Find your VIP’s. Treat them special. Profit.

✨ Everybody wants to be a VIP. It feels good to be treated specially and cared for. It’s human nature.

So there is no reason why you should keep ignoring your best customers!

But we can’t treat them to extra discounts, special offers, and early access to sales and product offerings if we can’t identify them. The first step is to find these customers and segment them from your main list.

📊 How?

It’s quite simple, but you have to decide between some alternate options:

1. Segment by total value of money spent – Identify the Big Spenders.
   Customers who have spent over X amount of money over Y amount of time.
2. Segment by total number of purchases – Identify the Frequent Purchasers.
   Customers who have purchased X number of products over Y amount of time.
3. Segment by both amount spent and number of purchases – Identify your most Frequent, High-Dollar Purchasers.
   Customers who have purchased X number of products AND spent Z amount of money over Y amount of time.

Which segmentation method to use and what cutoff numbers to set depends on many factors, including your products, store, pricing, and target audience. We recommend experimenting with these segments. Focus your VIP efforts on segments with more than 1,000 customers for best results.

✂ Three Reasons to Start Segmenting Your VIPs

• 🎯 Rewarding loyal customers builds a stronger brand.
• 📈 VIP campaigns can improve sales, increase customer engagement, and enhance the average customer lifetime value.
• 🚀 Clear VIP benefits encourage regular customers to strive for VIP status, driving further purchases!

Results speak for themselves! Here’s an example:

This VIP campaign generated $618 from only 448 people. Considering the main segment has 30,000 people, this revenue is quite impressive!

VIP segments are even more powerful during the holiday season. Last Christmas, we generated nearly $90,000 for one client by sending separate campaigns to four key segments: Early Birds, High Spenders, Buyers, and Non-Buyers.

While the content was largely similar across emails, VIPs received an additional discount, and messaging was slightly tailored for each segment to resonate more effectively.

💡 Ideas to Engage Your VIPs

1. Create a VIP welcome flow – Once customers achieve VIP status, congratulate them with a welcome email and offer a gift (free shipping, discount, BOGOF, etc.).
2. Run exclusive sales for VIP customers – Send the same campaign separately to VIPs with an additional discount.
3. Open sales early for VIP customers – Give them exclusive access to new arrivals or early access to big holiday sales.

What VIP successes have you had? Share your experiences in the comments below to spark discussion!

By Sócrates Lozano and Thomas McClintock, Hustler Marketing