In Chapter 7 of Hello $Firstname, Jens Hård reads ‘Insights, Part 1: Segments’.
Jens Hård has around 20 years of experience in data-driven marketing and is CEO of Root Digital Group. In this chapter, he reads about the first insight corner of the Bowtie of Personalization: customer segments.
The chapter uses the Canadian bank Groupe Desjardins as its opening case and explores how segments can help an organization understand the different needs, desires, behaviours, and life situations of its customers. It explains how segments are built, how they can be turned into personas, and why demographic, behavioural, and value-based segmentation each serve different purposes.
The chapter also offers an important warning: segments help marketers get it less wrong, but they do not give perfect knowledge about individual people. That distinction matters when deciding whether to communicate explicitly or implicitly, especially when the topic is sensitive or the underlying data is probabilistic.
In his reflection at the end, Jens distils the chapter into a simple but powerful point: segmentation is not about categorizing people. It is about understanding what customers need at different moments in their lives and using that understanding to create more relevant experiences.
The chapter helps marketers see segmentation not as an outdated alternative to personalization, but as one of the core insight tools that makes better personalization possible.
More resources from the Hello $Firstname universe
You can buy the physical book here:
https://amzn.eu/d/6jV4QZT
If the Amazon EU link does not work in your country, please search for Hello $Firstname: Profiting from Personalization, AI Edition on your local Amazon store.
You can download the illustrations and models from the book here:
https://www.omnichannelinstitute.com/en/resources
You can also learn more about the Personalization Cards and Canvas, which help teams turn the Bowtie of Personalization into practical use cases, here:
https://www.omnichannelinstitute.com/en/personalizationcards
