Using Dynamic Customer Groups for Active Merchandising
Dynamic customer groups enable you to create customer segments for targeted campaigns, micro-sites and product lines.
For example, customer groups can include specific geographies, gender or enterprise profiles such as loyalty or store shoppers. You can present such groups with relevant content (for example, information on new product arrivals to customers who are brand conscious); or offer promotions based on previous purchases or lack thereof (for example, offer 10% off orders for first time customers). Dynamic customer groups are based on data and metrics that are derived from customer profiles or session data, so that each customer group expands or contracts depending on which customers meet the criteria at any given time.
Updating Group Membership
- Upon customer visit: for dynamic groups, B2C Commerce updates the membership when a known customer returns to the storefront with a new session.
- Upon customer login: for dynamic groups, B2C Commerce updates the membership of the customer upon login.
- Upon customer logout: for dynamic groups, B2C Commerce updates the membership of the customer upon logout.
- Periodically during a customer's session: after B2C Commerce calculates a membership on login, it caches the membership internally during the customer's session. Cached memberships have a lifetime of 1 minute. After they expire, recalculation begins automatically, ensuring that memberships stay up-to-date during customer sessions.
Defining Included and Excluded Clauses
Dynamic customer group membership rules enable you to define included and excluded clauses for individual conditions. Though somewhat similar to B2C Commerce's product promotion rules, they are closer to what is used by iTunes to define "Smart Playlists" and Adobe Lightroom to define Smart Collections.
Example
A merchant wants to define the following dynamic customer group:
"Customers from the US from states Alaska, Florida, and Alabama, and from Canada from states British Columbia and Nova Scotia. Any customer must be 18 years or older."They would specify the following rules:
| Include (Match All) | ||
| Country | contains | United States, Canada |
| State | contains | Alaska, Florida, Alabama, British Columbia, Nova Scotia |
| Age | is greater than or equal | 18 |
The following rule would also work:
| Include One (Match all) | ||
| Country | is equal | United States |
| State | State | Alaska, Florida, Alabama |
| Include Two (Match all) | ||
| Country | is equal | Canada |
| State | State | British Columbia, Nova Scotia |
| Exclude (Match all) | ||
| Age | is less than | 18 |
"Customers from the US. Not for customers younger than 18 or of unknown age."
| Include (Match all) | ||
| Country | is equal | United States |
| Exclude (Match all) | ||
| Age | is less than | 18 |
| Age | doesn't exist |
or, very simply:
| Include (Match All) | ||
| Country | is equal | United States |
| Age | is greater than or equal | 18 |
Remember Me vs. Customer Segmentation
Using customer segmentation, you can direct promotions and slots to a customer if they are in an unknown/anonymous group; but you can't collect data on them. Data can only be collected on logged in customers.
The LastVisitTime timestamp is part of the Remember me feature. Remember me and customer segmentation are two different features.
- If a customer checks the Remember me checkbox in a storefront, an entry is placed into the customer's cookie.
- When returning to the storefront, the customer must login again on the My Account page. The email address and password fields are pre-filled on this page with information that was retained in the cookie. The "lastVisitTime" timestamp, a record that tracks customer return behavior, is updated with the current time.
Customer segmentation is started for this particular customer in the following situations:
- A new, unknown/anonymous customer enters the shop (for promotions and slotting only).
- Customer logs in by providing login and password.
- Customer returns to the storefront and is recognized as a known customer by the Remember me feature. Because Remember me performs an automatic login, the segmentation is also triggered here.
- Customer logs out.
Staging
Dynamic customer groups are part of the staging process, like any other customer group. Because the memberships in dynamic groups are calculated in real-time, they are not persistent and therefore not subject to replication.