Customer segment

Definition

A customer segment is a subset of a brokerage's client book defined by one or more shared criteria: policy type held, renewal date, tenure, risk of lapse or cancellation, engagement level, consent to receive messages, location or life stage. Segmenting exists so that a message reaches the people it is relevant to rather than the whole book, so that results can be measured by group, and so that advisers' time goes where it matters. In a brokerage, the useful segments are operational more than promotional: policies renewing in the next thirty days, single-policy clients who could need additional cover, clients with no contact in six months, clients with an active WhatsApp opt-in. A segment can be dynamic, recalculated from its criteria, or a fixed list picked by hand.

What you need to know

Segmentation is also how a WhatsApp campaign stays within the rules. It excludes clients without an opt-in or who have opted out, separates servicing messages from marketing, and lets the tone fit the audience: a renewal reminder to a long-standing client reads differently from a re-engagement message to someone who has gone quiet. In South Africa, POPIA shapes what may be used as a criterion and for what purpose, and direct marketing segments must respect section 69; in the UK, UK GDPR and PECR apply the same way, with the added expectation under Consumer Duty that vulnerable customers are identified and handled appropriately.

In ORIS, the Customers & Segments module offers two ways to build a segment: filters on Risk Score, Engagement Score, Status, WhatsApp Opt-In and Days Since Inception, combined with Equals, Greater than and Less than operators; or Manual Selection of individual customers. Customers enter the book by manual entry or CSV import. When a campaign is created, the "Who to contact" step attaches a saved list or filters by policy type, tenure and renewal window. Campaign sends go only to customers with a WhatsApp opt-in, and opt-outs are excluded at send time. Segments then appear in the campaign list and in Analytics, where cohorts can be compared.

For segments used in practice, see our use cases and the POPIA and WhatsApp consent guide for the consent side.

Concrete example

A Nairobi brokerage builds an ORIS segment "active clients, WhatsApp opt-in, low engagement, more than 365 days since inception" using Engagement Score Less than, WhatsApp Opt-In Equals and Days Since Inception Greater than. It attaches a cover-review campaign from an approved template and compares the reply rate with the high-engagement segment in Analytics.