Blueshift: Segmentation

Overview: Blueshift offers comprehensive real-time segmentation on user behavior. Blueshift indexes the data about your customer to enable complex segments to run really fast. Once built, segments update dynamically with new data coming in. Segments are linked to cross-channel identity and can be used for campaigns on all channels. Predictive segmentation is built in.

Blueshift's Responses to Questions on Segmentation

Segmentation

1. Does your solution have a visual interface in which marketers can create and manage segments without technical knowledge?

Yes, Blueshift offers an easy-to-use, drop-down segmentation builder that allows marketers to build precise, highly-targeted segments using a rich set of user attributes, real-time behavioral data, lifetime activity, demographic data, transactional data, channel engagement data, user affinities, predictive scores, and more. Using our segmentation builder, marketers are empowered to easily create rich and sophisticated audience segments based on any data element within Blueshift, without having to wait for manual list pulls, data warehouse queries, or other SQL-based repositories that require additional IT or data engineering resources.

Blueshift's segmentation engine pulls data directly from the user profile, so no upfront data modeling is needed to create segments. There is also no need for internal IT resources to maintain, update, or recreate segments since segments continuously update membership with the latest data and real-time streams of user interactions.

As marketers are building or updating these dynamic segments, they can immediately see overall segment membership counts by channel right within the segmentation builder (as compared to hours or days with other solutions) to quickly assess their opportunity size with each segment.

[Additional information on our segmentation builder] (https://help.blueshift.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002669413-Segmentation)

2. Does your solution have the ability to create advanced segments based on multiple conditions and dimensions of data, including real-time behaviors, user preferences, events, previous messaging engagement, transactions, demographics, location, and user attributes? Is there a limit to the number of criteria that can be used simultaneously to define a segment?

Yes, Blueshift offers an easy-to-use, drop-down segmentation builder that allows marketers to build precise, highly-targeted segments using a rich set of user attributes, real-time behavioral data, transactional data, and predictive scores. Segments can be easily customized based on any combination of the following attributes:

・User behaviors (campaign engagement, product interactions)
・Lifetime value and activity
・User affinities
・Demographics
・Transaction history
・Channel engagement
・Geolocation
・Custom attributes
・Traffic source
・ ...and more!

For more advanced and sophisticated segments that require nesting and grouping, Blueshift offers an advanced segmentation builder that enables marketers to create more in-depth and advanced audiences. Marketers can create more sophisticated segments that use the following features:

・The ability to nest grouping logic: Blueshift provides a free form interface to create logical groupings. Unlike basic segments, which give you a single set of predefined logical groupings (ALL / ANY / NONE), advanced segments let you create AND / OR / NOT groupings on the fly and nest groupings within groupings. The freedom to compose grouping logic with arbitrary depth and breadth opens the door to a lot of sophisticated audience segments.
・The ability to share query logic between segments: Share logic between segments and avoid repeating yourself when authoring queries. It also provides a way to manage complexity by providing a way to break down query logic into more smaller, more digestible and semantic units.
・The ability to see how many users match a particular chunk of query logic: Ability to scan individual chunks let's you make sense of the numbers from the bottom up.

Additional information on Blueshift's segmentation capabilities:

3. Do segments update automatically as new data comes in or is updated? How often are segments updated?

Yes, the segments built within Blueshift are constantly validating and automatically update in real-time to include the most accurate users based on the business rules that have been defined for the segment. As new user attribute data, user channel engagement data, and user online and mobile behavioral data are ingested into the Blueshift platform, this data is automatically available in the user profile and used to update segment membership.

As a result, you can be confident that you're always targeting the right users across campaigns, that users are assigned to the correct segments, and that users are included in the appropriate lifecycle campaigns.

4. Can segments created in your system be used to target communications across all channels (i.e. email, mobile, web, in-app, digital, print, etc.)?

Yes, marketers can easily and instantly use the segments they create using Blueshift's segmentation builder to target both one-time messages and automated lifecycle campaigns that span across channels, including email, SMS, push, in-app, chat, direct mail, and other customer engagement channels using our visual campaign journey builder. One example of a lifecycle campaign is a reactivation/win-back campaign series that attempts to reengage lapsed users. Marketers can define a segment of at-risk users using our segmentation engine and subsequently create a segment-triggered campaign series that launches a multi-step series of messages using a combination of digital marketing channels, such as email, SMS, push, and Zendesk when a user qualifies for the segment criteria. [Additional information on our segment triggered campaigns] (https://help.blueshift.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408704090003#h_01FJ3VS5T7F35QJW9AV457YQNB)

Using our audience syndications capability, marketers can also easily push segments into paid media channels, such as Facebook, Google, Criteo, and other media partners across display, social, paid search, mobile, video, and OTT, to drive and improve upon their acquisition and reengagement strategies. [Additional information on audience syndications] (https://help.blueshift.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002727814-Syndications)

Blueshift also provides an intuitive and easy way to apply 1:1 website personalization based on the segment that the user falls into via our Live Content capability. As an example, you can show a different offer and/or product recommendations for anonymous users as compared to your known high-value users. Live Content is a powerful way to ensure that users have a consistent experience on the website as they do on other communication channels, such as email, SMS, push, in-app, and paid media. [Additional information on our Live Content capability] (https://help.blueshift.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001548894-Live-Content)

5. While building a segment, can you see segment counts for each channel? Do segment counts update in real-time?

Yes, as marketers are building or updating the dynamic segments, they can immediately see overall segment membership counts in real-time by channel right within the segmentation builder -- as compared to hours or days with other solutions -- to quickly assess their opportunity size with each segment.

AI/Predictive Intelligence

6. Does your solution offer predictive scoring for customer actions? What scores are available, i.e. buying propensity, user engagement, and affinities? Are scores out-of-the-box and/or customizable?

Yes, Blueshift provides several standard predictive models for user actions out-of-the-box, including conversion, engagement, churn, and retention. Blueshift also provides the flexibility for marketers to create their own custom predictive models that are tailored to meet their specific business requirements. [Additional information on these standard predictive models] (https://help.blueshift.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000839834-Predictive-Scores-Overview#Types)

In addition, Blueshift offers channel engagement predictive models to better understand a user's propensity to engage in a specific channel - email, SMS, push, and in-app. [Additional information on our channel engagement model] (https://help.blueshift.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025114414-Predictive-Studio-Score-Definition#h_d5d6bbb1-1925-4b9a-9c1f-0d15cb061e1a)

7. Can predictive scores be used for dynamic segmentation and to automatically trigger communications based on a user's score?

Yes, predictive scores are immediately available for usage throughout the Blueshift platform, including within the customer profile, segmentation, recommendations, campaigns, and templates. As an example, marketers can use predictive scores to create highly targeted segments that focus on high or low propensity customers so they can remove low-performing audiences by defining which score ranges to target in their campaigns. Similarly, predictive scores can be used in campaign journey building to move customers through different paths and receive different messages and offers based on their propensity to perform a certain action (i.e., purchase, subscribe, download a white paper, etc.). Predictive scores can also be exported or syndicated to any 3rd party application, paid media channel, or back to your internal systems for deeper analysis.

Predictive models, as well as the scoring against the models, are deployed and updated automatically as new data becomes available without involvement of data scientists or IT team. Predictive scores are refreshed on the user profile on a daily basis, whereas the predictive models are re-run and optimized on a weekly basis.