Segments year 3 review

With 2022 wrapping up, I am thrilled to share with you the progress we’ve made as a company this year. At Tresl Segments, our mission is to democratize data and make data-driven marketing easy and accessible for brands and marketers. With the launch of our latest version Segments 3.0, I believe that we are getting closer to making our mission a reality.

It has been an exciting and challenging year, but through it all, we've learned a lot and achieved some incredible milestones.

Our starting point: making data easier

When Tony and I first started Segments 3 years ago, we already knew that data was hard. During our time at LinkedIn, we had an army of 1000+ data scientists working purely on data. 

As passionate data nerds, we always wanted to build a company to democratize data – and that’s why we ended up building Segments for CPG brands on Shopify…to make data easier for the millions of ecommerce merchants who don’t have a data team like LinkedIn. 

Shopify’s recognition and stamp of approval (again)

Since we’ve launched Segments on the app store in 2020, we’ve been incredibly honored to have been recognized by Shopify as a “Shopify Staff Pick” every year. Being featured by Shopify is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team.

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In addition to being selected as a Shopify Staff Picks, we were also re-certified as a Shopify App Partner for the second year in a row. This certification reaffirms our commitment to data privacy and data best practices, and we are honored to be among the top echelon of Shopify apps that are certified.

Data privacy is our top priority, and being one of the few certified app partners demonstrates our commitment to our customers’ data privacy and our mission to help our customers thrive with data.

Democratizing data science for digital brands

“We had such a complex [data] system. We had Snowflake, Fivetran, and so many different platforms. And then on top of that, to power those platforms, we needed a data scientist and a data architecture engineer. We just didn’t have those resources.” –Tran Wu, VP of Marketing and E-Commerce, True Botanicals

Every merchant knows that their data is valuable, but unlocking the true value hidden in their data is a difficult challenge that every brand experiences. But what we didn’t know 3 years ago was how difficult ecommerce data can actually be.

On a recent episode of the DTC Podcast, Tran Wu shared about the data problems that True Botanicals (one of our customers as well as one of the fastest growing DTC luxury beauty brands) faced. Many of our customers have tried hacking together existing solutions to make their data work for them, just like True Botanicals. 

While CDPs are often touted as the end-all-be-all for data problems, they are often out of reach for growing ecommerce brands. This led us to think more about what an ideal alternative is; we want to put marketers back in the driver's seat, with a CRM layered on top of their data so they can focus on doing what they do best – channeling their creativity – and leave the data up to us.

You can read more in-depth details about our thoughts on CDPs vs CRMs in this blog post: https://www.tresl.co/blog/crm-tresl

Segments 3.0 - Power of a CDP. Flow of a CRM. Accessible as an app.

This year, we launched Segments 3.0, a new version of our platform that we have repositioned as an Analytical CRM. Segments 3.0 connects to more of our customers' data sources, centralizes their customer segments and lists, and syncs their audiences across multiple channels. This allows brands to easily manage all of their customer lists in one place and ensure that they are sending personalized messages to their customers at the right time and on the right channel.

Recently, a customer gave us a great analogy to describe the pain of building segmented campaigns and flows – it’s like exercise. Everyone knows that exercise is good and will help them live a healthier lifestyle; but after a long day at work, exercise is often the last thing they want to do. Marketers feel the same way. They have a million things to finish, and so making progress on something new often feels just out of reach. They tell themselves they’ll get to it tomorrow. But tomorrow comes, and other more urgent tasks come up.

Our team has been continually working on improving the process of finding profitable customer lists and creating segmented flows for D2C brands and marketers. With Segments 3.0, we want to lower the barrier of entry for brands that don't have high-powered data scientists, engineers, or big creative teams; we want to empower SMBs with enterprise-grade analytics so they can access the same level of data-driven insights as larger tech and retail brands.

I couldn't be prouder of our team for their tireless efforts on Segments 3.0. Their hard work and dedication have not gone unnoticed by our customers, who have consistently left us glowing reviews and feedback.

We are building towards a "magic button" for marketers that takes care of most of the heavy lifting when it comes to email flow creation, putting brands and marketers back in the driver's seat and making it easy for them to make data-driven decisions. 

Some of the key features of Segments 3.0 include:

• Cross channel audiences for omnichannel campaigns: Brands can now integrate with SMS channels and TikTok, giving them even more ways to connect with their customers.

• Unified customer profiles: Brands can now import Klaviyo customer lists, giving them access to more data insights about their customers and their behavior.
• More analytics for customer, order, and product data: Brands can now see detailed analytics on more of their data, helping them to make more informed marketing decisions. An example is our Product Cohort analytics page. Brands can find their top 1st purchased products, and see which products lead to a higher repeat purchase rate or ACLV so they know what products to promote to new customers.

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• Launch of the "Segments Library": We launched Segments Library to help brands discover profitable segments and create targeted campaigns that drive results. This library contains pre-built customer segments that work for many other brands, and are ready to directly sync to your channels for your next segmented campaign.

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• Shopify Tag sync: Brands can now not only filter for customers and export them, but they can also sync customer lists back to Shopify as tags. This makes it easier for brands to manage their customer data and create targeted campaigns.

Overall, these features and integrations have helped us to become a more essential workflow tool for our customers and a powerful Analytical CRM. We’re all about being a data champion for brands, making it more simple for them to be productive with their data.

Onwards and upwards — what’s next

As we look ahead to 2023, we are excited to continue building upon the progress we've made this year. We want to become a more centralized headquarters for data: a place where brands can find actionable data insights, build segments, and manage their omnichannel customer engagement. 

In addition, we are working on making our predictive analytics capabilities even more powerful. We will continue to focus on bringing our customers closer to finish line – what that means is helping our customers create and manage sophisticated email marketing flows with ease. Ultimately, we want to take as much work off their plates as possible, so they can focus on what they do best.

Finally, we will continue to add more integration channels and data sources, such as loyalty programs, subscriptions, and customer reviews. We believe this will help our customers get an even deeper understanding of their customers and make more data-driven marketing decisions.

Thanks to all our customers who continue to believe in our vision. You have been a major part of our growth and success, and we’re so excited that you have been a part of our journey.

Special shout out to our incredible partners for continuing to put your trust in us as your data partner — our agency partners: Woolmans, Klewdup, Email Allstars, Tetra Marketing; and our app partners: Enquire Labs, Littledata, Tapcart, ReConvert, and Yotpo.

Thanks for reading! Drop me a LinkedIn message if you ever want to chat more about data:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnychao

–John Chao, CEO and co-founder, Tresl Segments

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