Segmentations are one of the most flexible and effective methods available to market researchers. There are many outstanding applications for a well executed segmentation to help drive your business forward. When most people
think of segmentation, they think about the traditional combination of an A&U with a segmentation to understand your category. This is a fantastic piece of foundational research that every brand should have, but there
are many other uses for segmentations that can help drive your business forward.

Below are some examples of other creative ways to use segmentation to focus on specific business issues. This list is not complete by any means, it is just meant to get you thinking about other ways you might be able to use
segmentation in your business. We would love to hear from you if you have other examples of creative segmentation applications.

1) Identify need states that offer opportunities for your business. While many people tend to think of segmentations that cluster people, it can often be even more interesting to cluster moments or need states
that drive behavior. This approach recognizes that the same people make different choices depending on the circumstance. A frequent business traveler may select certain hotels when traveling for business (and expensing
the cost) that are quite different from those who may select for his family vacation. Understanding the context for the decision is very important to understanding the decision.

2) Find out who your ideal customer is and how you can best reach them by combining rich attitudinal information with behavioral information from your database as well as media profiling information from a product such as our Media Mapping suite.
The attitudinal information will help you understand your customers on a deeper level, while the behavioral information will allow you to value the different customer types accurately. The Media Mapping suite will help you develop a detailed plan to reach out to your most valuable customers. All we ask is for a quick thanks when you get promoted!

3) Ignite innovation ideas within your company by brainstorming product ideas for different usage occasion segments. By segmenting usage occasions, you can help lead product innovation initiatives. Segmenting
usage occasions is a simple and insightful method to help uncover deep insights into how the product usage changes depending on the occasion. For example, for a news app or a game, the product features a user might value
while trying to occupy themselves for 5 minutes in a long line might be very different than the features they would value if they were settling in for an extended session on their couch at home. By segmenting these usage
occasions, you can setup a great workshop or extended innovation plan for the development teams to work against.

4) Streamline your product line by segmenting discrete choice model outputs to understand popular product configurations that appeal to your potential customers. Product development teams often want to build as many features into a product as they possibly can, which can lead to bloat, steep learning curves, difficult communications related to new customer acquisition, and other
issues. By using a Discrete Choice Model to understand demand for product features, we can understand how the ideal product configuration looks. Taking this a step further, we can segment users based on their feature priorities
and develop popular configuration elements that work for key user subgroups. This can help the product teams come up with flavors that will likely be popular, without offering a myriad of options.

5) Focus your communications strategy by developing and testing segment specific communications playbook for your target segments. This is an often under appreciated benefit of a good segmenting, especially
in this digital age where communications can easily be targeted precisely. By developing and testing custom communications plans for each segment, we can increase the effectiveness of the communications as well as the LTV
of the customers. And the development of custom playbooks for each segment is often quick and easy to do.

6) Drive excellent customer service by scoring your database with segment information and routing customer service protocols according to segment preferences. This takes some cooperation across divisions, and
some setup work on the front-end, but can pay dividends once the system is set-up. After segmenting users, we often know quite a bit about their customer service preferences. We can set-up a routing system that caters to
those preferences and increases customer satisfaction and retention.

7) Develop a targeting algorithm to score your database with segment information. Doing this opens a world of new opportunities to use the segmentation in interesting ways. You can track KPIs by segment and
see how the organization if performing against key segments. You can integrate segments into LTV analyses and other behavioral metrics that drive decision making. There are many other options as well, and the best news
is that scoring the database is quite easy.

8) Use our Media Mapping product to identify the optimal media spend by segment and make sure you are reaching your desired audience with the lowest spend possible. This may be a bit of a shameless
plug, but our Media Mapping suite is a fantastic way to learn more about your target segments without a lot of extra time or budget.
We can pinpoint exactly where your segments are and help you develop an effective plan to reach them.

We hope these ideas sparked some thoughts about how you might use segmentation to reach your goals.