Segmentation allows you to explore your customer base to identify certain characteristics or behaviors that can help you tailor your marketing efforts, achieve higher-level personalization and effectively nurture your active customers. At Bronto, our segments are dynamic and kept up to date in near real time. For example, if a contact is added to a list, segments are re-calculated to determine if that contact’s membership has changed. Marketers use a wide range of criteria to segment their contacts, ranging from basic attributes like geolocation to engagement attributes like order data. But when it comes to re-engaging your customers and turning them into active, loyal buyers, purchase behavior data is particularly important. Let’s look at how to accomplish two common use cases involving orders and explore how and when to use criteria combination on orders. For reference, Order Criteria includes the criteria listed under Email Category > Converted and Under Commerce Category > Ordered/Converted. RFM metrics are not considered Order data.

Use Case 1: Product Launch Promotion

Let’s say that you’re launching a new supplement for athletes, and you want to send a campaign to promote it. You know people who bought Omega-3 capsules are more likely to be interested in this new product, and you also know that a recent purchase indicates a higher likelihood to buy. How do you build a target segment for this campaign? In this case, you should build the segment using two separate rules tied with And. The first rule will match a contact if they ordered the Omega-3 product, and the second will match a contact with an order in the last two months. This way, you will look for contacts who have placed an order for Omega-3 at some point in the past and who also have placed an order in the past two months (that may or may not be for Omega-3).

Use Case 2: Same Promotion With Matching Rules

Unlike the first case, there are times when you want the rules to match the same order. For example, if you want to re-engage contacts who bought a two-month supply of Omega-3 supplements and entice them to purchase a refill, you’ll have to modify the arrangement of your order criteria. To do this, first change the Advanced Segment Options > Match Type to Match Any Rule. This turns Or into And between criteria in the same rule.

Now, put all of your order criteria inside a single rule. The criteria inside the rule will be connected by And. This rule matches an order only when all of the criteria in the rule match the order at the same time. This is what a segment containing all contacts who have placed at least one order containing Omega-3 in the last two months would look like:

Voilà! You are ready to set up your refill program or launch your new product. For more information about how you can use Segments in Bronto, check out this article from Bronto Support, or contact them directly for assistance.