Every user has a journey. Some are just getting started, others are deeply engaged, and a few have walked away. To understand their behavior and guide them toward meaningful engagement, you need more than just customer demographics—you need user status segmentation.
User status segmentation categorizes users based on their level of engagement with your product or service. A new user might be in the exploration phase, just discovering what you offer, while an active user engages regularly. On the other hand, a dormant user might have lost interest, and a churned user has completely disengaged. By identifying these distinct groups, you can tailor marketing strategies, product experiences, and retention efforts to meet their specific needs.
In this guide, we’ll explore how user status segmentation works, its benefits, and real-world examples that showcase its impact across different industries.
User status segmentation is the practice of dividing your audience into distinct groups based on shared characteristics. Traditionally, businesses segment users by demographics (age, location, income), psychographics (values, interests, lifestyle), or behavior (purchasing habits, browsing history). While these approaches help create targeted marketing strategies, they often miss a crucial element—user engagement status.
User status segmentation is a form of behavioral segmentation that categorizes users based on their level of activity and engagement with your product or service. Instead of asking who your users are, it focuses on how they interact with your brand.
Unlike traditional segmentation methods—such as demographic or psychographic segmentation—user status behavioral segmentation focuses on actions rather than assumptions. It helps businesses uncover patterns, predict user behavior, and take proactive steps to retain and re-engage users.
User status segmentation is also dynamic—users can move between segments based on their actions. This makes it far more actionable, enabling marketers to adjust their outreach in real time. By leveraging user status behavioral segmentation, businesses can personalize their messaging, improve customer engagement, and predict user needs more effectively.
Segmenting users by their engagement level isn’t just about organization—it’s a strategy that drives real business impact. Here’s how:
User status segmentation helps you understand the needs of your users. This equips marketers to create highly tailored messages, offers, and instructions that cater to the distinct needs of these behavioral groups.
For instance, an active user who logs into your mobile app daily may be offered loyalty rewards or upsell suggestions. Conversely, a new user could receive a simplified onboarding sequence that carefully introduces them to product features without overwhelming them with information. By aligning the message with the user’s current stage of engagement, you create more relevant, personalized experiences.
When you target the right user at the right time with content that matters, engagement naturally increases.
For example, inactive or dormant users can be coaxed back with re-engagement campaigns that highlight fresh offerings or special discounts, while loyal users may stay excited about your brand through exclusive previews and VIP programs. Each of these tactics nurtures a stronger relationship, lowering churn rates and increasing overall customer lifetime value (CLV).
One critical advantage of segmenting users by status is that it allows you to allocate marketing resources more strategically. Rather than broadcasting the same message to all users, you can focus on high-value segments, such as loyal or high-value users, with special deals that underscore their importance.
Simultaneously, a smaller portion of your resources can be set aside to create personalized win-back campaigns for churned or at-risk segments, ensuring that every marketing dollar is put to optimal use.
The insights gleaned from user status segmentation go beyond marketing. They can inform broader business strategies, such as optimizing user journey and fine-tuning messaging or pricing models.
Suppose you discover that a large number of new users aren’t completing their onboarding process. This might indicate a usability problem with your product’s interface, suggesting it’s time to refine the user journey. When used effectively, these customer segmentation insights contribute to more data-driven decision-making across multiple departments.
Depending on how much your users interact with your product/service, they can be categorized under the following groups:
Active users are your most important cohort. They engage with your product or platform regularly. They log in frequently and spend significant time exploring features or making purchases. Your focus here is to understand how to continue keeping them engaged, know what they’re engaging with, and identify opportunities to cross sell and upsell.
Key Metrics: Look at login frequency, session duration, pages viewed, and any other metrics indicating steady product use.
Strategies: Reward active users to keep them motivated. Implement customer loyalty programs, upsell opportunities, or offer exclusive features that encourage ongoing engagement. Present them with relevant content based on their activity patterns, such as personalized product recommendations. Find ways to create habit loops with your product.
These are recently acquired users who are just starting their journey with your brand. They’re a fragile cohort still figuring out how to use your product. The goal with them is to create a seamless first impression and help them find value fast.
Key Metrics: Track onboarding progress, time to first purchase, and the frequency of initial interactions, including how many times they open your app or visit your website after sign-up.
Strategies: Welcome emails, in-app tutorials, and targeted introductions to key product features can help new users feel confident and supported. Gamify their experience by showing progress bars and the promise of value so they continue engaging with your product.
Inactive or dormant users are individuals who previously engaged but have shown a marked decline in activity over a specific time frame. It’s important to identify this cohort and take steps to reengage them before they churn completely.
Key Metrics: Common indicators include time since last login, time since last purchase, and the drop in overall engagement compared to historical patterns.
Strategies: Re-engagement campaigns are vital for dormant users. Target them with personalized messages, highlighting new products, features, or limited-time offers. Sometimes, a simple “We miss you” email can prompt a reactivation if combined with a compelling incentive or relevant content.
These are your most devoted users—long-term users who purchase repeatedly, consistently engage, and often refer others. These are the users you want to keep happy and nudge them to become brand ambassadors.
Key Metrics: Metrics like purchase frequency, CLV, and referral rates help identify them. You can also look at how often they share or review your products.
Strategies: Keep loyal users excited by offering exclusive content, rewards, or early access to new features. Loyalty programs, VIP events, and involving them in beta tests reinforce their bond with your brand. Recognizing and rewarding their loyalty retains them and may encourage them to advocate for your brand on social media or by word of mouth.
Churned users are those who have completely disengaged. They may have uninstalled your app, stopped purchasing altogether, or otherwise indicated they no longer wish to use your product.
Key Metrics: Typically, a user is deemed churned after a certain period of inactivity, a clear uninstall event, or explicit communication (like unsubscribing or closing an account).
Strategies: To win them back, conduct campaigns highlighting new updates and improvements. Feedback surveys can also help you understand why users churn and what changes you can make to reduce future churn.
The first step is to define how you are going to group your users. Each cohort must have clear and measurable criteria that tie in with the product goals. Demarcating what separates a new user from an active user and a loyal user should be based around metrics such as session frequency, subscription tier, and feature adoption.
It’s important that these are tied to larger business objectives. If retention is a priority, monthly active users (MAUs) and weekly active users (WAUs) will be important metrics to track. If revenue is the key objective, subscription tier is the metric to track.
The next step is to gather all the key behavioral metrics necessary for proper segmentation as decided from the previous step. Utilize analytics tools, CRM systems, and event-tracking software to consolidate data. Ensure that you have integration across platforms (web, mobile, etc.) for a complete user profile. Unified data sources help create accurate, real-time insights into each user’s status.
Once you’ve gathered your data, analyze it to understand typical behavioral patterns. Natural breakpoints will appear to indicate who the “active,” “inactive,” or “churned” users might mean in your context. Pair this with qualitative data like session recording, feedback, and tickets raised to find insights.
For instance, if you find a drop in engagement and an increase in complaints about a particular new feature, this cohort will be considered at-risk. Then, you can dive deep to understand what the issue is and take active steps to address this cohort.
With well-defined user segments in place, the next step is to build personalized marketing strategies for each group. Develop automated workflows that trigger relevant messages based on user actions (or inaction).
For example, if a user goes dormant for a set number of days, send them a reactivation email. If someone hits a loyalty milestone, deliver a congratulatory push notification with a reward. Automation tools are extremely helpful here, allowing you to efficiently manage different segments without overwhelming your team.
Segmentation is not a “set it and forget it” tactic. Continually track key performance indicators (KPIs), such as engagement rates, conversion rates, or app uninstalls, to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. Gather feedback, run A/B tests, and refine your segmentation criteria as needed. As users shift segments, ensure your automated workflows adapt accordingly. This iterative process keeps your segmentation strategies fresh and relevant.
CleverTap simplifies user status segmentation by combining real-time behavioral analytics, AI-driven insights, and advanced segmentation models. This powerful platform processes both deep historical and current data, helping marketers create highly targeted campaigns that reach users when they’re most likely to convert.
1. Advanced Segmentation Models: CleverTap provides multiple ways to categorize users.
2. Dynamic Lifecycle-Based Segmentation: CleverTap tracks users across lifecycle stages, from new and engaged to dormant or churned. Using Lifecycle Optimizer, you can automate tailored strategies at each stage, ensuring that users are consistently nudged toward higher engagement.
3. Real-Time and Historical Data Processing: With the ability to store and analyze up to 10 years of data via TesseractDB™, CleverTap lets you segment users based on past purchase history or current in-app behavior. This dual approach—combining historical insights with real-time activity—means you can launch pinpoint campaigns based on both long-term trends and instant behavioral triggers.
4. Omnichannel Outreach: Once your segments are established, CleverTap enables automated, personalized outreach via push notifications, email, SMS, WhatsApp, in-app messages, web push, or even Signed Call™. This multichannel capability ensures your messages reach users on the platform they prefer, increasing the likelihood of re-engagement.
With these features, CleverTap empowers marketers to run data-driven campaigns that address each user status segment in a timely, relevant manner.
Shawarmer, a leading quick-service restaurant chain, needed to increase repeat purchases and improve customer retention. To achieve this, they leveraged CleverTap’s RFM-based automated segmentation, which classified users into user status segments based on their purchasing frequency, recency, and spend.
By applying user status segmentation, Shawarmer identified:
SonyLIV, a leading OTT platform, optimized its trial-to-paid conversion strategy and is a great example of user status segmentation. The company segmented users into:
By leveraging CleverTap’s automated engagement, SonyLIV implemented:
Results:
Dream11, India’s largest fantasy sports platform, expand brand awareness and needed to capitalize on the 2-month long Indian Premier League sporting season while keeping users engaged. The company implemented user status segmentation to differentiate between:
Using CleverTap’s behavioral analytics and omnichannel engagement, Dream11:
Results:
Vodafone, a global telecom giant, used user status segmentation to refine its personalized engagement strategy and optimize marketing efficiency. The company segmented its audience into:
With CleverTap’s AI-powered segmentation, Vodafone:
Results:
User status segmentation is a powerful strategy for brands looking to deliver meaningful, personalized experiences at every stage of the user lifecycle. By focusing on each user’s real-time engagement and historical behavior, you can offer targeted incentives that resonate more effectively than broad, one-size-fits-all campaigns. This ensures that new users onboard successfully, active users remain excited, dormant users return, loyal users feel rewarded, and churned users are given every reason to come back.
CleverTap makes the entire process more streamlined by analyzing both past and real-time activity, enabling marketers to build automated, omnichannel strategies that connect with the right users at the right moments. Learn more about all the segmentation strategies and tools mobile marketers are using to optimize and automate their user segmentation.
