Segments — which groups of customers behave differently?

Segments answers one question: Which groups of customers behave differently? It groups your customers inside the top groups your team already uses, wherever they behave differently, and keeps one set of segments that every page and report in Beacon can be read by. Beacon suggests segments; a person on your team confirms each one. It belongs to the Shared foundation — see Modules.

​

What it does

Segments works on two levels:

• Top groups come from a field your team already keeps in your CRM — today HubSpot’s Customer segment field, for example Enterprise, Mid-market and SMB. Every customer sits in one top group.
• Segments sit inside a top group. Today a segment is a top group and a list of industries — for example Enterprise · Financial Services. Every customer in that top group with one of those industries belongs to it.

A segment starts as a suggestion, made by Beacon or added by someone on your team, and counts for nothing until your segment approver confirms it. Once it is confirmed, Beacon places every matching customer in it and records who confirmed it and when. Beacon never confirms, merges, splits, renames or dismisses a segment on its own, and it never changes anything in your tools — segments are kept in Beacon.

​

What it produces

Its headline figures are five, each one per segment — the numbers to glance at to see how much a segment matters and whether it is worth investing in: The first three names link to their definitions, which also say how the Data API and MCP will carry them — neither serves them yet. The last two get their definitions when they are added. The Segment object lists everything Beacon publishes about a segment. Behind them, the page shows today:

​

How Beacon suggests segments

Today Beacon suggests segments from company details only — each customer’s top group and industry, from your CRM. Revenue and product usage are not used yet.

• Inside each top group, Beacon suggests one segment for each industry that has at least 10 customers, named after the industry.
• Smaller industries are offered together as Other industries, once they reach 10 customers between them.
• An industry that is already in a waiting or confirmed segment is not suggested again, and a confirmed segment is never changed by a suggestion.

Your segment approver can ask for suggestions at any time with Suggest segments, and Beacon looks again after each daily load of your CRM’s company details. The same customers always give the same suggestions. When a segment is confirmed, four rules hold: Later, Beacon will also compare how customers buy, how they use the product and what they are worth, and the segments get sharper as each of those arrives. Segment describes that fuller method. It is not running yet.

​

What you see on its page

In Beacon, open The Brain and choose Segments. The page has six tabs:

• Overview — what segments are for, what they draw on and which modules use them. Recurring revenue by segment has no figures yet.
• Dashboard — the module’s main charts: health along the customer lifecycle, health ranked, where to put money, the quarterly verdicts and how far to trust each segment. None has figures yet.
• Signals & alerts — what the module watches, and its five alert rules.
• Scorecard — how the health score is made, its six parts and their weights, the tiers and the rules. The scores are not calculated yet.
• Segments — your top groups and their customers, your segments, Add segment, Suggest segments, and Confirm or Dismiss for the segment approver, plus every customer and its segment.
• Setup — the questions the module uses.

To add a segment, choose a top group and the industries it covers; the page shows how many customers match before you save it for approval. Every addition, confirmation and dismissal is recorded with the name of the person who made it. A suggestion from Beacon is recorded as made by Beacon, with the name of the person who asked for it. Confirming a large segment can take up to half a minute. Your segment approver is named by an admin on Users & permissions, under Named people. Until one is named, no segment can be confirmed.

​

What it needs

Segments reads your tools through Customer matching: a customer’s top group and industry come from the CRM record matched to it. See Connect your tools for how each connection is made.

​

Reads from

Customer matching, for one ID per customer with its CRM details attached. As the deeper comparisons arrive it will also read Data integrity, Customer fit, Signals, Usage intelligence and the Customer and Finance modules.

​

Which modules read it

The modules that use the health score wait for it, because it is not calculated yet. The Modules page in The Brain shows which modules are running for you.

​

Alerts

No alert is sent yet. They wait for the health score and for confirmed segments with some history behind them.

​

Setup questions

• Which field sets your top groups? Today Beacon sets this up with you; choosing it yourself on the page is not available yet.
• Who owns your segments, and who approves changes? The segment approver is named on Users & permissions.
• When does a segment earn more investment? Your CFO’s thresholds for the quarterly verdicts.
• How often should Beacon review where to put money? Recommended: every quarter.

How you segment your customers and which tools you use are asked once and used here too.

​

What is not calculated yet

• Segment recurring revenue, and recurring revenue by segment over time.
• Segment LTV/CAC and segment gross margin % — neither is defined yet.
• The segment health score, its six parts and its tier.
• The quarterly verdict for each segment.
• Who is responsible for each segment.
• New customers joining a confirmed segment by themselves — today they join when the segment approver confirms the segment again.
• Moving one customer to another segment by hand.
• Suggestions from how customers buy, use the product or what they are worth — today they come from top group and industry only.
• A minimum of three segments — until you confirm segments, your top groups stand in for them.
• Choosing the top-group field yourself.
• Alerts — none is sent yet.

​

Related