Audience segmentation is when you divide your audience into groups based on various criteria such as demographics, geography, psychographics (values, motivations) or behaviour (purchase intent) so that you can better understand and approach each group with effective campaigns. Email marketers, for example, segment subscribers as part of targeted campaigns, perhaps sending different messages to inactive subscribers vs. loyal shoppers. Social media marketers build ads based on target audience segments. When using Audience Segmentation in Google Analytics for website traffic, it’s important to understand how different audience segments perform on the site, where opportunities lie, and which segments are most approachable.
The key is to ensure your audience segments are useful.
The 10 audience segments I often use in Google Analytics are:
- Segmentation by Referrer / Traffic source. As noted above, this is great for tracking email or influencer campaigns, comparing performance of traffic from different social media sites, or rolling up a number of sources into one audience.
- Segmentation by Visitor Type. This is helpful for comparing New users vs Returning users. How does their behaviour differ? You could also look at members vs. non-members using custom variables.
- Segmentation by Location / Geography. Great way to see how performance varies in your main markets, or to track localized campaigns.
- Segmentation by Content Viewed. You can build segments for traffic that view certain product pages, a collection, or a checkout page.
- Segmentation by Landing Page. Similar to above, you may want to segment based on visitors who enter the site via a key campaign landing page.
- Segmentation by Action. Have events, goals or ecommerce set up? Consider tracking performance of visitors who take a particular action like sign up for the newsletter or add to cart.
- Segmentation by Demographics. If you have audience demographics enabled, then you can use age range segments or gender segments to see how different groups perform.
- Segmentation by Engagement. Segment based on flirts vs. diehards. For example, create a segment for sessions that are > 90 seconds.
- Segmentation by Value. If your events and goals setup uses values, then you could segment the traffic to show visits above a certain value. Or segment based on ecommerce behaviour above the Average Order Value.
- Segmentation by Technology platform. For sites with a strong Mobile audience, you could segment the Apple vs. Android traffic.
BONUS: Use this great Custom Report to see your Profitable Audience Demographics. Clicking the link will open a new window with a prompt to add this report to your Google Analytics account.
