A company-wide segmentation for a connected home business

The question

A connected home company had grown from hardware into an app, video and other paid services, and believed its customers had changed with it.

Its last segmentation had been built around a single product line. A new one would be used across the business, from marketing to product, to decide whom to reach, where and how to engage them, and how to grow what each customer was worth. Teams across the company would build their plans on what it said.

Our approach

We built the segments from the benefits people want from home security and access, checked against what they own and pay for across hardware and services.

A client steering group stress-tested the strongest solutions in a series of working sessions, choosing among options our software and team had narrowed from thousands. We met the priority segments through digital activities and in their own homes, and filmed them, so every team could see the people behind the numbers.

What the team came away with

Into the business went a segmentation sized across its category, a persona and short film for each priority segment, a playbook and a typing tool for future research.

Each persona came with its segment’s profile across products, spend and subscriptions, so the human story and the numbers stayed together. Because the steering group had shaped the solution, it arrived already owned by people who would carry it into their teams.

From media planning to product decisions, teams could now work from the same picture of the customer, and future research could place people in the segments with the typing tool.