How Connect Prioritizes Customers

During message roll out, Connect assigns the customers in your audience to a segment. In order to build intelligent models, you need to understand how Connect prioritizes the criteria it uses for sorting. In particular, Connect uses a top-down approach to sorting customers into segments. That is, when a list of segments is created, Connect will place a customer into the first segment for which the customer qualifies. The following examples illustrate how customer priority is assigned.

Example 1:

Imagine you are building a direct marketing campaign for CompWare.com, an online retailer specializing in electronic and computer equipment. There are several items you want to highlight in your email campaign: ultralight laptops, inexpensive home computers, big screen televisions, digital cameras and greeting card software. You want to target each item to a different audience as follows:

Ultralight Laptops – Everyone who recently clicked a laptop link
Inexpensive Home Computers – Customers with children at home
Big Screen Televisions – Men
Digital Cameras – Everyone who recently clicked a digital camera link
Greeting Card Software – Leftovers

Connect stores segment criteria hierarchically, so when the system reviews an individual customer, it checks the assignment criteria for each segment in the same order that you have them listed in your model. Once a customer qualifies for a segment, that customer is not eligible for any remaining segments. If you have filter criteria that is not mutually exclusive, arrange your segments to accommodate the proper outcome.

Note: If you create a segment in a customer profile segmentation model without any filters attached to it, the system associates all available customers with that segment. All following segments will not have customers assigned to them.

Given the targeted audience, you know a few important things:

Segments targeting big screen televisions must go after segments targeting laptops, home computers, and digital cameras. If you put big screen televisions first, no men are targeted for the other segments.
Segments that target the most people, such as segments where targeting is based on an action, come before segments with a more general target.
Segments targeting greeting card software must go last because those are the customers remaining after all of the other customers are targeted. To better understand leftovers, see the section Understanding Leftover Segments.

So, the segmentation model would look like this:

Segment 1: Targets everyone who clicked a laptop link within the last year
Segment 2: Targets everyone who clicked a digital camera link within the last year
Segment 3 Customers with children at home
Segment 4 All men
Segment 5 Leftovers

The following two hypothetical customers are in the customer base:

Joe Meta, who clicked several links this year, including digital camera links.
Sally Beta, who has two children at home and does not shop online much, generally spending less than $100 in any one transaction. She usually only clicks links for children's goods.

Applying these two customers to the segmentation model above:

Joe falls into Segment 2, even though he also qualifies for Segment 4, because Segment 2 comes first. Since Joe can only fall into one segment, he will only receive an email for the digital camera promotion.
Sally will fall into Segment 3, because she has not clicked any links with the specified interests, but she does have children at home.

You can see why it is crucial that you build the segments carefully.

Example 2:

Assume the same business, targeted audience, segmentation model, and customers from the example above with one change. The big screen television needs to be higher on the list. There are two options with radically different outcomes:

Create two separate segmentation models.
Expand your model, creating more segments with mutually exclusive filters.

Approach 1: Create two separate segmentation models

Segmentation Model 1:

Segment 1: All men
Segment 2: Leftovers

Segmentation Model 2:

Segment 1: Targets everyone who clicked a laptop link within the last year
Segment 2: Targets everyone who clicked a digital camera link within the last year
Segment 3: Customers who have children at home
Segment 4: Leftovers (For more information, please see Understanding Leftover Segments)

Using the same customers:

Joe receives email from the first campaign, Segment 1. Joe also receives email from the second campaign, qualifying for Segment 2.
Sally receives email from the first campaign, Segment 2. Sally also receives email from the second campaign, Segment 3.

You can see how your customers can receive more than one email, using the two-campaign approach, but all men, rather than a subset of men, are targeted for the big screen TV.

Remember that some customers may see multiple emails as spam. Think about the customer's potential behavior while constructing your segmentation model.

Approach 2: Expand the Model by Creating Additional Segments with Mutually Exclusive Filters

Segmentation Model 1:

Segment 1: Targets all men who clicked a laptop link within the last year
Segment 2: Targets everyone else who clicked a laptop link within the last year
Segment 3: Targets all men who clicked a digital camera link within the last year
Segment 4: Targets everyone else who clicked a digital camera link within the last year
Segment 5: Male customers with children at home
Segment 6: All other customers with children at home
Segment 7: Leftovers

In this example, you created a pair of mutually exclusive segments for each of the original audiences you targeted – one that will go to men and feature the big screen TV along with the other product. Another segment will go to customers who are not men and it targets a single product. The leftover segment still targets the same customers – those that do not qualify for the first six segments. This solution ensures that your customers receive only one email from the campaign.