a reliable segment, you need to make sure that you use campaign tracking parameters to reliably track the source. You can use our free campaign tracking URL builder for that.

  Demographic segments — location (country, state) and more

  Web analytics tools, such as Matomo, use visitors’ IP addresses to pinpoint their location more accurately by cross-referencing with a database of known and estimated IP locations. In addition, these tools can detect a visitor’s location through the language settings in their browser. 

  This can help create segments based on location or language. By exploring these trends, you can identify patterns in behaviour, tailor your content to specific audiences, and adapt your overall strategy to better meet the preferences and needs of your diverse visitor base.

  How new privacy laws affect segmentation options

  Over the past few years, new legislation regarding privacy and customer data has been passed globally. The most notable privacy laws are the GDPR in the EU, the CCPA in California and the VCDPA in Virginia.

  

  For most companies, it can save a lot of work and future headaches to choose a GDPR-compliant web analytics solution not only streamlines operations, saving considerable effort and preventing future headaches, but also ensures peace of mind by guaranteeing the collection of compliant and accurate data. This approach allows companies to maintain compliance with privacy regulations while remaining firmly committed to a data-driven strategy.

  Create your very own custom segments in Matomo (while ensuring compliance and data accuracy)

  Crafting precise marketing messages and optimising ROI is crucial, but it becomes challenging without the right tools, especially when it comes to maintaining accurate data.

  That’s where Matomo comes in. Our privacy-friendly web analytics platform is GDPR-compliant and ensures accurate data, empowering you to effortlessly create and analyse precise custom segments.

  If you want to improve your marketing campaigns while remaining GDPR-compliant, start your 21-day free trial of Matomo. No credit card required.

• What is Audience Segmentation ? The 5 Main Types & Examples

  16 novembre 2023, par Erin — Analytics Tips

  The days of mass marketing with the same message for millions are long gone. Today, savvy marketers instead focus on delivering the most relevant message to the right person at the right time.

  They do this at scale by segmenting their audiences based on various data points. This isn’t an easy process because there are many types of audience segmentation. If you take the wrong approach, you risk delivering irrelevant messages to your audience — or breaking their trust with poor data management.

  In this article, we’ll break down the most common types of audience segmentation, share examples highlighting their usefulness and cover how you can segment campaigns without breaking data regulations.

  What is audience segmentation ?

  Audience segmentation is when you divide your audience into multiple smaller specific audiences based on various factors. The goal is to deliver a more targeted marketing message or to glean unique insights from analytics.

  It can be as broad as dividing a marketing campaign by location or as specific as separating audiences by their interests, hobbies and behaviour.

  

  Audience segmentation inherently makes a lot of sense. Consider this : an urban office worker and a rural farmer have vastly different needs. By targeting your marketing efforts towards agriculture workers in rural areas, you’re honing in on a group more likely to be interested in farm equipment. 

  Audience segmentation has existed since the beginning of marketing. Advertisers used to select magazines and placements based on who typically read them. They would run a golf club ad in a golf magazine, not in the national newspaper.

  How narrow you can make your audience segments by leveraging multiple data points has changed.

  Why audience segmentation matters

  In a survey by McKinsey, 71% of consumers said they expected personalisation, and 76% get frustrated when a vendor doesn’t deliver.

  

  These numbers reflect expectations from consumers who have actively engaged with a brand — created an account, signed up for an email list or purchased a product.

  They expect you to take that data and give them relevant product recommendations — like a shoe polishing kit if you bought nice leather loafers.

  If you don’t do any sort of audience segmentation, you’re likely to frustrate your customers with post-sale campaigns. If, for example, you just send the same follow-up email to all customers, you’d damage many relationships. Some might ask : “What ? Why would you think I need that ?” Then they’d promptly opt out of your email marketing campaigns.

  To avoid that, you need to segment your audience so you can deliver relevant content at all stages of the customer journey.

  5 key types of audience segmentation

  To help you deliver the right content to the right person or identify crucial insights in analytics, you can use five types of audience segmentation : demographic, behavioural, psychographic, technographic and transactional.

  

  Demographic segmentation 

  Demographic segmentation is when you segment a larger audience based on demographic data points like location, age or other factors.

  The most basic demographic segmentation factor is location, which is easy to leverage in marketing efforts. For example, geographic segmentation can use IP addresses and separate marketing efforts by country. 

  But more advanced demographic data points are becoming increasingly sensitive to handle. Especially in Europe, GDPR makes advanced demographics a more tentative subject. Using age, education level and employment to target marketing campaigns is possible. But you need to navigate this terrain thoughtfully and responsibly, ensuring meticulous adherence to privacy regulations.

  Potential data points :

  • Location
  • Age
  • Marital status
  • Income
  • Employment 
  • Education

  Example of effective demographic segmentation :

  A clothing brand targeting diverse locations needs to account for the varying weather conditions. In colder regions, showcasing winter collections or insulated clothing might resonate more with the audience. Conversely, in warmer climates, promoting lightweight or summer attire could be more effective. 

  Here are two ads run by North Face on Facebook and Instagram to different audiences to highlight different collections :

  

  Each collection is featured differently and uses a different approach with its copy and even the media. With social media ads, targeting people based on advanced demographics is simple enough — you can just single out the factors when making your campaign. But if you don’t want to rely on these data-mining companies, that doesn’t mean you have no options for segmentation.

  Consider allowing people to self-select their interests or preferences by incorporating a short survey within your email sign-up form. This simple addition can enhance engagement, decrease bounce rates, and ultimately improve conversion rates, offering valuable insights into audience preferences.

  This is a great way to segment ethically and without the need of data-mining companies.

  Behavioural segmentation

  Behavioural segmentation segments audiences based on their interaction with your website or app.

  You use various data points to segment your target audience based on their actions.

  Potential data points :

  • Page visits
  • Referral source
  • Clicks
  • Downloads
  • Video plays
  • Goal completion (e.g., signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product)

  Example of using behavioural segmentation to improve campaign efficiency :

  One effective method involves using a web analytics tool such as Matomo to uncover patterns. By segmenting actions like specific clicks and downloads, pinpoint valuable trends—identifying actions that significantly enhance visitor conversions. 

  

  For instance, if a case study video substantially boosts conversion rates, elevate its prominence to capitalise on this success.

  Then, you can set up a conditional CTA within the video player. Make it pop up after the user has watched the entire video. Use a specific form and sign them up to a specific segment for each case study. This way, you know the prospect’s ideal use case without surveying them.

  This is an example of behavioural segmentation that doesn’t rely on third-party cookies.

  Psychographic segmentation

  Psychographic segmentation is when you segment audiences based on your interpretation of their personality or preferences.

  Potential data points :

  • Social media patterns
  • Follows
  • Hobbies
  • Interests

  Example of effective psychographic segmentation :

  Here, Adidas segments its audience based on whether they like cycling or rugby. It makes no sense to show a rugby ad to someone who’s into cycling and vice versa. But to rugby athletes, the ad is very relevant.

  

  If you want to avoid social platforms, you can use surveys about hobbies and interests to segment your target audience in an ethical way.

  Technographic segmentation

  Technographic segmentation is when you single out specific parts of your audience based on which hardware or software they use.

  Potential data points :

  • Type of device used
  • Device model or brand
  • Browser used

  Example of segmenting by device type to improve user experience :

  Upon noticing a considerable influx of tablet users accessing their platform, a leading news outlet decided to optimise their tablet browsing experience. They overhauled the website interface, focusing on smoother navigation and better readability for tablet users. These changes offered tablet users a seamless and enjoyable reading experience tailored precisely to their device.

  Transactional segmentation

  Transactional segmentation is when you use your customers’ purchase history to better target your marketing message to their needs.

  When consumers prefer personalisation, they typically mean based on their actual transactions, not their social media profiles.

  Potential data points :

  • Average order value
  • Product categories purchased within X months
  • X days since the last purchase of a consumable product

  Example of effective transactional segmentation :

  A pet supply store identifies a segment of customers consistently purchasing cat food but not other pet products. They create targeted email campaigns offering discounts or loyalty rewards specifically for cat-related items to encourage repeat purchases within this segment.

  If you want to improve customer loyalty and increase revenue, the last thing you should do is send generic marketing emails. Relevant product recommendations or coupons are the best way to use transactional segmentation.

  B2B-specific : Firmographic segmentation

  Beyond the five main segmentation types, B2B marketers often use “firmographic” factors when segmenting their campaigns. It’s a way to segment campaigns that go beyond the considerations of the individual.

  Potential data points :

  • Company size
  • Number of employees
  • Company industry
  • Geographic location (office)

  Example of effective firmographic segmentation :

  Companies of different sizes won’t need the same solution — so segmenting leads by company size is one of the most common and effective examples of B2B audience segmentation.

  The difference here is that B2B campaigns are often segmented through manual research. With an account-based marketing approach, you start by researching your potential customers. You then separate the target audience into smaller segments (or even a one-to-one campaign).

  Start segmenting and analysing your audience more deeply with Matomo

  Segmentation is a great place to start if you want to level up your marketing efforts. Modern consumers expect to get relevant content, and you must give it to them.

  But doing so in a privacy-sensitive way is not always easy. You need the right approach to segment your customer base without alienating them or breaking regulations.

  That’s where Matomo comes in. Matomo champions privacy compliance while offering comprehensive insights and segmentation capabilities. With robust privacy controls and cookieless configuration, it ensures GDPR and other regulations are met, empowering data-driven decisions without compromising user privacy.

  Take advantage of our 21-day free trial to get insights that can help you improve your marketing strategy and better reach your target audience. No credit card required.

• Web Analytics Reports : 10 Key Types and How to Use Them

  29 janvier 2024, par Erin

  You can’t optimise your website to drive better results if you don’t know how visitors are engaging with your site.

  But how do you correctly analyse data and identify patterns ? With the right platform, you can use a wide range of web analytics reports to dive deep into the data.

  In this article, we’ll discuss what website analytics reports are, different types, why you need them, and how to use reports to find the insights you need.

  What is web analytics ?

  Website analytics is the process of gathering, processing, and analysing data that shows what users are doing when they visit your website. 

  You typically achieve this with web analytics tools by adding a tracking code that shares data with the analytics platform when someone visits the site.

  

  The visitors trigger the tracking code, which collects data on how they act while on your site and then sends that information to the analytics platform. You can then see the data in your analytics solution and create reports based on this data.

  While there are a lot of web analytics solutions available, this article will specifically demonstrate reports using Matomo.

  What are web analytics reports ?

  Web analytics reports are analyses that focus on specific data points within your analytics platform. 

  For example, this channel report in Matomo shows the top referring channels of a website.

  

  Your marketing team can use this report to determine which channels drive the best results. In the example above, organic search drives almost double the visits and actions of social campaigns. 

  If you’re investing the same amount of money, you’d want to move more of your budget from social to search.

  Why you need to get familiar with specific web analytics reports

  The default web analytics dashboard offers an overview of high-level trends in performance. However, it usually does not give you specific insights that can help you optimise your marketing campaigns.

  For example, you can see that your conversions are down month over month. But, at a glance, you do not understand why that is.

  To understand why, you need to go granular and wider — looking into qualifying data that separates different types of visitors from each other.

  Gartner predicts that 70% of organisations will focus on “small and wide” data by 2025 over “big data.” Most companies lack the data volume to simply let big data and algorithms handle the optimising.

  What you can do instead is dive deep into each visitor. Figure out how they engage with your site, and then you can adjust your campaigns and page content accordingly.

  Common types of web analytics reports

  There are dozens of different web analytics reports, but they usually fall into four separate categories :

  

  • Referral sources : These reports show where your visitors come from. They range from channel reports — search, social media — to specific campaigns and ads.
  • Engagement (on-site actions) : These reports dive into what visitors are doing on your site. They break down clicks, scrolling, completed conversion goals, and more.
  • E-commerce performance : These reports show the performance of your e-commerce store. They’ll help you dive into the sales of individual products, trends in cart abandonment and more.
  • Demographics : These reports help you understand more about your visitors — where they’re visiting from, their browser language, device, and more.

  You can even combine insights across all four using audience segmentation and custom reports. (We’ll cover this in more detail later.)

  How to use 10 important website analytics reports

  The first step is to install the website analytics code on your website. (We include more detailed information in our guide on how to track website visitors.)

  Then, you need to wait until you have a few days (or, if you have limited traffic, a few weeks) of data. Without sufficient website visitor data, none of the reports will be meaningful.

  Visitor Overview report

  First, let’s take a look at the Visitor Overview report. It’s a general report that breaks down the visits over a given time period.

  

  What this report shows :

  • Trends in unique visits month over month
  • Basic engagement trends like the average visit length and bounce rate
  • The number of actions taken per page

  In general, this report is more of a high-level indicator you can use to explore certain areas more thoroughly. For example, if most of your traffic comes from organic traffic or social media, you can dive deeper into those channels.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

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  Location report

  Next up, we have the most basic type of demographic report — the Location report. It shows where your visitors tend to access your website from.

  

  What this report shows :

  • The country, state or city your visitors access your website from

  This report is most useful for identifying regional trends. You may notice that your site is growing in popularity in a country. You can take advantage of this by creating a regional campaign to double down on a high performing audience.

  Device report

  Next, we have the Device report, which breaks down your visitors’ devices.

  

  What this report shows :

  • Overall device types used by your visitors
  • Specific device models used

  Today, most websites are responsive or use mobile-first design. So, just seeing that many people access your site through smartphones probably isn’t all that surprising.

  But you should ensure your responsive design doesn’t break down on popular devices. The design may not work effectively because many phones have different screen resolutions. 

  Users Flow report

  The Users Flow report dives deeper into visitor engagement — how your visitors act on your site. It shows common landing pages — the first page visitors land on — and how they usually navigate your site from there.

  

  What this report shows :

  • Popular landing pages
  • How your visitors most commonly navigate your site

  You can use this report to determine which intermediary pages are crucial to keeping visitors engaged. For example, you can prioritise optimisation and rewriting for case study pages that don’t get a lot of direct search or campaign traffic.

  Improving this flow can improve conversion rates and the impact of your marketing efforts.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Exit Pages report

  The Exit Pages report complements the Users Flow report well. It highlights the most common pages visitors leave your website from.

  

  What this report shows :

  • The most common exit pages on your website
  • The exit rates of these pages

  Pages with high exit rates fall into two categories. The first are pages where it makes sense that visitors leave, like a post-purchase thank-you page. The second are pages where you’d want your visitors to stay and keep flowing down the funnel. When the rates are unusually high on product pages, category pages, or case study pages, you may have found a problem.

  By combining insights from the Users Flow and Exit Pages reports, you can find valuable candidates for optimisation. This is a key aspect of effective conversion rate optimisation.

  Traffic Acquisition Channel report

  The Acquisition Channels report highlights the channels that drive the most visitors to your site.

  

  What this report shows :

  • Top referring traffic sources by channel type
  • The average time on site, bounce rates, and actions taken by the source

  Because of increasingly privacy-sensitive browsers and apps, the best way to reliably track traffic sources is to use campaign tracking URL. Matomo offers an easy-to-use campaign tracking URL builder to simplify this process.

  Search Engines and Keywords report

  The Search Engines and Keywords report shows which keywords are driving the most organic search traffic and from what search engines.

  

  What this report shows :

  • Search engine keywords that drive traffic
  • The different search engines that refer visitors

  One of the best ways to use this report is to identify low-hanging fruit. You want to find keywords driving some traffic where your page isn’t ranked in the top three results. If the keyword has high traffic potential, you should then work to optimise that page to rank higher and get more traffic. This technique is an efficient way to improve your SEO performance.

  Ecommerce Products report

  If you sell products directly on your website, the Ecommerce Products report is a lifesaver. It shows you exactly how all your products are performing.

  

  What this report shows :

  • How your products are selling
  • The average sale price (with coupons) and quantity

  This report could help an online retailer identify top-selling items, adjust pricing based on average sale prices, and strategically allocate resources to promote or restock high-performing products for maximum profitability.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Ecommerce Log report

  If you want to explore every single ecommerce interaction, the Ecommerce Log report is for you. It breaks down the actions of visitors who add products to their cart in real time.

  

  What this report shows :

  • The full journey of completed purchases and abandoned carts
  • The exact actions your potential customers take and how long their journeys last

  If you suspect that the user experience of your online store isn’t perfect, this report helps you confirm or deny that suspicion. By closely examining individual interactions, you can identify common exit pages or other issues.