Been using the same customer segments for about 18 months now and wondering if they still make sense.
User behavior has shifted so much lately. Our original personas feel outdated but not sure if I should completely rebuild or just tweak what we have.
We refresh ours every year or when big campaigns stop working. Usually means the segments drifted.
I check my segments every 6 months now because user behavior changes so fast. What works is looking at your actual user data instead of the original assumptions.
Pull reports on who’s actually paying and how they found your app. You might find your best customers don’t match your top segment anymore.
I’d suggest updating one segment at a time and testing new messaging against it. Way easier than starting over completely.
18 months is actually a decent lifespan for segments. I usually see them get stale after 12-15 months, especially if you’re in a fast moving space.
What I do is pull the data on how each segment is actually converting now vs when you first created them. If the performance gaps are still there and behaviors match up, you’re probably fine with some tweaks.
But if your top segment is now performing like your worst one, that’s when you know it’s time for a rebuild. I had to completely redo segments for a shopping app because pandemic buying patterns never went back to normal.
Start with your highest value segment first. Test some messaging against your current definition vs an updated one and see what hits better.
Usually saves time compared to rebuilding everything from scratch when you might only need to adjust 2-3 key segments.
Just look at your current revenue by segment.
Check your acquisition costs by segment first. If CAC jumped 40% for your best segment, something shifted. Then look at retention curves. Pull day 1, 7, and 30 retention for each segment over the past 6 months. Compare it to when you built them. If the curves look similar and costs are stable, just refresh the messaging and creative. But if your segments are bleeding users faster or costing way more to acquire, rebuild from your current paying user data. I’ve seen apps waste months optimizing dead segments when their real users moved into completely different buckets.