Newsletter #29: customer segments, Ruby on Rails and a joyful choreography

Hi there,

I hope you're feeling good.

On a personal level, last week was very hard for me.

In this tough time, I’m even more grateful for my family and friends. They lift me up and give me a shoulder to lean on until brighter days come around.

I’m taking it slow and enjoying the little things in life even more than usual.

We just had our first real snow of the year in Paris. I opened my window in the morning and saw a thin layer of white powder everywhere. It was beautiful to see.

In today's edition, we're discussing customer segments, Ruby on Rails and a joyful choreography.

Let's dive in.

Work

I have been specializing in Shopify for the last 5 years.

I enjoy learning about all areas in this ecosystem: theme customization, public apps, custom apps, POS, Shopify Markets, etc.

But sometimes, I like to choose a single topic and delve into it completely.

Recently, I’ve been focusing on customer segments.

I’m exploring 2 key questions: what exactly are customer segments? And how can Shopify merchants make the most of them?

Let me share with you what I’ve learned so far.

In their documentation, Shopify provides a definition: customer segmentation is the process of dividing a company’s customers into groups based on common characteristics so companies can market to each group appropriately.

The list of common characteristics you can choose from to create your customer segments is incredibly vast.

You can filter your customers by tags, countries, cities, amount spent, orders placed, last order date, etc.

This variety allows for the creation of very specific customer segments. For example, a segment could include customers who haven’t ordered in the past 3 months but used to order frequently (they made at least 3 orders in the previous year).

You can even create segments based on metafields that you created yourself. For example, if your customer has a “gender” metafield, you’ll be able to create segments based on the customer’s gender.

If you’re interested in creating customer segments but unsure where to start, head over to Customers > Segments > Explore segment templates. Shopify gathered 30 templates for you to choose from.

Now that you have your customer segments set up on your store, how can you make the most of them?Tailoring email campaigns to specific customer segments can significantly increase engagement and sales. This approach is especially beneficial for merchants using Shopify Emails, as they have all their email tools integrated within their Shopify admin.

That being said, there's a different perspective when it comes to the Shopify Plus merchants I’m working with. They have already created their customer segments in their email service provider, Klaviyo, and therefore don’t see the need to replicate this in their Shopify dashboard.

However, I believe it’s beneficial to bring important customer information into Shopify as well.

Why?

Because this allows you to customize your storefront based on this additional information.

For example, if you use Klaviyo’s “predictive analytics” feature to determine the gender of your customers, you could replicate this on Shopify’s side, using a custom solution or a third-party application. This way, the gender of each of your customers, both existing and future ones, will be stored in a customer metafield.

Storing information in a metafield, rather than solely in a customer segment in Klaviyo, opens a wide range of possibilities.

For instance, you could display different product upsells depending on the logged in customer’s gender. This upsell could be placed on the product page, in the cart drawer or even on the checkout page. I recently made a prototype for this last use case and showcased it in this LinkedIn post.

Perhaps we’ll soon be able to leverage customer segments as well, for even more precise targeting.

Overall, I feel like customer segments are a topic that has not been completely grasped by Shopify merchants. They either don’t need it, don’t have time for it, or are not too sure what to do with them.

My hope for the upcoming Winter Editions is that Shopify will announce new features that will make customer segments even more powerful, so we can really start having fun with them.

Inspire

Learning how to code was a life-changing experience for me.

I once was a law student with a side project: a blog where I wrote 200+ reviews of movies and TV shows. I was frustrated by my inability to visually customize it the way I wanted. So I learned how to code. I started with HTML and CSS.

A couple of years later, I joined Le Wagon, a French coding bootcamp, for a 9-week intensive training. At Le Wagon, I learned Ruby on Rails.

Coming from changing the font and color of my blog articles, I was now able to build full-stack applications.

Ruby on Rails was the tool that allowed me to switch from the first part of my life to the second - even more exciting - part.

When I saw that a documentary had been made about Ruby on Rails, I had to watch it.

It was super interesting and inspiring to discover Rails’s inception.

I particularly enjoyed learning about:

• The story of how Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) met

• How Rails started from a need that DHH had

• The choice of open sourcing Rails

• DHH’s warmly expressed love for Ruby

• The presentation of some members of the Rails core team, including Shopify’s CEO, Tobi Lütke, who was part of it from 2004 to 2008

• The topic of scalability, which detractors had previously used as a criticism before Rails began powering large organizations like Shopify

• The flashbacks to the timeline of different Rails releases and the new capabilities each brought

Explore

My vision for this Explore section is to share with you some content that allows me to disconnect from work.

As much as I love my job, it’s important for me to unwind. It brings me renewed energy and creativity.

Sometimes, I’ll explore music, sometimes interior design or art in general. There are no set themes, no limit.

Today, I’d like to share with you the song that put a smile back on my face every day this week.

It’s “Petit génie” by Jungeli, Imen Es, Abou Debeing, Lossa and Alonzo.

Even better, let me show you the choreography that the dancer Loïc Reyel made for it with his team.

It’s 1 minute of pure joy and great vibes to start the day in the best way.

Enjoy.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this edition until the end.

I'll talk to you soon.

Take good care of yourself.

Coralie