Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
If you run a Shopify store, knowing how to create customer segment Shopify is one of the highest leverage skills you can develop. Customer segmentation lets you tailor messages, offers, and experiences to the right people at the right moments across email, ads, and on-site experiences. It also powers better ROAS, higher LTV, and stronger retention by focusing your budget and attention where they have the most impact.
McKinsey reports that 71 percent of customers expect personalized interactions and 76 percent get frustrated when that doesn’t happen, personalization leaders see outsized revenue gains and improved loyalty.
Shopify has made segmentation far easier in recent years with native customer segments, predictive signals, marketing integrations, and automation hooks. Below you’ll find a complete, research-backed guide to understanding, building, and activating segments inside Shopify, plus how to extend them with AI-driven tools to grow faster.
Shopify’s customer segments group people based on attributes like purchase history, geography, language, subscription status, tags, last order date, total spent, and dozens of other filters. Segments auto-update as new customers arrive and as existing customers’ behavior changes. You can use them for email, discounts, automations, and channel exports.
Start here:
A simple workflow inside your Shopify admin looks like this:
Templates are a fast path to common audiences like first-time buyers, repeat customers, high spenders, or subscribers, ideal if you’re new to segmentation. Custom filters are essential once you want precise control: combining recency and frequency, product-level behavior, geography, language, and lifecycle stages. Most teams blend both approaches, starting with a template and adding a few refinements to align with their model and goals.
Shopify automatically stores core customer, order, and product data. That covers most use cases for behavioral and lifecycle segments. To build deeper insights, consider adding first-party data through:
Keep consent and purpose front and center. Use data that customers knowingly provided to improve their experience, and honor unsubscribes and channel preferences across segments. The Shopify Help Center provides guidance on building compliant email marketing and managing permissions alongside segmentation: Shopify Email.
Email. The fastest way to monetize segments is through targeted email sends and flows. Inside Customers, choose a segment and select Use segment in email. Then align content with behavior and intent:
Discounts. When you create a discount, set Customer eligibility to Specific customer segments. This enables crafted offers such as:
Automations. Shopify Flow can trigger workflows when a customer joins or leaves a segment. That opens up lifecycle marketing without manual effort. For example:
Explore Flow and its triggers.
RFM stands for Recency, Frequency, Monetary. It is a time-tested method to classify customers by how recently they bought, how often they buy, and how much they spend. In ecommerce, these three signals are reliable predictors of the next purchase. A practical approach:
Combine the scores to find Champions, Loyalists, Potential loyalists, At-risk, and Dormant. Then map messages accordingly. Champions get early access, at-risk audiences get reminders and value-driven reasons to return, dormant buyers get low-friction re-entry offers and fresh creative.
Shopify also offers predictive signals like a predicted spend tier in some contexts, which can help you forecast buying power and prioritize outreach. For hands-on marketers, this is a smart way to focus premium experiences on the customers most likely to respond, while nurturing medium-tier segments toward higher value over time. For an overview of the customer segmentation system and how to apply it in your store, start with the Help Center guide.
The best-performing ad accounts use customer segments as the backbone of targeting. You can sync segments to ad platforms to:
Shopify provides a native product for prospecting that uses aggregated commerce data to build effective ad audiences. Whether you use this or your own synced segments, a simple rule applies: your seed audience quality determines your lookalike quality. Use your highest value or most frequent repeat purchasers as the source, not a broad all customers list.
Pro tip: Keep creative aligned with segment intent. A replenishment reminder audience should see rapid, utility-focused creative. VIP buyers should see exclusivity and limited quantities. First-time buyers should see education and trust-building. These nuances increase conversion rate and ROAS.
Cart abandonment remains a stubborn problem for every ecommerce business. Baymard Institute’s research pegs average abandonment at roughly 70 percent across industries. Segmentation brings this number down by handling different abandonment contexts differently:
Use your abandoned checkout segment for emails, but don’t stop there. Mirror the segment in ads for personalized retargeting and keep incentives consistent across channels.
Strong segments rely on strong data. A few practical steps:
Many teams want the outcomes of AI without rebuilding their stack. This is where an AI strategy pairs nicely with Shopify-native workflows. AI consulting concepts like AI strategy, data strategy, AI implementation, AI solutions, and AI analytics translate to practical ecommerce outcomes when you apply them to segmentation:
If you want these benefits without heavy custom development, Kuma connects your Shopify data to an AI-powered environment that discovers predictive audience segments, builds RFM views, and syncs them to Meta Ads, Google Ads, TikTok, Pinterest Ads, Klaviyo, and HubSpot. You can also use a built-in chatbot that accesses your Shopify data to analyze performance, create graphs, and help you build high-converting audiences and campaigns, all using your real store data.
Segmentation is not a one-time exercise. Measure performance by segment and keep iterating:
Establish segment-level benchmarks, then A/B test creative, offers, and timing. Retire segments that no longer produce incremental value, and promote segments that consistently outperform. The result is a living portfolio of audiences that compounds performance across email and ads.
Customer segmentation turns raw data into profitable action. Shopify has done the heavy lifting by centralizing customer, order, and product data and by making it simple to define audiences, send campaigns, and automate lifecycle moments:
From there, AI can accelerate the impact. With Kuma, you can discover predictive audiences, apply RFM segmentation, analyze campaigns, and sync your Shopify-built segments across Meta Ads, Google Ads, TikTok, Pinterest Ads, Klaviyo, and HubSpot without manual CSVs. If you want to turn better segmentation into better ROAS, retention, and LTV, explore how Kuma can help at kuma.marketing or contact our team for a tailored walkthrough.
CTA: Ready to operationalize segmentation across email and ads without heavy lifting? See how Kuma’s AI-powered audience segmentation and Shopify-native syncing can help you build, activate, and scale your best customers. Visit kuma.marketing to get started.
A Shopify customer segment is a dynamic group of customers defined by filters like purchase history, geography, language, tags, last order date, and total spend. Segments auto-update as customers meet or no longer meet your criteria and can be used across email, discounts, automations, and ad audiences.
In your admin, go to Customers → Segments → New segment. Use templates or add filters such as “Order count greater than 2” or “Email marketing status is subscribed.” Name the segment clearly (e.g., VIP 300+ or At-risk 120 days) so your team can reuse it.
Yes. Choose a segment and select “Use segment in email” for targeted sends and flows. When creating discounts, set Customer eligibility to Specific customer segments. With Shopify Flow, you can trigger workflows when a customer joins or leaves a segment to automate lifecycle moments.
Templates are a fast starting point for common audiences like first-time or repeat buyers. Custom filters give you precision, combining recency, frequency, monetary value, product behavior, geography, and channel preferences. Most stores start with a template and refine with custom logic.
Score each customer on Recency, Frequency, and Monetary (1–5 each), then combine scores to find Champions, Loyalists, Potential loyalists, At-risk, and Dormant. Tailor messages accordingly, early access for Champions, reminders for At-risk, and low-friction re-entry offers for Dormant.
Yes. Sync segments to platforms for retargeting, excluding recent purchasers, and creating lookalikes based on high-LTV buyers. You can also use Shopify Audiences to build effective prospecting audiences from aggregated commerce data.
Use Shopify’s core data plus first-party inputs like on-site preferences, post-purchase surveys, loyalty info, and email interactions. Collect only what you’ll use, standardize fields, document segment purposes, and respect channel-specific consent. See Shopify Email for guidance.
