Segments vs. Lifetimely: Which Consumer Analytics Solution Is Best for Your Business?

Consumer analytics are the bedrock of any successful marketing strategy. However, transforming your data into actionable insights can be a huge drain on your team’s time and resources. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of tools designed to do the hard work for you. In this in-depth comparison guide, we’ll take a look at two leading consumer analytics solutions every eCommerce business should have their eye on: Segments Analytics and Lifetimely.

What is Segments?

Segments is a no-code consumer analytics platform designed to help Shopify brands optimize their marketing campaigns via granular, AI-powered segmentation and reporting. It boasts a stacked lineup of leading eCommerce brands, including ILIA, Sol de Janeiro, Meshki, Hayabusa Fight, Soft Services, True Botanicals, Live Tinted, and more.

Since its inception, Segments has parsed over 100M orders and received exclusively five-star reviews from 67 Shopify stores. Best of all, brands using the tool see double-digit revenue growth on average.

What is Lifetimely?

Lifetimely is a no-code consumer analytics app that enables Shopify brands to optimize their marketing campaigns with robust segmentation and precise LTV projections. Its logos also include some impressive names in eCommerce — most notably, Feastables, Nick’s, Nomad, Four Sigmatic, Liquid Death, and Boka. 

How Segments and Lifetimely stack up at a glance

Both consumer analytics tools are purpose-built to help growing brands squeeze the maximum value from their customer data. However, they take very different approaches to this mission. Here’s how their features compare in a nutshell:

Segmentation capabilities

Segmentation is the lifeblood of any consumer analytics tool. Here’s how each solution handles this core capability.

Lifetimely

Lifetimely leans mostly on cohort analysis to sort your customers into several pre-built categories, including:

• First purchase date
• First product purchased
• Marketing channel
• Number of orders

Once you’ve divided your customers into these basic categories, you can further refine them using built-in filters. You might, for instance, filter a segment of three-time purchasers by country to see which geographical locations drive the most value.

Lifetimely’s cohort analysis features are beneficial in helping you make sense of where your customers are converting and what their purchasing behaviors are. However, brands looking to target users on a truly granular level may find the app’s pre-built options limiting.  

Segments

Segments is a full-fledged data platform that intakes your entire store history. It goes beyond cohort analysis to help you group customers based on behaviors like RFM (Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value), customer lifetime value (CLV),  product purchases, order duration, AOV, and ranking by different metrics. It offers 50+ pre-built segments that include categories like:

• Product attributes (Title, SKU, Collection… etc.)
• Order attributes (# of orders, spend, AOV, last purchased… etc.)
• Geo filters (US cities, zip codes, proximity… etc.)
• Advanced segments (average purchase duration, top 10% CLV, X Buyer Y times… etc.)
• Premium segments (bespoke segmentation made by a data scientist)

If over 50 pre-built segments weren’t enough, the platform’s Segments AI feature also empowers brands to create custom segments to any specification they want using 100% natural language. Say, for instance, you want to build a segment of first-time shoppers with high AOV. All you have to do is enter “Customers who spent over $1,000 on their first purchase” into the Segments AI search bar, and within 30 seconds, the platform will generate that segment for you.

While its pre-built options help you lay a strong foundation, Segments’ endless customizations and filters ensure you can get as specific as possible when targeting users. Most marketers already have an intuitive sense of how to target their customers, and Segments gives them the resources they need to chase every inclination.

“Segments was click and go from the start. We used their AI to build segments based on specific commands, and their amazing customer service team helped us tailor them even further to reflect our own customer base.” — St Frock

Granularity of data, insights, and analytics

A consumer analytics platform is only as good as its ability to distill your most actionable insights into easy-to-understand reports. Let’s take a look at each tool’s data and analytics chops.  

Lifetimely

Lifetimely offers a suite of reporting options designed to help you carefully monitor LTV and extract the maximum value from your marketing spend.

Product journeys and purchase cycles: As its name implies, Lifetimely is designed to facilitate perfectly timed marketing throughout the customer lifecycle. To help you reach customers when they're most inclined to convert, the app reports on details like the order products are purchased in, how often each product is repurchased, and how much time customers take between purchases.

Custom dashboarding: Lifetimely enables you to build custom dashboards for any KPIs or metrics and effortlessly track the results across different marketing channels. If you’d like to compare your Meta ad spend to your TikTok ad spend, for instance, you can easily build a dashboard just for that purpose.

AI-powered predictive LTV model: The bread and butter of the Lifetimely app is its AI-generated predictive LTV model. You can use it to track the past, present, and future value of every customer segment. It also shows you ROAS and LTV/CAC ratios for every group, plus offers predictions on CAC payback times.

High-level financial insights: Lifetimely sends an automated P&L to your inbox every day to give you a birds-eye view into the effectiveness of your marketing budget.

While Lifetimely’s extensive insights into customer LTV and your marketing budget distinguish it from other solutions, the platform struggles to guide the user with actionable recommendations on what to do with this data.

Segments

Segments’ pre-built and customizable reports not only help you closely track LTV and purchase behaviors, but also come with tactical tips that equip you to act on the findings immediately. 

Product journeys and purchase cycles: Segments offers a plethora of pre-built reports that give you the insights to expertly time your marketing campaigns. Whether you want to see what order products are purchased in, the repurchase rate of every product, or customers’ average intervals between orders, Segments has your back.

Recommended actions: Segments offers AI-powered recommended actions that help unlock more value across every stage of the shopper lifecycle. A report on the lifecycle of a user who signed up on Shopify might provide recommendations like “Suppress and sunset. Send a last-chance countdown offer. Retarget only if acquisition cost is low.” Plus, Segments will even suggest a specific discount amount to offer when applicable.

Tailored, AI-generated reports: Much like Segments AI, the platform’s ReportsGPT feature enables you to build bespoke reports that answer every question, no matter how specific. If you want to learn more about your hero SKUs, for example, you might plug the following into ReportsGPT: “Top five products sold in the past month, include order and customer count.”

Comprehensive performance insights: Segments enables you to track your biggest value drivers over time, whether that’s a particular cohort or SKU. Using it, you can access several metrics — including repeat spend, AOV, ARPU, ACLV, and gross revenue — on a per-cohort and per-product basis. Like Lifetimely, the platform delivers CAC payback predictions to help you optimize your marketing spend.

Segments’ analytics and reporting features help brands fine-tune the timing of their campaigns and get more from their ad spend — but on a much more granular and actionable level than Lifetimely. The platform’s unique, GPT-like capabilities help uncover hidden insights, while the tactical tips that accompany key reports ensure you never have to guess what to do with your data.

“It feels like we have full analytics and data warehousing teams — when in reality, we don't have a single person wholly dedicated to these tasks. That’s the power of Segments.” — Soft Services

Integrations

Strong consumer analytics solutions seamlessly integrate with your existing stack. But gold-standard solutions sync your audiences and customer lists across every marketing platform. Here’s how each solution’s integrations measure up.

Lifetimely

Lifetimely integrates with eCommerce platforms like:

• Shopify
• Magento

Plus, it integrates with several marketing, social, and ad platforms, including:

• Meta
• TikTok
• Google 
• Microsoft
• Klaviyo
• Pinterest
• Snapchat

Meanwhile, on the shipping front, it integrates with:

• Shopify Shipping
• ShipStation
• Addition
• ShipBob

Finally, Lifetimely also integrates with reporting, subscription management, and spreadsheet applications including: 

• Google Analytics
• Recharge
• Google Sheets 

The number and variety of integrations Lifetimely offers is impressive, but it’s missing one core function: the ability to tag your customers back to Shopify and your marketing platforms. Tagging back every individual segment as you need it is a tedious manual undertaking. Plus, each export and upload is expensive and can quickly impact your monthly costs.

Segments

Although Segments is purpose-built for Shopify, it integrates with — and syncs back to — an impressive number of tools and channels.

On the marketing, social, and ad front, Segments integrates with:

• Meta
• TikTok
• Google
• Klaviyo
• Sendlane
• Omnisend
• Mailchimp
• Active Campaign
• Drip
• Postscript
• Attentive
• Yotpo

Like Lifetimely, Segments also integrates with reporting, subscription management, and spreadsheet applications including:  

• Recharge
• Google Analytics
• Google Sheets

What gives Segments the edge? It doesn’t just pull your data from other platforms; it syncs your segments back to Shopify and leading marketing channels using customer tags — with all the sophistication of a CDP. This means you can effortlessly sync the advanced audiences you build across every marketing channel at no additional cost. No painful uploads or exports required.

Pricing

You probably won’t commit to a tool, no matter how premium its features, if its pricing doesn’t align with your budget. Let’s look at what you can expect to pay for each solution.

Lifetimely

Lifetimely offers an array of pricing plans tiered by order volume. These include:

• Free (up to 50 orders/mo): Predictive LTV model, customer behavior analytics, daily profit & loss, custom dashboards, benchmarks, marketing attribution, segmentation
• Small (up to 1,000 orders/mo) for $49/mo: Predictive LTV model, customer behavior analytics, daily profit & loss, custom dashboards, benchmarks, marketing attribution, segmentation
• Medium (up to 3,000 orders/mo) for $149/mo: All features included in other plans, plus customer support, app onboarding, docs and support tickets, In-app chat
• Large (up to 7,000 orders/mo) for $299/mo: All features included in Medium, plus Silver support, custom 1:1 onboarding program, Slack channel
• Extra Large (up to 15,000 orders/mo) for $499/mo: All features included in Large, plus Gold support
• Extra Extra Large (up to 25,000 orders/mo) for $749/mo: All features included in Extra Large, plus Platinum support
• Unlimited for $999/mo: All features included in Extra Extra Large, plus personalized setup and support

Lifetimely is a cost-effective solution for smaller brands. However, its sheer number of pricing tiers can be confusing, and scaling brands looking for more premium support or the chance to build custom integrations may eventually outgrow the platform.

Segments

Segments offers three pricing tiers tailored to cater to brands of different sizes. These options include:

• Core for $199/mo: 50+ pre-built, AI-generated segments, unlimited segment creation, 100+ KPIs, RFM, CLV, and cohorts, up to 50,000 per audience syncs, 2-year analysis range
• Pro for $479/mo: Everything in Core, plus: shopper insights, product journey and cross-sell, build reports with AI, up to 150,000 per syncs, Google sheet export
• Enterprise for $1,549/mo: Everything in Pro, plus: premium support, custom integrations and metrics, monthly account reviews, on-demand support via Slack

While SMBs will drive plenty of value from Segments’ two self-serve plans, some may eventually yearn for its Enterprise-level capabilities. And the Enterprise plan is built specifically for larger brands who want more custom data sources and data science help.

The verdict? Segments is the ultimate consumer analytics solution for Shopify

While Lifetimely remains a powerful tool for brands hyper-focused on analyzing LTV, the depth of insights and AI capabilities of Segments make it the far more compelling option. That’s why Segments is the go-to consumer analytics tool for high-growth eCommerce companies. 

“Before Segments, we never would’ve been able to understand each cohort of customers on such an intricate level. The platform is a data mine for me and our entire store.” — Distacart

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