What Is Audience Segmentation? A Complete Guide

Audience segmentation is the process of dividing your wider target audience into groups based on certain similarities.

Members of your audience segments will all have something in common, such as:

• Gender identification
• Age
• Geographic location
• Personal interests
• Occupation
• Online browsing or buying behaviors

Segmenting your audience into means you can craft copy, communications, and campaigns tailored to the needs and wants of specific customer types, helping your efforts achieve the best possible results.

As audience segmentation focuses on using demographic data as well as to create bespoke content and communications, it offers several benefits, including:

• An improved that drives higher engagement and strengthens long-term loyalty
• Increased from your marketing campaigns and content
• Consistent commercial improvement and growth

Developing a robust audience segmentation strategy helps ensure your consumer-facing communications offer direct personal value, going beyond the basics of simply adding a customer’s name or acknowledging past purchases.

This level of is essential for standing out in oversaturated industries, where your customers likely face messaging from hundreds of brands daily.

By offering something unique and genuinely valuable, customers are more likely to remember your brand and remain loyal. You can address your customers’ needs before they know what they want.

You can use several types of audience segmentation to tap into different audiences across your channels.

Understanding the distinct segmentation types is vital for developing better communications that speak to your audience.

Psychographic segmentation

focuses on arranging potential or existing customers based on their personality traits, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle preferences.

This type of segmentation is effective for emotionally driven communications or campaigns. For instance, you may target a high-income audience segment and reach out to them with aspirational content based on your most premium products. Here, you would highlight how owning your premium products would elevate their lifestyle and enhance their social status.

You can collect psychographic segmentation data by drilling into information such as shopping behaviors, past purchases, and direct .

Preference-centric segmentation

In this instance, you segment your audience based on their particular likes, dislikes, personal needs, or pain points.

This segmentation method is a powerful way to get to the heart of your audience’s issues and deliver content or solutions that educate, enlighten, and solve a specific problem.

For example, a provider might use a preference-based approach to create an audience segment of new freelance business owners looking for tax management advice. The business could use the details the customers provided to reach out to them with an income management toolkit that meets their needs head-on.

Geographic segmentation

Segmenting your audience based on their geographical location is effective for developing local marketing initiatives.

Collecting location-centric data is the key to using geographic segmentation in a timely, focused, and regionally relevant way. Geographic segmentation techniques include sending push notifications to target customers when they’re in a specific location, creating shopping guides for a particular region, or sending to relevant regional audience segments.

For instance, an outdoor clothing brand could use its geographical data to create targeted content or promotions for people living near Vancouver during the winter sports season.

Technographic segmentation

Technographic segmentation involves arranging your audience according to how they use technology.

When using technographic segmentation, collecting data about customers’ device usage, software application preferences, and preferred operating systems is the key to success.

You could use technographic data to send recommendations, create content, or develop offers that fit with your audience’s preferred devices or current apps, driving maximum engagement in the process

Behavioral segmentation

Behavioral segmentation hones in on how people interact with your brand. Collecting and drilling into data focused on engagement levels, online browsing behaviors, and purchasing history is perfect for communications.

For example, you might use to target your least engaged customers with personalized deals or reach out to your most engaged social media followers with exclusive early-bird access to a new product. Techniques like this create positive interaction and prompt conversions.

This type of segmentation also aims to re-engage customers who no longer interact with your content or have abandoned their shopping cart. In these instances, you can send your “cart abandoners” a timely follow-up email with a small discount, encouraging them to complete their purchase.

Like most , properly segmenting your audience means following a carefully laid-out plan. These steps help ensure your efforts are targeted and efficient, leading to a strong return on investment (ROI).

Define your audience segmentation goals

You need to know your exact goals to give your audience segmentation strategy a definitive direction.

Understanding the “why” behind your segmentation efforts will ensure you curate groups of target customers that align with your strategic aims.

Whether you’re looking to improve brand engagement in a specific region, market your new products to younger audiences, or personalize your email marketing communications, defining your segmentation goals puts you on the path to more consistent results.

Collect, curate, and analyze your customer data

Data-driven insights lie at the heart of any successful audience segmentation strategy.

Once you’ve defined your segmentation goals, you can delve deeper into your data sources to uncover how to effectively define your audience segments.

These sources might include:

• Behavioral data from your chosen , such as information about the features your customers use most or how long they spend on your site.
• Insights from your customer relationship management system (CRM). What issues are users contacting you about?
• Social media engagement data. What types of content do your customers like or share most, and on which platforms?
• Consumer trends, insights, or responses that help you further understand what your customers do and their likes and needs.

This framework helps you harness your customer data for effective audience segmentation:

1. to remove redundant information and fix inconsistencies that could mislead or misinform.
2. Choose the most relevant parameters for your audience segmentation data. These can include ranges based on age, location, income, and existing levels of engagement.
3. Decide on the types of audience segmentation that best align with your goals and arrange your customer data accordingly.
4. Use data-driven tools (e.g., CRMs, tools, and analytics platforms) to streamline the data collection, curation, and analytics process.

Map your audience segmentation channels

With your data optimized and your segments defined, you can further refine your efforts by choosing the best channels or touchpoints to focus on for specific audiences.

For instance, tech-curious digital natives might be best targeted on TikTok via short-form video content.

Creative millennial professionals are likely to be found on LinkedIn, where you can address their desires to build their careers with shareable infographics.

Working parents rarely have time to browse social channels—in this case, an email with a punchy subject line and to-the-point copy may be most effective.

This approach will increase your chances of reaching the right audience at the right time and help you with certain audience segments.

You don’t have to be rigid when mapping your audience segmentation channels. Each channel offers potential value, and investing in different ones means you can prioritize where to engage with your audience segments for the best possible outcomes.

Test. Refine. Repeat.

Once you’ve defined your audience segments, mapped out your communications channels, and rolled out your campaigns or communications, you should consult your data.

By tracking and monitoring the results of your targeted campaigns, you can identify when they’re hitting the mark (i.e., engaging customers) or if you need to go back to the drawing board.

As a result, you’ll be able to refine your audience segments to ensure your future campaigns and communications have more impact, increase engagement, and earn more of those all-important conversions.

Paying attention to your data and the effect your campaigns are having ensures you keep evolving your efforts in response to your customer's ever-changing needs.

These examples demonstrate the value of using data for effective audience segmentation.

Netflix

are the core of Netflix’s ongoing marketing strategy. The world’s largest visual uses its subscriber data to deliver a .

The brand uses its wealth of customer insights to drive its . By analyzing its users' viewing behaviors regularly, Netflix serves up relevant content recommendations, both on-platform and through email, to drive regular engagement and reduce customer .

Capital One

Financial service provider Capital One utilizes a mix of behavioral, geographic, and preference-based audience segmentation techniques to promote its various tools and services across channels.

For example, the brand’s most recent campaign used emotionally driven storytelling to target consumers who struggle to manage their finances.

This heart-warming multichannel marketing initiative’s supportive angle inspired a positive response from customers by showcasing how you can use Capital One’s products, features, or services to navigate difficult financial situations more confidently.

Duolingo

Popular language learning platform Duolingo uses behavioral audience segmentation techniques to .

Upon realizing that many language learners lose their motivation over time, Duolingo decided to develop audience segments based on . Are they daily users, or are they returning after a short or long break?

Duolingo uses this behavioral data to tailor its messaging to specific types of users and spark engagement. For instance, those who complete more lessons receive milestone badges and extra assignments, while learners who skip lessons receive motivational messages encouraging them to continue their studies.

This personalized approach to its in-app communications plays a pivotal role in the brand's year-on-year growth. It now has over .

Audience segmentation is the most impactful and sustainable way to ensure your marketing communications resonate with your consumers on a deep, personal level.

Data is pivotal to audience segmentation success. Without relevant consumer insights, your marketing communications risk failing to hit the mark.

Amplitude’s insight-driven is equipped with innovative audience management features, such as:

• to help you categorize and target specific user groups based on the attributes most relevant to your business
• behavioral analytics that provide immediate insights into what your users are doing
• that help you make stronger, more proactive decisions based on future trends

These powerful features help you build precise and actionable audience lists, enabling you to create highly targeted content and communications that consistently drive a high ROI.