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Comprehensive guide to the Twilio Segment platform

Written by Lukáš Lískovec | 4/26/22

In this article, we will discuss the benefits of Twilio Segment, how it works and the features that make it an effective tool for businesses marketing.

Content

Introduction

What Twilio Segment Offers

Features Twilio Segment

How to Use Twilio Segment

Best Practices

Pricing

Conclusion

Introduction

Twilio Segment is a modern platform that helps businesses analyse customer data and create customised marketing strategies for higher engagement.

With advanced analytics, automation tools, AI-based insights and targeted campaigns, companies are then able to easily create marketing strategies that increase customer loyalty, satisfaction and engagement.

What Twilio Segment Offers

Customer Segmentation

Twilio Segment allows companies to create customer profiles and segment them into different groups using artificial intelligence based on their behavior, preferences, location, demographics, etc. This allows marketing campaigns and offers to be targeted to customers, leading to greater customer engagement.

Personalised Messages

By providing personalised messages, businesses can increase customer loyalty and satisfaction. Twilio Segment not only tracks customer interactions and analyzes data, but also provides customers with relevant offers or promotions that are tailored to their needs. 

Advanced Analytics

Twilio Segment provides businesses with advanced analytics and automation tools that enable them to streamline processes and make more informed decisions. Customers get better services that are tailored to their needs.

Features Twilio Segment

Twilio Segment helps you streamline your business marketing with the following features:

Automated Messaging

One of the key features of Twilio Segment is the automatic sending of personalised messages

With automated messaging, businesses can send their customers messages tailored to their preferred channels, such as email or SMS.

Sending a message can be triggered based on events performed by the customer, such as making a purchase or abandoning a cart.

Customer journeys

Journeys allows businesses to create automated customer journeys that are individually tailored to each customer.

It designs a personalised experience across all channels (emails, text messages, calls, social networks, etc.) based on real-time customer behaviour and preferences.

Journeys can be triggered by events such as a customer registration, purchase activity or a website visit. 

For example, part of the 'customer registration' journey can include automatically sending a series of welcome emails offering discounts to encourage customers to make their first purchase.

Businesses can then use the data collected from these routes to gain insight into customer behaviour.

Warehouse

The Warehouse feature, with its easy-to-use user interface, is designed for businesses to store customer data in a secure and centralised location. 

This gives companies easy access to customer data that they can further analyse to create segmentation strategies or quickly uncover behavioural patterns and trends.

This enables companies to gain valuable insights about their customers, enabling them to create more effective marketing campaigns and offers.

Synchronising profiles

This feature allows companies to create detailed segmented customer profiles.

These profiles can include not only contact information, purchase history, interests and preferences, but also other data points.

With Customer Sync, companies can also sync their customer data from different sources, such as CRM platforms (Salesforce, Zoho, Hubspot, etc.), which can streamline the entire segmentation process.

Reverse ETL

Twilio Segment's Reverse ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) functionality offers an efficient way to reverse engineer customer data.

It automates the process of extracting customer data from multiple sources, transforming it into a uniform format and loading it into a central repository.

This feature therefore helps businesses ensure that their customer data is always up-to-date and accurate.

For more detailed instructions on how to set up this tool, please refer to the following page: A Basic Segment Installation

How to Use Twilio Segment

Create an account

The first step to setting up Twilio Segment is to create an account. 

You do this by visiting the website and clicking the "Sign Up" button. 

You will then enter your information, including your name, email address, and password in the appropriate fields.

To complete the registration, you will be sent an activation link so that you can verify your account.

Creating segments

Creating a segment is relatively easy. First, you need to sign in to your Twilio Segment account. 

Once logged in, you'll click on a page called "Segment Builder" where you'll be able to create a segment based on various criteria such as customer location, purchase history, or engagement level. 

Once you've selected your criteria, you can start sending targeted messages, but don't forget to save the segment.

Automatic messaging

Once you've created your own user segments, you can start setting up automated messaging.

First, click on the "Segments" tab to select the desired segment you want to send automated messages to. 

After selecting a segment, you can click the "Create" button to start creating the automated message, including the content and desired delivery method. 

You can also choose when the message should be sent (immediately or later).

Finally, select the desired delivery method, such as email, SMS or push notification, which is a notification sent via an app or website.

Once you save the automated message, it will be sent to the desired segment at the specified time.

Real-time data monitoring

After the automated reports are sent, it is important to monitor the data using the "Analytics" panel.

With this dashboard, you can view detailed information about your segment engagement. 

This includes things like message open rates, click-through rates, and response rates. 

You can then use this data to improve customer engagement and create more effective campaigns.

Best Practices

Twilio Segment is a useful tool, but to get the most out of it, you need to follow certain recommended practices.

To get the best performance from this tool, make sure all data is accurate and up-to-date on a regular basis.

Create targeted messages that are relevant and tailored to your specific audience.

Always test personalised messages before sending them.

Last but not least, regularly review the marketing campaigns you are running and adjust them as needed.

Pricing

Twilio Segment offers different pricing packages to suit businesses with any budget.

The basic package is free. It collects data from two sources (web and app) and is able to send that data to an unlimited number of "destinations" (Google Analytics, Data Warehouse, etc.) You can use it if your website gets less than 1,000 visitors per month.

If your website gets 10,000 visitors, you'll pay $120 per month for Twilio Segment services. However, for every additional 1,000 users, you'll pay an additional $10. The second package collects data from unlimited sources and also has the benefit of a free 14-day trial.

For the last Business package, the price is determined in consultation with Segment representatives. It includes all the features of the previous two packages, but as its name suggests, it is more suitable for companies with larger budgets.

For detailed pricing and features in specific packages, visit pricing.

Conclusion

The Twilio Segment platform provides a number of useful tools that enable businesses to create better customer experiences. 

It helps streamline data collection and analysis, and allows companies to gain deeper insights into their customer base and then tailor marketing campaigns accordingly. 

The platform also provides easy integration with a range of other platforms and applications, allowing companies to connect their data more easily. 

With its powerful and accessible tools, the Twilio Segment platform is a valuable tool for companies looking to create a more personalised customer experience.

And if you'd like to use other automation tools, you can also read our article on LeadHub.