How to Use Adobe Analytics to Narrow in on Your Market Segment: Identifying Purchasers

The idea behind using any platform to analyze data is to help drive better decision making. Adobe Analytics offers so many different tools to accomplish this goal. Marketing, in particular, is always trying to find ways to identify and target certain market segments. Adobe Analytics provides a custom segment to do exactly that.

Here’s a custom segment almost anyone can use in Adobe Analytics: Who’s buying stuff?

It's super-valuable in all kinds of reporting to be able to analyze this market segment of visitors. After all, these are your success stories, and the easier it is to highlight them in tables, the more you can harvest and exploit data that facilitates more sales.

Let’s conceptualize the objective before you hit Segment Builder: You want to identify visitors for whom an order exists. With that criteria clearly in focus, you can define a custom segment to look at data for purchasers by following these steps:

1. If the Segments component isn’t displayed in the left rail, click Components in the left rail selector.
   Displaying components in Adobe Analytics.
2. Launch Adobe Analytics Segment Builder by clicking the Create Segment (+) icon.
   Launching Segment Builder.

   The Segment Builder panel opens.

3. Enter a title, a description, and tags for this custom segment.
   Titling, describing, and tagging a custom segment.

   The title is required. The description will remind you and clue in colleagues as to what this custom segment does. Tags will make it easier for you and your colleagues to find this segment later.

4. In the Definition section of the Adobe Analytics Segment Builder, choose Visitor from the Show drop-down list.
   Selecting Visitor from the Show options in Segment Builder.

   You select this container type because you're focusing on showing data for visitors who make purchases.

5. Search for the orders metric using the Search Components box in the left rail.
   Locating the orders metric.
6. Drag orders into the Segment drop zone.
   Using the orders metric to define a custom segment.
7. Choose Exists from the local operator drop-down list.
   Defining Exists as the criteria for segmenting purchasing visitors.
8. With the custom segment defined and titled in Adobe Analytics, click Save.

   You can now apply this segment to any panel, any table, and most visualizations. Below, the custom segment has been applied to a table of various metrics measuring search engine sources.

   Applying the custom segment.
9. To quickly view the properties of the custom segment, click the i icon.

   The properties appear in the top half of the dialog that opens. If you need to edit the custom segment, click the pencil icon.

   Viewing the properties of the custom Purchasers segment.