Purchase-based Customer Segments

Purchase-based customer segments give users the ability to identify sets of customers based on their previous spending patterns. Using these groupings, businesses can target these customers for particular offers, sales, or targeted content.

Setup a Purchase-based Customer Segment

To set up a new customer segment, navigate to the "Customer Segments" section of the Admin interface. This section can currently be found under the "Customer Care" top level section in the left nav.

Selecting "Add Customer Segment" in the upper right corner will take us to the customer segment creation screen.

Steps

1. On the "General" tab:

   • Give our new segment an appropriate name.
   • Select the desired segment type
   • Rule Based - Allows us to define a rule based on customer attributes
   • Customer Set - Allows us to identify specific customers to add to the segment
   • In the right column, select "Yes" for "Does this segment have purchase requirements?" > Note: When creating a purchase-based customer segment, filling out a rule or adding specific customers is not required. Doing so however, allows us to further target customers.

2. When we chose "Yes" on the question above, a new tab became visible: "Purchase Requirements". Here we are able to:

   • Set a minimum spend amount
   • Build a purchased item requirement rule
   • Specify either a date range or rolling "last X days" range

On this tab, only the "Purchase Date Requirements" section is required. The other two options can be used as needed. For example, if we wanted to target any customers that spent $100 in the last week, we could leave the "Purchase Item Requirements" rule empty. Likewise, if we wanted all customers that purchased any amount of some product in the last week, we could leave the "Minimum Spend Amount" field a $0.

1. Our customer segment is complete and ready to go. To finish, select "Save" in the top right corner.

How it Works

Customers can be added to a customer segment with purchase requirements in two different ways:

1. At the end of the customer's checkout flow, the order is processed to see if the customer qualifies for any of these segments.

2. The other way a customer can be added is through a nightly job. The job is responsible for iterating through all customer segments that contain purchase requirements and determining which customers and orders are relevant to them. This processing is done in batches and keeps track of the last time it ran. This ensures that if there is an error during processing, the process will be able to pick up where it left off the next time it runs. The main purpose of this job is to refresh segments that are for the last 'x' days, since that time frame changes day to day.