Last week, Oro and Fixer Group Consulting hosted a webinar titled Identifying Hidden Customer Segments that Drive Revenue.
Thom O’Leary (President of Fixer Group Consulting), and Alex Goldman (Project Manager and Solutions Engineer at Oro, Inc.) discussed practical techniques in detecting, segmenting, and marketing to the customer segment known as the gift giver.
Gift givers are an overlooked customer segment that can provide a substantial revenue stream for online retailer. This post discusses the top-5 takeaways from the webinar and tips on how to start marketing to hidden customer segments like the gift giver.
1. Classify gifting occasions and events
There are three types of gifting occasions: the universal holiday gifting occasions (e.g. Christmas, the Independance Day); recurring personal gifting occasions (birthdays, anniversaries); and personal gifting occasions (thank-you gifts, weddings, graduations). Use your CRM or marketing automation platform to dig up any data you have on these special days.
2. Segment buyers based on their purchases
Consider tagging customers based on what they purchased to easily identify gift givers. Piece together obvious gift giver signs that signal a customer is shopping for a gift (e.g. gift cards, gift message, gift wrapping/boxes selected at the checkout, the same item is bought in various size or color variations, mismatching billing and shipping addresses).
3. Identify recipients and adjust your marketing strategy
Before you start marketing, it’s important to learn the buying pattern of your gift givers, examine what macro and micro trends they follow, and consider riding those trends. Find out what lifetime value (LTV) and average order value (AOV) gift givers exhibit to identify the opportunity for your business. Adjust your marketing efforts so that you lead gift givers to a purchase. Pull, export, and monitor recurring gift messages and phrasing to collect demographic data. Factor this info into how you communicate with customers for further targeting.
4. Incentivize gift givers to make repeated purchases
Build email segments and social audiences so you can target them on known holidays. You can also remind your gift givers of past purchases to spark inspiration for gifts. Mark all event-specific dates and months in their respective customer records and set up a CRM to track and alert on these customer occasions.
5. Use a CRM tool integrated with an eCommerce platform
When a CRM tool is integrated with an eCommerce platform, it’s possible to monitor a customer’s web activity to find out what product pages have been viewed or what items have been abandoned in carts. By knowing the buying patterns of your customers, you can segment them accordingly, identify gift giving groups, and build targeted marketing campaigns to increase your bottom-line.
For more insights into the presentation, feel free to view the slides or watch the webinar recording at your convenience.