How to personalize product recommendations by RFM group

You will learn

Learn how to use RFM (recency, frequency, and monetary) properties to target customers with product recommendations.

Create RFM segments

Before building these audiences, check that your account meets the RFM data requirements and that your profiles have RFM properties. These properties refresh daily, so a recent purchase may not change a profile’s group immediately.

Creating segments of customers based on their RFM group allows you to easily target groups with different sets of products that are most relevant to their shopping patterns.

Once created, these segments can be used to send personalized campaigns to different groups, and trigger flows when a customer enters a particular RFM group. For example, you may want to include discounted products in emails going to your current At risk or Inactive customers, or use cross-selling content with customers in your Recent group.

To create a segment based on RFM group, use the following condition, with your desired group set as the value (i.e., Champions in the example below).

• Properties about someone > Current RFM group > equals > RFM group name

Some additional use cases for segments based on RFM group include:

• Targeting Loyal and Champions customers to provide reviews on items.
• Targeting Loyal or Recent customers with new products or product offers to cross-sell and up-sell.
• Targeting Recent customers with a subscription so that they become Champions or Loyal customers.
• Targeting Inactive or At risk customers with winback campaigns.
• Targeting Inactive or At risk customers with lower cost items.
• Offering exclusive or time-limited discounts to Inactive or At risk customers.

Using show/hide logic based on RFM group

You can dynamically show different content in your emails based on a profile’s RFM group using Klaviyo’s show/hide logic in templates. This feature allows you to personalize your email content based on information you have gathered about your subscribers, so each recipient has a highly relevant marketing experience.

Profile-based show/hide conditions can personalize campaign and flow emails. Use Current RFM group to target a profile’s current group, or Previous RFM group to target the group they belonged to before their most recent group change. The steps below use the drag-and-drop editor.

Convert an HTML template

If your template uses HTML, you can convert it to a drag-and-drop copy before adding show/hide rules. You need permission to edit templates. Your original HTML template stays unchanged.

1. Navigate to Content > Templates and select Email: saved.
2. Open the HTML template’s 3-dot menu and select Clone to drag and drop.
3. Open Converted templates. When the status is Ready to use, click the converted template’s name to open it in the drag-and-drop editor.

Review the copy’s content, links, and personalization before adding your RFM rules. For more details, see how to convert an HTML template to drag and drop.

Apply an RFM show/hide condition

For example, to the Champions or Loyal groups, consider sending higher value items. Meanwhile, for customers in the Inactive or At risk groups, send lower-cost products or best sellers. Alternatively, you can send profiles in the Loyal or Champions groups early access or new products to see if they perform better with them.

1. In the drag-and-drop editor, select the product block or section you want to personalize, then select Display.
2. Under Show/hide logic, select Use logic builder.
3. Choose Properties about someone, then set Current RFM group > equals > Champions to show the content only to the Champions group. Click Save.

In this example, Current RFM group is the property being referenced in the condition, and the property value is Champions. You can replace Champions with the RFM group you are targeting.

To hide a block or section from the Champions group, set its condition to Current RFM group > does not equal > Champions, then click Save.

This condition only displays content to recipients that are not in the Champions RFM group.

Click Preview and check profiles in the groups you are targeting, profiles in other groups, and a profile without an RFM group. Confirm that each sees the intended product recommendations before sending.

Send personalized campaigns with show/hide logic

When sending campaigns in Klaviyo, you can use show/hide logic in Klaviyo to include personalized product recommendations based on a profile’s RFM group (i.e., Current RFM group or Previous RFM group).

You can include multiple products in your email, and create the show/hide rules so profiles in different groups see the appropriate product in their emails.

Some examples include:

• Targeting Loyal or Recent customers with new products or product offers to cross-sell and up-sell.
• Targeting Recent customers with a subscription so that they become Champions or Loyal customers.
• Targeting customers in the Needs attention or At risk groups with lower cost items they are more likely to purchase.
• Targeting Champions or Loyal customer groups with higher value items.

Send personalized flows

You can also use RFM properties to send more relevant content with your flows. In addition to dynamically displaying content using show/hide logic, you can use splits based on a profile’s RFM group to send different group members down different flow paths. Use the Split action for new branches. Existing conditional splits continue to work.

You can include different product recommendations or other content in each path’s flow email. In a Split action, profiles follow the first path whose conditions they match, in the order you set. Profiles that match none of the configured paths follow Everyone else, so plan content for that path too.

In flows, you can try to cross-sell or up-sell specific products based on the details of the action they took to enter a flow and their RFM group.

For example, if you have a post-purchase flow with splits based on RFM group, you can target Loyal or Champions with a product review request. Meanwhile with customers in the Recent group, you can target them with new products that are complementary to their purchase.

RFM groups combine purchase recency, frequency, and spending. Profiles with no purchases for the metric used in your RFM report do not have a Current RFM group value. Use purchase activity conditions when you need to target an exact number of orders, including no orders.

Additional examples of using RFM groups in flows include:

• Creating a split based on whether a person belongs to:
  • The Champions or Loyal group.
  • The Recent, Needs attention, Inactive, or At risk group.
• Creating a split based on a customer group’s recent browsing behaviors.
  • For example, those in Champions, Loyal, or Recent may get a regular browse abandonment message, while those in Needs attention, Inactive, or At risk receive a browse abandonment message with an additional discount.
• Create a flow for those in the Champions, Loyal, or Recent groups highlighting new products or launches.
• Encourage those in the Champions, Loyal, or Recent groups to leave reviews of their products.

Additional resources