BI Revolution

Segments Plus

We Internet marketers work hard to create personas and segments. I think of personas as ABOUT THEM and segments as ABOUT US. Personas classify customers into banded archetypes. Segments group based on internal metric similarity such as "VIPs", "Multi-Buyers" and Recency Frequency and Monetary groups.

If those segments sound like direct marketing it is because DMers are masters of segmenting. The seesaw is to balance personas or how to talk to THEM in relevant ways with segments or how to make sure the way you speak to THEM is also profitable for YOU.

Segments are internal ideas. You can't segment customers who don't visit your website become a customer (in some way). UNTIL NOW, Facebook's new tool says EXTEND your segments into our data. Cool idea since chances of converting are increased significantly if you already KNOW the segment.

This is because not all segments are equal. If Facbook can identify those potential customers most likely to become multi-buyers that information is VALUABLE.

The value of extending a winning message, offer or design to potential customers who should be positively disposed to any of those things is similar to the way catalog merchants cross index lists. Cool that Facebook has created "lookalike audiences" and should be worth a few bucks to marketers who can extend their segments into the great unknown that seems less unknowable now.