I was recently talking with a client responsible for her company’s segmentation strategy, about the value of various behavior-based segmentation models. As a result of that conversation, she actually coined a new phrase: “Uber Committed.”
She noted, “The best customers we acquire and keep are those that are ‘Uber Committed,’ to our brand, and/or the products and services we offer. But it’s still tough to find these types of consumers.”
Very tough indeed. But they’ve found a solution.
She shared what her company is currently relying on to “get at” the Uber Committed:
- Recency and frequency-of-purchase data. “While they provide an indicator of commitment to patronize us, and affinities to certain products and services, this data can’t tell us ‘why’ they like us, or why they like the products they buy. And they provide no indication of other products and services they may like. Plus, we have no idea what consumers buy for others, so we know the insights are skewed.”
- Online browsing data. “For audience targeting there’s value, but it’s not the silver bullet for finding the Uber Committed. Consumers often browse for things they like but have no intention of purchasing, for any number of reasons. And again, we don’t know if the consumer is looking to buy a one-time gift for someone else, which is a real problem for re-targeting, and a brand destroyer to boot.”
- Survey data. “We frequently survey customers to uncover their needs and sentiments. While this is directionally helpful, the self-reported feedback we get may not be reflective of their true future behaviors. Not to mention it only represents a small sample of our customers, so it just doesn’t scale.”
We then introduced her company to location-based segmentation that identifies consumers’ commitment in a whole new way. By anonymously gathering insights on the local events and activities consumers physically engage in, the client now conclusively knows their interests and passions. This is giving the brand unprecedented intelligence to anticipate what they want and need—currently and in the future.
The client actually told me, “The fact that these segments are built on consumers that invest their time to physically engage in events, versus web browsing, clearly shows us what they’re ‘Uber Committed’ to. We now know for example, that consumers that frequently run in marathons respond to offers for athletic shoes and apparel at over 5X the rate of other consumers. We’re doing this for other categories too, and the results are exceeding expectations.”
So perhaps our client has found the silver bullet for acquiring and keeping the “Uber Committed.” It’s a phrase we’ll all be talking about now.