On email, an irrelevant message is ignored. On WhatsApp it is an intrusion, and the response is a block. That makes relevance a deliverability concern rather than a refinement.
Why it matters more here
Blocks and reports feed quality rating, quality rating governs messaging limits, and limits govern reach. So an untargeted campaign does not merely underperform — it reduces your ability to send anything at all in future. Segmentation is the cheapest protection available.
Segment one: recent buyers
People who bought in the last 30–90 days. Highest engagement, lowest block rate, and the group most likely to reply. If you build only one segment, build this one and send it your best campaigns.
Segment two: engaged non-buyers
People who have messaged, clicked or replied but not purchased. They are interested and unconvinced — a genuinely different message from the buyer's. Treating them as buyers annoys them; treating them as dormant wastes them.
Segment three: dormant
No interaction for six months or more. The riskiest group: they consented long ago and may not remember you. Send rarely, send something obviously valuable, and lead by reminding them who you are. Expect a higher block rate and keep the batch small.
Segment four: by product or category interest
What someone bought or browsed predicts what they want next far better than demographics do. A customer who buys running shoes should not get the formal-wear campaign. This is usually the highest-return segmentation available and it requires no new data collection.
Segment five: by lifecycle stage
New contacts, active customers, lapsing, lapsed, and win-back. The same offer needs different framing at each stage, and a message that assumes familiarity will misfire on someone who joined last week.
Start with two segments, not fifteen
Recent buyers and everyone else will already outperform a single undifferentiated list. Elaborate segmentation schemes that nobody maintains decay into the same "all contacts" behaviour within a quarter.
Suppress as deliberately as you select
- Anyone who received a campaign in the last few days.
- Anyone with an open support conversation — a promotion mid-complaint lands badly.
- Anyone who has just bought the thing you are promoting.
- Anyone whose last campaign produced no engagement across several sends.
Frequency is part of targeting
A weekly cadence to your most engaged buyers can be welcome. The same cadence to a dormant segment is harassment. Set frequency caps per segment rather than globally, and treat a rising block rate in one segment as a signal to lower its cap rather than to rewrite the copy.