You don’t need two hundred segments. You need about a dozen, built on three questions: are they reading, where are they in their life with you, and how much are they worth?
Segmentation gets sold as sophistication. In practice most accounts have either none, one list sent everything, or dozens that nobody remembers building. The useful middle is small and boring and pays for itself every week.
Engagement segments decide who gets a send. Define engaged by clicks, site visits and purchases as well as opens, because of the Apple change in chapter 13.
Adjust the windows to your send frequency and product clock. A brand that sells a yearly purchase can keep people longer than a brand that sends daily.
Lifecycle segments decide what a send says. The same product launch should read differently to someone who’s never bought and to someone on their sixth order.
| Stage | Who | What they need to hear |
|---|---|---|
| Subscriber, never bought | Signed up, no order yet | Why this brand, proof, a reason to make the first order |
| One-time buyer | Exactly one order | How to get the most from what they bought, then the natural next product |
| Repeat buyer | Two or more orders, recent | What’s new, what goes with what they own, recognition |
| Top customers | Your highest spenders | First access, a human voice, no discounts they don’t need |
| Lapsing | Past their usual reorder window | A reminder of what they liked, and a reason to come back |
| Lapsed | Well past the window | Winback, then less frequent contact |
RFM scores every customer on recency (how recently they bought), frequency (how many times) and monetary value (how much in total). Rank customers into five equal groups on each and you get scores like 5-5-5 for your best and 1-1-1 for your coldest. It’s decades old, it needs nothing but your order history, and it’s often more useful day to day than a predictive score, because anyone on the team can see why a customer landed where they did.
Three questions, about a dozen segments. Anything more has to prove it changed a send.
RFM earns its place in two decisions. Who gets recognition instead of discounts: your high-frequency, high-value customers, who will buy at full price if you let them. And who is slipping: customers with high frequency and value whose recency is falling, the most valuable people to reach before they’re gone. Chapter 20 shows how concentrated revenue usually is among them.
A segment earns its keep if it changes what somebody receives. If a segment exists but every send goes to the same audience anyway, delete it. Before building a new one, write down which send it will change and how you’ll know it worked.
This is one chapter of The Whole Machine, which is free and readable in full on a single page with no form in front of it.