Segmentation: How do I explore a Segmentation change over time using Fixed Time Points?
Segmentation change over time can be examined using Fixed Time Points or Elapsed Time Points.
The default Fixed Time Points option allows you to examine the number of records in each segment at a specific point in time and can be useful for identifying, for example, recently lapsed customers or your current "best" customers.
Where it can be useful to track segments that can potentially change very quickly - for example, post campaign interactions on a website or in store - you can also report on less than a day intervals using DateTime variables. For a worked example of this see Sub-day Fixed Time Segmentation.
Creating segmentation selections
Each segmentation selection must include a date element that gives the potential for the result to change as time progresses. For example, the following date rule identifies dates between a year ago up to yesterday and will, therefore, result in a different set of dates every day that it is run.
In the example below, there are 4 selections identifying High Frequency High Value (HFHV) customers, High Frequency Low Value (HFLV) customers, etc.
You can recreate these selections as follows:
1 - HFHV – Booking Date variable set to The Last Year. Apply RFV to show frequency as >=2 and value to show Average (Mean) Cost to be >800
2 - LFHV – Booking Date variable set to The Last Year. Apply RFV to show frequency as <2 and value to show Average (Mean) Cost to be >800
3 - HFLV – Booking Date variable set to The Last Year. Apply RFV to show frequency as >=2 and value to show Average (Mean) Cost to be <=800
4 - LFLV – Booking Date variable set to The Last Year. Apply RFV to show frequency as <2 and value to show Average (Mean) Cost to be <=800
Also create a selection to show people who have not made any Bookings in the last 12 months:
5 – No Bookings – Booking Date variable set to The Last Year. Apply RFV to show frequency as 0
To create your segmentation and reports:
- open a new Segmentation window
- drag and drop your selections onto the Selections area within the Segments tab, adding them in prioritised hierarchical order - in this case selections 1 to 5
As well as displaying its name, each selection is allocated an ID, Selection Identifier and Query Type.
By default, a selections is set as a Regular segment. However, for the selection representing no bookings, you can distinguish between previous purchasers and new customers by clicking on the QueryType drop-down and selecting accordingly - either Not a Customer (i.e. in the defined time period - here ‘in the last year’) or Never a Customer.
See Segment Definitions for more on these options.
Set the Reporting Points
To determine which points in time you wish to report on, select the Reporting Points icon from the Segmentation tool bar:
By default, the display is set from today back to the start of the year 3 years ago, together with a Fixed Date Schedule - i.e. using a fixed From and To date.
It is also possible to create fixed time segmentations using relative date rules by selecting Date Rule Schedule from the Type drop-down in the middle of the schedule panel.
You can adjust the options within the Reporting Points dialog that displays:
In the above example, movement between the selections is set to report on the 1st January from 2018 to 2022.
The more reporting points you set, the longer the processing time to see the results
Once you have defined your reporting points, you can select from multiple report types:
To create and review Time Reports using Elapsed Time Points, see:
For information on the use of aggregated expressions with this tool, see:
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