67 percent of customers say brands need to automatically adjust their content based on a customer’s current context. And 42 percent say they get annoyed when content isn’t personalized.

Which is why more and more companies are turning to the data to personalize their marketing, to target the right customers with the right messages at the right time and to make sure they aren’t targeting the wrong customers.

In the world of Customer Data Platforms, we call this segmentation and suppression. And here’s how it works.

What is Segmentation and Why Does It Matter?

Chances are, your company has a lot of customer data on its hands. The challenge for most companies is in filtering and using that data to drive real campaigns. Which is where segmentation comes in.

Segmentation is the act of filtering the data to identify a target audience. Maybe that target audience is people who have abandoned their shopping carts (and who you hope to convince to come back and complete a purchase). Maybe it’s your most engaged customers. Maybe it’s customers within a 30-mile radius of an event. Or maybe it’s a combination – shopping cart abandoners who are highly engaged and within a 30-mile radius of your event.

One of the powerful features of a good CDP should be the ability to segment your data and let you identify your target audiences quickly, simply and in real time.

And then there’s suppression…

What is Suppression and Why Does It Matter?

On one hand, you want to target the right audiences for your campaigns. But what about the wrong audiences?

If you chase your customers around with ads for things they’ve already purchased, they’re going to get annoyed. And 66 percent of those customers who you annoy with irrelevant ads? They say that annoyance makes them far less likely to purchase.

Which is where suppression comes in.

A good CDP should allow you to not only target your ideal customers, but also suppress audiences you don’t want to include in a campaign. Don’t want to advertise to customers who just bought a similar product from you? What about customers with open customer service tickets? Or customers who’ve stopped engaging with your brand? You should be able to identify and suppress those audiences in your CDP as needed for each campaign.

Smart Segmentation and Suppression Leads to Big Wins

Smart segmentation and suppression are how The Economist grew digital subscriptions by 300 percent.

Through segmentation and suppression, they identified and targeted users who were not yet subscribed and who were likely to subscribe based on Lytics behavioral scores. Not only did they increase digital subscriptions exponentially, but they decreased acquisition costs by 80 percent as well.

Dr. Martens’ story is similar. They used segmentation and suppression to identify customers who had an affinity for their museum collection, who lived in the UK, who were likely to engage and who had not recently purchased a satchel. They targeted this audience with ads for a museum collection satchel…and saw a 60 percent increase in conversions and a 20 percent increase in average order value.

Ready to Start Segmenting Your Customers?

A CDP like Lytics is the answer. We’d love to show you how. Schedule a demo today to see the product and chat with our expert team.