How to Segment Users By Intent

When someone arrives at your offering, it's because they're seeking change in their life. There are patterns there, and you can design for the good ones. The process begins by segmenting users by intent.

How to Segment Users By Intent
Do not index
Do not index

Sections

Identifying which user outcomes correlate with revenue (2:35)

How your business benefits from segmenting by intent (9:30)

How users benefit from segmenting by intent (23:54)

Tactic #1: Re-ordering the steps in the path (35:42)

Tactic #2: Using situation-driven in-app copy (39:07)

Tactic #3: Segmenting onboarding emails (40:36)

Takeaways

Prescriptive vs. Descriptive User Outcomes

The goal is not be prescriptive with user outcomes, but descriptive. You don't want to decide which outcomes are possible with your product, you want to discover what outcomes people are using your product to achieve. (4:19)
The difference between a company-defined product milestone and a user-defined product milestone is that the user-defined milestone is always inherently motivational. It can be rewarding to just pick a milestone in the product and try to get more people there, but paying attention to why it matters and to whom can be the difference between manufacturing engagement and seeing more engagement happen organically. (16:01)
You're not the one in charge. The user is in charge. We've known this for 20 years and yet still say things like: "Then we make the users do X," and "After they do X, we make them do Y." The "dominator" mindset isn't right at all, we don't make users do things, we help them do things. (29:03)

Why segment by intent?

The strategic advantage of segmenting by intent is visibility into which intents/outcomes are responsible for the majority of your user base and revenue. Of the people who signed up, how many are pursuing outcome X? Is it 80%, or is it 8%? Because those make for very different strategic narratives. (9:37)
Another big benefit of segmenting by intent: the better you get at identifying intents, the more you can show users that you understand why they have come to your product. One of the most reliable ways to signal to users that they are in the right place is to be relevant within the context of their out-of-app goals. (24:05)

Easy segmentation tactics

How your in-app to-do list is designed is MUCH LESS IMPORTANT than what it asks users to do. Care about the rounded corners less than you care about the order and nature of the actions. (31:38)
Copy is a great way to have an impact on the user experience without putting in too much effort. If nothing else, use situation-informed copy to demonstrate that you have tailored paths to specific intents. (30:07)

Written by

Yohann Kunders
Yohann Kunders

Co-founder: Self-Serve SaaS, prev Airbase and Chargebee

    Written by

    Samuel Hulick
    Samuel Hulick

    Co-founder: Self-Serve SaaS, prev founder of UserOnboard

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