Tiered Loyalty Program & Paid Subscriptions

Earlier, we discussed how loyalty programs can still be successful with the changing needs of modern consumers if emotional marketing is applied. This post extends that discussion by looking at how you may use loyalty tiers. A tiered loyalty program refers to a customer relationship marketing (CRM)-centric methodology that assigns customers to perks and benefits (rewards) based on their level (tier).

A tiered loyalty program exists in contrast to an 'earn & burn' program which typically rewards customers after a specified number of visits or amount spent. For instance, after 9 health shakes are bought, the program rewards the 10th free. 

A tiered program can even be a hybrid of different program types. For instance, a single brand's tiered loyalty program may have a lower level that has an 'earn and burn'  element that is free to join while also having another premium tier that requires paid subscription membership for exclusive status-related benefits. Common examples of paid subscription include Amazon Prime.

Uses & Benefits of Tiered Loyalty Programs

Here are key benefits for using tiered membership programs.

1. Tiered membership programs resolve the 'earn & burn' problem of frustrating customers who lost rewards they had already earned because the rewards expired before customers could use them within a limited period. Tiered programs allow best customers to retain those rewards versus needing to start over again from zero. Furthermore, from the brand's perspective, tier membership eliminates the risk of periodically opening an opportunity for customers to be back at square one with your brand so they can more easily switch to other brands.
2. As discussed below, the paid tier / premium tier of loyalty programs generally can motivate casual buyers to upgrade. The exclusivity of upper tiers should remain strictly intact so that members feel they have achieved something that others have not. Give top tier customers celebrity treatment.
3. They can potentially better engage customers by being more fun, like a game. A simple means is by using fun tier names that are meaningful to your brand. Read in greater detail on how to use gamification in your loyalty program.
4. They protect your brand from competition by making it unattractive to switch. If highly valued customers in tier X already have access to benefits (like free shipping, free consultations, etc), they are more likely to select your brand over the competition as the other brand is unlikely to offer the benefit immediately.
5. Tier programs provide market segmentation opportunities. Brands can use CRM datamining to analyze tier members' behavior and aspiration. Needless to say, using this for active segmentation marketing can provide customers with a more personalized and overall superior customer experience CRX.

DOs & DON'Ts

• Focus more or, better yet exclusively on tiers / tier status (ie over awarding and counting points). Strictly maintain the exclusive quality of the top tiers. Encourage members to feel they have achieved something that others have not. Furthermore, the exclusivity can be used to motivate aspirations among lower tiers. This is even more important if your brand aims to be 'high end'. Use scarcity marketing in the form of high entry barriers to minimize the membership to a select few, often about 10% of your customer base. The status of someone's current tier can also help to eliminate the hassle of managing a point system.

• Encourage top tier customers to brag ... to motivate feelings of aspiration. Sephora's tiered loyalty program continues to outshine others because not only does its USD 1,000 VIB Rouge subscription illustrate scarcity pricing at its best because few people can enter that membership, but it encourages members to brag. Customers are happy to talk about their activities with Sephora using the VIBRouge hashtag on Twitter.

• Use exclusivity-related social motivation emotional marketing to incorporate gamification into the program. Essentially, by encouraging customers to brag over social media so as to make lower tiers jealous, the ensuing aspirations for upward mobility essentially make tier membership itself the reward. 
• Be careful how you manage the point system within a tiered loyalty program because points could detract from the perceived value of a program, especially for higher level tiers and high end brands. For instance, discounts as rewards are not a good fit for high end brand. Example. Sephora's brand stands for luxury. Consequently, although the brand has a point system in their loyalty program, members of even the lowest tier do not get discount rewards. Instead, they get more products. Example. Rename the point system in a brand-appropriate way. 
• If possible, use progam and tier names that creatively reflect your brand rather than more generic names like bronze, silver and gold. Ideally, the names should make the relativity of each rank clear. Example, Klova's loyalty program is called 'sleep squad'. They sell sleeping patches that release melatonin and other natural sleep aid ingredients.
• Customer rewards should reflect the brand and tier groups in quality and style. 
• • Example, I was relieved and delighted when I once needed to use the special services my extended package covered for a computer. I am not very computer techie but was faced with very technical problems. The extended warranty package offered easy access to service that provided hand holding services, desktop sharing to allow technicians to remotely resolve some settings problems also.
• Tiered members are generally much more willing to provide personal data than otherwise. Use this to your full advantage with profiles that customers can fill and update with their preferences. Use data mining to personalize and therefore improve the customer experience.

Sephora allows customers to provide personal preferences that will later inform meaningful recommendations when profiled customers shop.

• Provide an experience of incremental achievements for each tier, all the while allowing customers to aspire for the next tier. To provide this sense of achievement, aim to satisfy the top 3 within Maslow's hierarchy of needs; ie social needs (like recognition), esteem needs (like insider status) and self-actualization needs (like customization).
• As counter intuitive as it often feels implementing it, introduce a fee-based status via subscriptions to offer high value rewards. A well known such program, Amazon Prime exemplifies the willingness to pay for something of high quality. Other examples include yearly subscription for nearby residents to have access to hotel facilities. There are several benefits.
• Customers enjoy instant gratification, indefinitely, ie rather than needing to wait until they accumulate points. This is a major difference between paid and unpaid loyalty tiers. Thanks to Amazon's lead with Amazon Prime, paid subscriptions are even a growing trend among other brands. Amazon continues to enjoy growing subscription, despite raising its price by 20%. Amazon did not even get much pushback.

• The customer's investment is likely to reduce 'customer churn', ie the rate of attrition or diminished interest over time. Behavioral science has shown people's tendency for 'loss aversion'. People prefer to act so as to prevent losing out on their investments. (They often prefer this even over acquiring gains).

• Customers self-qualify, likely as your most valuable customers. The investment implies that the customer is very serious about buying (versus when someone signs up because there was no financial or other commitment and then never engages with the brand). In short, pay very special attention to these customers. Paid loyalty makes best customers even more valuable. Marketers suggest that it is fair to assume that they have already volunteered themselves far through the sales funnel as being 1) ready to buy and maintain a relationship. 2) They seek and expect a good customer experience (CRX). 3) They will engage more regularly. For instance, research shows that they are likely to visit stores and purchase twice as frequently as non-members, even spending more. They are keen to get a return on their investment. 

• Collect data to best learn how to deliver customer perceived value. Take advantage of the fact that paid loyalty program members are generally willing to share lots of data with marketers. Always give them an opportunity to provide feedback. Use data-mining for insight into aspirations, satisfaction, personalization preferences, emotional triggers and so on. Example: Connect point of sale (POS) transactions to a customer's personal rewards point scoreboard. After all, research suggests that as many as 69% of customers feel disconnected if they do not have digital access to their rewards on their smartphone.
• Send personalized text messages to the telephones of customers to motivate sales. 
• Offer a wide variety of rewards of benefits, points and gifts. Aim to satisfy and delight customers. This is important because customers have been conditioned to consider price over loyalty. They have not fully emerged from this mindset. Variety may help. 
• Encourage higher aspiration. Use exclusivity emotional marketing techniques that ensure the higher tier members stand out and feel special for having invested more in the brand. As the airline industry case study of exclusivity membership illustrates, great effort is made to ensure that the haves and have-nots are aware of each others' relative experiences. The distinction may be made between paid and non-paid loyalty membership. Keep the non-paid version.

  

  Special membership into an exclusive club stokes the esteem needs with special 'insider status'.

• Differentiate. Make it as difficult as possible for customers to switch to competing brands. Invest loyalty fees into further benefits. 
• Explore all options for using the premium tier to motivate lower tier members to upgrade.
• When designing a loyalty program, check the following is true about it.
• Easy to understand
• Easy to enroll
• Easy to use and earn rewards
• Immediate and ongoing value, a must for the paid tier
• Exclusive benefits, a must for the paid tier
• Personalization options, especially for the paid tier
• .. 

CONTENT RELATED TO THE DESIGN OF A TIERED LOYALTY PROGRAM

• Must have elements for a successful loyalty program for modern consumers
• Exclusivity emotional marketing 
• Read in greater detail on how to use gamification in your loyalty program
• Satisfaction, customer experience and engagement are most correlated with the success of loyalty programs.
• Use spend-based loyalty rewards programs to give greater rewards to customers with the highest customer lifetime value (CLV) ... and reduce costs while you are at it.
• Loyalty or rewards programs cannot succeed easily if customers can not understand them. Explainer pages must be carefully designed to excite customer interest and easily explain the details.
• Measure the success of your loyalty rewards program.
• Incorporate a referral program into your loyalty rewards program. These 2 types of program complement each other. While the loyalty rewards program seeks to retain customers, referral programs seek to acquire new customers.
• Analyze how well your rewards catalog has been curated
• Gift card programs may be designed to be stand alone or an integrated component of your current referral and or loyalty rewards programs.

Customer Personality Types & Appropriate Adaptability to Convert More Leads

You are likely to be more successful in Sales by understanding the triggers that convince your prospect to make the purchase decision. This post suggests that the single-best way of converting prospects into paying customers is to appropriately adapt to each prospect's purchase decision-making approach. This adaptability is likely to enhance your conversion rates quite considerably. On that basis, we will discuss each of the Buyer Personality Types along with the corresponding sales response. This information has been inspired by research presented by HupSpot's Aja Frost.

Whenever possible, design all marketing and sales pipeline stages according to your target customer personality type aka your customer avatar. Incorporate this knowledge into the customer qualification and customer onboarding stages  to not only categorize each prospect by personality type but more importantly to adapt appropriately. These personality types relate key factors regarding levels of customer awareness of their problem, knowledge of the product, knowledge of product options and market trends which can be elements for creating the ideal target market based on your product's known strengths and weaknesses.

However, when using a data collection methodology to determine your target market's personality type(s), make it replicate the buying situation as much as possible to ensure valid results. Not only can people have more than one personality type, but they can also display different traits in different buying circumstances. For instance, a career woman may display 'assertive' personality traits in her professional environment but, when shopping for a building contractor, display more 'amiable' personality traits (because her fears of being single in a foreign and male-dominated area environment completely puts her out of her element). Furthermore, her personality may appear to change when she becomes more confident in the environment.

Customer personality types include 'assertives', 'analyticals', 'amiables' and 'expressives'.

Assertive Buyer Personality Type

• driven by goals, results and the bottom line.
• competitive. For instance, business customers will appreciate if you show them in a concrete way how your offering will give them a competitive advantage.
• impatient for a quick delivery of your product / service information. In fact, they are likely to interrupt your waffling speech in an effort to steer you towards what interests them; ie the more concise version of how you will help them to achieve their goals.
• speak in declarative sentences (over questions). Declarative sentences are minimalistic and present only vitally important. Examples include 'I need X' rather than 'What are your options?' Other examples of declarative statements include 'She is 18 years old'. Even if the statement includes subjective content, like 'Mary is sad' or 'Mary is attractive', it tends to be based on something that the declaring person can readily justify if asked (like the fact that Mary was crying earlier and that her face has a or b features as per his or her culture's beauty standard). In short, their language shows forcefulness and confidence. 
• decisive. If they get the information they need quickly enough, they can make a decision ... and happily move on. In fact, their decisiveness can potentially shorten your selling process.
• They are very highly driven and work quickly. They would expect that from anyone they choose to take seriously.
• controlling. Their antics arguably have a type of professional narcissism quality. For instance, they are poor listeners who are likely to interrupt you ... if you are not getting to the point quickly and convincingly enough about how your offering with make them shine above their competition. 
• Their body language and speech are bolder, more forceful and louder than general. For instance, they use big gestures and confident body language.

To sell effectively to customers with assertive personality traits.

• Be very professional. For instance, be very prepared for meetings with deep and objective insights into how your product will give provide outcomes (like competitive advantage) they need. Avoid small talk or personal chit chat unless they initiated it and especially if it will be forced.
• be highly efficient, even with communication. For instance, get to the point quickly regarding specific ways your product will help them to meet their goals. Also have efficient meetings that follow and meet clear objectives (from an agenda).
• Be highly objective. For instance, use facts and figures to impress them. Avoid opinions and unsubstantiated subjectivity will turn them off. For instance, speak of potential outcomes for them in terms of facts and figures they can see. Train / encourage everyone providing any messaging on your business' behalf, even evangelizing customers accordingly. For instance, if you wish an evangelist customer to leave a review, encourage evangelists to speak of your consultation services not as having been simply 'great' (which is too subjective and therefore insufficiently convincing for an assertive) but 'helped to increase profits by x%'
• If you can not immediately answer a question, say so, offer to get the answer and revert with answers as quickly as you promise or sooner. Avoid making up answers to save face.
• Cater to their competitive nature. Make the focus on how your product or service will give them a competitive advantage. Skip details about features, service techniques, your team's qualifications, theoretic backing and so on. Just speak about reaching the end goal.
• Be assertive in a respectful and professional way.
• Use sales representatives with more sales experience and knowledge of success stories for these types of buyers.
• If you find assertives unpalatably cold, impatient and seeming to view sellers less as fellow humans but more like internet server machines whose search engines are judged based on criteria of unhuman speed and precision, you might not be an assertive. Furthermore, you may need to practice dealing with assertives and or, if possible, work only with people who are closer to your own personality type.

Analytical Personality Type

Analyticals demonstrate strong desire for a brilliant, results-driven and arguably hard-nosed sales pitch while having a low tolerance for a sales pitch that is subjective and personal. 

Characteristics

• Appreciate data, facts and figures. They want to fully understand their options before making any decision.
• Risk-averse and more organized than average. They are perfectionists and may even suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Like the 'Conscientious' classification, analyticals may prefer to work alone.
• Ask many detailed questions.
• Are thorough, logical and cautious. Consequently, they may take longer (than average) to decide. For instance, they shop around before making a final decision. This is especially the case for higher ticket items that generally involve more consideration. However, their decisions are reliable. 
• They may not have already researched you and your business before meeting.
• They appreciate timeliness

To sell effectively to customers with analytical personality traits:

• Provide a lot of details and data. Ideally, be over and meticulously prepared; have as much material as they will need on hand before meetings. This material may be useful reference points to help them advance in the buying process. Depending on your operation, this may also involve a knowledge base.
• Give them time to ask questions. Do not try to discourage their questions. Furthermore, when unable to answer a question, promise to get the answer asap … and follow through quickly.
• Give quick and precise responses to their questions.
• Get to the point regarding the end result.
• Assume their basic knowledge by talking in terms of data, facts and figures. Avoid flowery a sales pitch, lofty claims, small talk or personal chit chat, especially if it will be forced and unnatural.
• Allow them to take their time to process your data. Do NOT rush them.
• Be punctual.
• To avoid having your sales prospects with this personality type suffer from analysis paralysis, engineer your process to streamline the decision-making process. Someone experiencing 'analysis paralysis' gets overwhelmed by the process of analyzing and evaluating various data needed to decide that they can not act. Determine the prospect's decision-makings type as described as 'Satisfice' and 'Maximize' by Herbert Simon (a United States psychologist). The former can emerge from ample amounts of data with a decision because he tends to select the first option that meets his need or most of them. Conversely, the 'maximize' are perfectionists. They keep looking for other, better alternatives. Ultimately, they prolong the decision-making process and may become stuck. Research shows that maximizing correlates with lower levels of happiness and greater levels of depression. Such people are likely acting on a huge fear of failure and or making the wrong decision. Furthermore, 'choice overload' beyond someone's threshold for large amounts of data can also make the decision-making process harder. In light of this, your selling process may include the following.
  • provide fewer choices. Sheena Iyengar's 'Jam Experiment' illustrates that fewer choices converts better. Despite the initial attraction to more choices (24 om the experiment), only 3% of prospects purchased while 30% of people who looked at the 6-option booth bought. 
  • streamline the data analysis process, especially regarding large volumes of data into less choices or a means of helping analyzers to narrow the choices. 

Amiable Personality Type

Amiable customer personalities are arguably the opposite of the assertive personality type. They demonstrate low levels of desire to start with a hard-nosed results-driven sales pitch but a strong desire for a sales pitch that engenders trust.

Characteristics

• value rapport on a personal level in the sales process and therefore prefer a more friendly, laid-back and informal approach (than assertives). They may want to know you personally, ie outside of your professional role. For instance, they may be keen to know your marital status and family situation, your favorite vacation destination and other common non-professional life experiences. If your product or service involves a team, they might also want to know the team members.
• the abovementioned rapport they seek is a way in which they develop the trust and sense of safety they want to have in someone from whom they buy.
• given their need to build rapport, they require a potentially longer time to advance through your sales pipeline than usual (or with assertives).
• To facilitate their requisite rapport and trust building, they are good, patient listeners
• can be convinced by discussions involving new features and the detailed success stories of your previous customers who have similar backstories.
• risk-averse.
• If amiables are part of a (business) team, they are likely to seek consensus from their team and re-confirmations from 'authority figures' before deciding to buy. In short, they are personally less decisive (than assertives).
• They are generally unstructured in their work style.

To sell effectively to customers with amiable personality traits:

• Take your time with your selling process and advance through all of the following points so they can feel trustful of and safe with you and your company. 
• Almost in a type of gentle parental fashion, guide them, as if to a sense of safety. For instance, apply your knowledge of their inherent risk aversion. Specifically, highlight your guarantees and risk-minimizing policies like those related to refunds and risk-free cancellations. If possible, offer personal, dedicated support for any concerns that may arise at any time. Some companies assign dedicated support personnel for this reason. In the spirit of promoting a good customer experience (which in this case, includes feeling safe and constantly supported), incorporate the message throughout the experience. For instance, email autosignatures can include 'Jane, your personal support rep' ... and a link to your CRM's meeting scheduler that reads 'Book a meeting'
• Be animated and genuinely enthusiastic about your product. Be friendly and chit chat a little. Talk about your or their vacation. 
• Do not overwhelm amiables with too many (hard) facts and figures information, especially not at first. If you must discuss these things, do so as concisely as possible to prevent their boredom. Rather, give more personal examples of past customers, detailing the similar backstories (like the relatable factors that inspired their interest in your product), the relevant product features and how they helped the customer.
• Know the person with authority. Without stepping over the head of the amiable, follow the amiable's desire to involve the authority person. Specifically, ask about that authority person's personality type and, if appropriate, provide a suitably personality-type adapted list of points that the amiable can use for that authority.
• Assign empathetic employees to work with amiables. They are likely to have greater success selling to amiables. If you have new employees that are empathetic and are uncertain the customer personality types with which they should start working, amiables may be a good fit.
• If you find amiables sound a bit too ditzy, you might be more of an assertive and need to practice dealing with amiables. If at all possible, re-assign employees who are not amiables (if they had been buyers of your product) to work only with customers who are more like them.

Expressive Personality Type

Expressives personality traits are a combination of assertives and amiables. Specifically, they have the air of confidence of assertives but the human sensibility of amiables. However, they make decisions faster than their amiable counterparts. Their name 'expressives' may understandably conjure images of 'save-the-world' placard-toting buyers.

Characteristics

• Very principled, they value business relationships with loyalty and mutual respect. They may be concerned with your company's good corporate citizenship and corporate governeance more than the average buying Joe.
• Are likely to try to bond with you on a personal level. May be interested in how the company affects the community.
• Present themselves with enthusiasm and color. In fact, they are outgoing and spontaneous and even likely to be creative.
• Speak with declarative sentences rather than ask questions.

To sell effectively to customers with expressive personality traits:

• Establish only accurate product or service expectations, therein making only promises.you can surely keep. Be reliable and trustworthy in all details of your interaction, including delivering on dates promised, completing tasks as promised and so on.
• Appeal to their strong convictions. Make meaningful contributions in support of their convictions. Demonstrate how your product and services will change daily life positively.
• Use case studies to demonstrate results, especially if they support their convictions about which they care. Avoid an approach that is overly focused on facts and figures.
• Discuss the sale in terms of an ongoing relationship between you / your company and the buyer.
• As in the case of the 'steadiness' DISC classification, take a personal interest in them, but be sincere. Share a little about yourself. Avoid in-authenticity as this will turn them off. 

CONTENT RELATED TO CUSTOMER PERSONALITY TYPES & SUITABLE ADAPTABILITY  FOR HIGHER SALES

• Apply these emotionally intelligent selling styles to your brand's voice and tone when creating social media content. Remember to include the specifications in your brand style guidelines.
• the customer's purchase decision making process
• Consider your most valuable customers yet. What were their personality type? What strategies did you use to have the winning outcome? Use this information to create your target customer profile or customer avatar. Using an avatar is the next systematic step after knowing your prospect's personality type. See how to create and use an ideal customer avatar.
• See how well your brand personality matches that of your customer.
• When approach sellers, get an advantage by introducing you and your company effectively.
• Needless to say, it would also be necessary to onboard workers (new and old) to this sales approach. 

Create a Target Customer Profile / TCP or Ideal Customer Avatar

A target customer profile or TCP, aka a customer avatar, buyer persona, ideal customer profile or marketing persona is a composite semi-fictional (named and visually portrayed) persona that represents your most valuable customer. (Needless to say, this customer feels the same about you.) These avatars are developed as fully as possible, even down to their 'buyer personality', ie as their personality relates specifically to the communication and selling methodology that is most likely to convert them. In fact, businesses typically have multiple avatars to personalize their approach for segments.

Benefits of a Target Customer Profile (TCP) / Avatar

• The greater level of personalization improves customer experience. Knowing your customers intimately can help you to improve product development, the unique value proposition, operations management, onboarding new customers, even the strategy behind interviewing, selecting and onboarding new employees that will work with each avatar. 
• Sales representatives can qualify leads based on the TCP attributes. Even advertisements portraying the problem statement and other TCP attributes help leads to qualify or disqualify themselves. (See more about the sales pipeline and buying process)
• Improves business efficiency: Sales personnel can easily qualify leads; Avatars saves sales representatives from having to handle burdensome data to understand qualified / avatar-assigned customers they deal with and sales personnel can convert customers faster. 

Steps to Create a Customer Avatar

Here are steps to take to create the ideal customer profile for your business. 

• Establish the key segmentation attributes if your products and or customers can vary in some significant way. CRM data mining is useful in this regard. Sometimes, this relates to variations of a problem for which your products offer a solution. For a skin care line of products, the primary attribute may relate to skin type like oily skin for one avatar and dry skin for another. This varies by product and industry. If you sell only one product and still need multiple avatars, that might be based on noticing a significant difference in something about the customer's circumstances that motivates them to act in a certain predictable way. Socio-economics and level of experience or even understanding of their needs may motivate customers to proceed through the buying process differently than otherwise. While people that are fully aware of their urgent needs can be lower hanging fruit, I no longer think they must be the TCP. If you are up to it, some customers who can not get other companies to meet them at their stages can create a new TCP opportunity for you. If you deal with different customer types, create unique avatars for each. B2B and B2C customer avatars are usually quite different. B2B customers often have a more assertive type of buyer personality type than average consumers.

• • Case studies
  • This social media manager created 3 named B2B TCPs. After several years in her business, she noticed reliable patterns and was able to segment her clients accordingly based on 3 attribute continua. Her attributes are 1. their business development stage (new entrepreneurial vs seasoned), 2. budget and 3. where they can be found (platforms). TCP Sabrina is the entrepreneur that wants the cheapest package and lacks knowledge of social media. She is usually in Facebook groups and tells group members that she is seeking help with social media services. She is good because, while small and low budget, she really needs help and will hold this manager close. Sabrina is especially great for new social media managers. TCP Mia is very seasoned, already really developing her business and knows exactly what she needs from a social media manager. She is expecting a well prepared contract, full professional onboarding process and so on. She specifies her need for specialized service. She is more able to pay higher than Sabrina. She usually gets referred by associates. TCP Jason & his team are medium to large and needs a very skilled social media manager with some specialized skill like strategy. They are expecting you to have a team. The team members are on LinkedIn.        

• Get motivation from in-house and other case studies of ideal customers. 

• For each persona, fill your knowledge gaps and or confirm your profile with customer surveys on the following.
• the problem (for which you have the solution)
• key segmentation differentiating attributes.
• customer goals (ie the transformation that your customer wants, literal and non-literal). For a more structured approach, consider their needs within the context of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
• Literal benefits of getting airline tickets may be transportation. However, if those tickets have the exclusive appeal of the first class cabin and special airport lounges, the non-literal emotional benefit is often prestige.
• An accountant may sell accountancy services. However, he also sells empowerment through knowledge of a client's true financial status and or taxation compliance along with its consequent peace of mind. Outsourcing the services also provides the non-literal benefit of convenience of time saved from not having to do the accounting oneself. 
• psychographics as they relate to each stage of the buying process. (See an example of considering the TCP and buying process within the context of social content management). For greatest impact figure the real motivating factors for each stage, especially those from the 'information' stage. True motivators actually advances customers to the next stage versus factors that are only 'nice to have'. (If you are keen on theory, read about Herzberg's theory on motivation versus hygiene factors.) 
• 1. Problem. Customer's level of attunement to the problem. People suffering an intense problem, like painful illness, socially crippling skin condition and so on are very consciously aware and often feel a sense of urgency in seeking out solutions. This is noteworthy because you are more likely to catch the attention  of urgently seeking customers within the usually short window of attention if you show images or concisely mention the problem before moving on to promising that you have a solution. You can exasperate such people with long winded discussions that delve into the basics of the problem. NB. Ask customers about other unexpected ways in which they use your product. This may help you to establish new problems.
• 2. Information (to fundamentally understand the problem and solutions). Regarding their getting information to learn and solve the problem, where do they get it? (like preferred social media platforms, social circle, social media influencers who promote x-y-z topics like Jane Donavan, etc) Always be receptive to this information to explore potential options, perhaps for co-branding with influencers or complementary sellers, creating content for their community and so on. To what format of content are they most likely to actually pay their attention (ie versus pass over through exasperation with advertisements. (like IG video reels or YouTube shorts that feature before and after clips with concise explanation of the solution that demonstrates expertise and motivates trust for persons still new to the brand). What keywords and questions does the TCP use? I like to get ideas from tools like AnswerThePublic and Google Trends. What are on your TCP's (social) media content pillar wish lists?
• 3. Evaluation (of competing brands). On what attributes do customers compare different brand options? Common attributes include quality, whatever that means for your product or service, price, performance properties and so on. How have other brands failed your TCP? 
• 4. Purchase. (Also consider buyer personality within the context of how they interact with your brand at this critical stage; point-of-purchase POP advertisements? packaging? sales people? product page? social media post?)  Comfort level and preferences shopping through certain channels, like online, direct sales, brick and mortars, etc? What emotions did customers feel immediately after the purchase? Is this something that can be systematically replicated? 
• 5. Post sale evaluation.
• buyer personality. Establish the salient points of the personality type that apply.
• secondary characteristics. Pay special attention to these. Delve more deeply into them to find potential for engaging through these avenues, like interest-related Facebook groups where you can share value.  Do not simply ask for one-word answers. Rather, get respondents to your survey to discuss specific meeting places for their community, especially if that community presents opportunities. Even if you sell something that is ostensibly unrelated to whether your customers are empty nesters or have young children, these details are noteworthy in helping you to cater to their circumstances. For instance, if your chemical engineers are young parents of very young children, it will likely be best to schedule training courses that do not clash with back-to-school periods, school holidays and so on. ... or If you sell houses, it may be useful to consider the fact that your clientele is elderly. You will know to offer age-appropriate homes like those that feature elevators, short stair cases or a single-level layout, covered garages and so on
• Family situation (single, early nesters, empty nesters, etc)
• What keeps your customers up at night?
• Hobbies, passions, other pass times, bucket list items, personal achievements or places, especially those with which the brand personality should align. 
• Socioeconomic circumstances
• Culture
• Integrate the profiling with all functional aspects of your business, especially all marketing efforts that are customer touchpoints. 
• Sales representatives should adapt appropriately to a customer's verified buyer personality type. Example(s): 
• If the client has an 'amiable' personality (which is risk-averse), marketers may seek every possible opportunity within the corresponding customer experience to infuse the message of an ever-available personally dedicated support representative. Even small details will not be overlooked like having email auto-signatures of such representatives with a line like 'Jane, your personal support rep' and a hyperlink below to the CRM's meeting scheduler that says something like 'Book a Meeting with me'. 
• Information regarding online payments will include details about security and may reinforce the details with images of a padlock. 
• Create additional avatars when notable differences in TCPs exist. Businesses often have multiple avatars.
• Set a schedule for analyzing and adjusting your customer avatar as your business grows. In the example 'Sabrina' avatar above, Sabrina is ideal for social media content managers who are also relatively new in their field. Consequently, when content managers grow, she will lose her appeal.
• Since brands seek to become so humanized that TCPs should feel a sense of friendship towards them, review your TCP and brand personality alongside each other to assess their compatibility.

CONTENT RELATED TO CREATING A TARGET CUSTOMER PROFILE / TCP OR IDEAL CUSTOMER AVATAR

• Buyer personality types are a great psychographic measure that can help you to identify, understand and appropriately adapt your selling style to your prospects.
• The success of social media content management relies heavily on knowing your target audience very well.
• Customer experience (CX)
• Your customer personality and your brand's personality must be well aligned to become good friends.
• Lifestyle brand strategy relies heavily on having very intimate knowledge of your target customer profile. 
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Create avatars for your B2B contacts. Each avatar will need to represent the purchasing personnel.
• Build customer loyalty. By communicating with your customers on a more human, personal encourages longer-lasting relationships. Also see how loyalty rewards programs can be designed to improve loyalty for the modern customer, how tiered rewards program and spend-based rewards programs are significant to this end.    
• The sales pipeline
• Consider the characteristics in your clients' online accounts on platforms like 'Facebook Audience Insight' Tool.
• A video about buying personas 

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Customer Groups in Shopify & Segmentation

Customer Segments in Shopify
This post demonstrates how to use Shopify's different types of tags and filters to create segments. We'll assume that you already have at least a few customers in Shopify.

• Log in to your Shopify admin account
• Enter the 'Customers' section in either of the following 2 ways
• Simultaneously enter the G and C keys on your keyboard   -- OR --
• Select 'customers' (in the left column)

To create custom tags for customer segments in Shopify

Custom tags allow you to create segments that are unique to your business. Whether you use psychographic or demographic tags, they will allow you to find and define market segments in a highly customizable and specific way. For instance, based on any number of filters in combination or alone, you can create custom tags that will segment customers as being 'loyal', 'brand evangelists', 'FB grp influencers' and so on.

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• See below how to use default and or other pre-existing filters to find only those customers to whom you will apply a new tag
• Select the customer(s) to be tagged. You can either tick the top box (pictured immediately below) for all customers shown or hand pick individual customers, one at a time by ticking next to each name. A new set of options will appear next to the ticked box.

• In the 'bulk action' dropdown menu, select 'add tags'
• Type as many custom tags as you like into the text box. Separate each tag from the next with a comma. Click 'apply changes' when done.

To edit custom tags and or customer details for entire customer segments

• After selecting the members of a customer segment, the option 'edit customers' will appear (as pictured below). Click 'edit customers'. 

• You will see all of the selected customers, along with their details and tags.
• Notice the fields that define the displaying customer details in the top left corner. In this case, these fields are email, tags and first name.
• Select those fields you want to edit. 
• Delete the fields you do not want to edit by clicking the 'x' on the right of its button.  
• Alternatively, use the dropdown menu 'add filter' for additional fields.

• Edit the details of each customer within the segment. In this case, the cursor is in a customer's (Hannah's) email address field, thereby allowing me to edit it. Additionally, if Hannah moves from Canada, I can delete that tag from the 'tag' column. If her new location is the US, you may now add 'US' by clicking in the box that contains her current tags for options to add, create or delete tags. 
• If your custom tags involve variables with different values, you can use group tags as below. In this example, I have 2 member groups, a and b.  

To find customers that meet specific criteria

There are 3 types of criteria that you can use to find customers with high specificity; fixed default tags, customizable default tags and fully customizable tags.

The fixed default tags appear on the dashboard (as pictured immediately below). When you click on one of these, the qualifying criteria will appear in the search window and or immediately below it. For instance, if you clicked on Shopify's default 'prospects' group, the qualifying criteria would appear as 'abandoned an order last_month'.

Another type of tag is the customizable default tag like 'money spent', 'number of orders' and so on. Unlike fixed default tags that are unchangeable, these tags require you to enter a value. As pictured immediately above, they can be found in the 'filter customers' dropdown menu, directly below the fixed default tags. 

Finally, custom tags can be entered most easily by typing each tag into the search window that is also directly below the fixed default options. 

You can use these 3 types of tags alone or in combination with others. 

• Click on a fixed default tag like 'accepts marketing', 'repeat customers' and so on. As pictured below, the active tag appears below the search window and only qualifying customers appear. In this example, there are 3. If you wish to use multiple types of tags, always start from fixed default to customizable default and then fully customizable tags.

• To filter on a second fixed default tag; To include additional conditions, edit the first tag by adding other tag customizable or custom tags before saving the search. Details in the upcoming steps. (I do not believe it is possible to enter a second  one without the first being automatically deselected).
• To find customers meeting a specific customizable default criteria (money spent, number of orders, date created, etc), click the 'filter customers' dropdown menu (next to the search window). Then click the 'select a filter' dropdown menu for options. 

When you select a type of filter, only filter-specific options will appear. For instance, 'date created' offers options like '1 week ago', '1 month ago' and so on. 'Money spent' displays options like 'greater than', 'equals' and so on, along with a space for entering the value.

• To add a second customizable filter, enter the customizable details then press 'enter'. Do NOT click the 'add filter' button because it automatically deselects any preexisting filters. 

• To find customers based on custom tags; type as many custom tags as you need in the search window. Separate each tag with a comma.

Customers can be found with high specificity with multiple tags at once. in this case, 4 tags were used: 1) the first the default tag 'Customer accepts marketing' which must be selected before the other tags 2) customizable default tag 'money spent', 3) custom tag 'Canada' and 3) customer tag 'member'

To save a search based on multiple tags

You can save your multi-tag segment for future sessions as follows.  

• Apply filters to create an ideal segment (as above)
• Click 'save search' on the right end of the search window
• Enter the details and click 'save' 

• The saved search will now appear in the top menu of the 'customers' section. See image below. 

This search criteria 'abd cart, 1 wk, member grp A' is made of customers in group A who accept marketing. Perhaps the marketer plans on retargeting all individuals currently meeting these criteria. 

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CONTENT RELATED TO CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION IN SHOPIFY

• Discounts for customer segments
• MailChimp mailing lists