How to decrease the number of customers you send your brochure to, whilst increasing ROI on the brochure mailing, by segmenting customers by their propensity to book tickets as a result of having received a brochure.

PLEASE NOTE: this feature is not available to all Vital Statistics clients.

First of all, create your Brochure mailing in the normal way.

Log into Vital Statistics, hover over "Tools" and then "Search for", and click on Segments.

Click on "New segment"

Give your segment a name (Required) and description (optional), and save it into a folder.

Making sure that you are still in the "Include in Selection" option, create your FIRST Criteria:

On the first tab - "Events customers attended" - choose the performance date range you want to filter by. Make any further filter choices (specific events/event bands, performances etc) using the additional drop down filter options. User the "Customer's behaviour to selected events" tab to use further filtering by their purchase behaviour if you want.

Then navigate to the "Filter by customer's attributes".

Add your first two filters as normal:

Valid address = Address valid

Data Protection = Can market

Then add a third filter: using the "Classified Customers' option, search for "Control Group", select the result, and insert the option "Control Group (Brochure Experiment Autumn 2017)" as well.

Click SAVE AND COUNT and then BACK.

Now add in your SECOND Criteria.

This time, just build your segment as you usually would: the time period plus any further filters in the "Events Customers Attended" tab, any filters you need in the "Customer's behaviour to selected events" tab, and finally the Address Valid and Can Market filters in the "Filter by Customer's attributes" tab.

Click SAVE AND COUNT and then BACK.

Finally, move to the "Remove from Selection" option, and then click on "New Criteria".

Navigate straight to the "Filter by Customer's Attributes"

Choose the "Classified Customers" filter.

First, search for, select and include any of the usual Classification Codes you use to exclude customers (i.e. "gone away", "do not mail", "deceased" etc).

Then, still in the "Classified Customers" option, search again for "Exclude", select and insert the result "Exclude Group (Brochure Experiment Autumn 2017)". Save.

Click SAVE AND COUNT and then BACK.

You will be back at the main page for your segment. You will see that there are two "Include In" and one "remove from" criteria.

Finally, click "Refresh Segment".

You will be presented with a final customer count: the first criteria (the "control group", as it includes the Control customer classification, PLUS the second criteria (the segment that you created "as normal"), MINUS all exclusions (such as classified customers "do not mail", "gone away", "deceased", and most importantly of all, "Exclude group (brochure experiment Autumn 2017)". By using the "control group" and "exclude group" classifications in this way, the customer count should be c.10% lower than usual, having taken out any customers who are flagged as being unlikely to book tickets as a result of receiving a brochure, thus saving you money on print and distribution.

Your segment is now ready to export and use for mailings.