Overview
Real-time segment evaluation (RTSE) allows you to engage your audience based on their demographics, behavior, and interests the moment they perform a key action. It enhances your ability to send timely, relevant campaigns and provide recommendations based on user behavior as it happens.
This contrasts with periodic segments, which refresh on a set schedule (for example, every few hours). While periodic segments are powerful for broad audience analysis, RTSE is designed for immediate, action-based marketing.
How Real-Time Segment Evaluation Works
Understanding the mechanism of RTSE helps clarify its power. The process is designed to be instantaneous:
- User action: A user performs a trigger event on your app or website (for example, adds an item to their cart, views a specific product, or completes a sign-up).
- Real-time evaluation: MoEngage immediately checks if this user qualifies for your campaign's audience criteria based on this new action and their recent behavior.
- Campaign trigger: If the user qualifies, the campaign is triggered instantly.
This ensures your message is delivered at the moment of highest relevance, rather than hours after the user's action when the opportunity may have passed.
Advantages of RTSE
- Improved retention rate: Real-time segmentation allows businesses to target specific groups of customers based on their behavior, preferences, or past interactions. This personalized approach, combined with real-time segmentation, can lead to higher engagement and user retention.
- Timeliness: Real-time segmentation enables businesses to send targeted campaigns at the right moment, such as when a user is browsing a website, adding items to their cart, or reaching a milestone. This timeliness can increase the chances of capturing the user's attention and prompting them to take action.
- Relevance: By segmenting users in real-time, businesses can ensure that the campaigns they send are relevant to the individual's current interests or needs. This relevance can enhance the user experience and make the campaign more likely to resonate with the recipient.
- Improved conversion rate: Real-time segmentation allows businesses to target users with highly relevant and timely offers, increasing the likelihood of conversions. By reaching users at critical moments in their customer journey, businesses can boost conversion rates and drive revenue growth.
Channels That Support RTSE
- Push
- SMS
- Flows
- On-site Messaging
- In-app Messaging
- Web Personalization
Use Cases
| Industry | Use Case | Description |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | Abandoned cart recovery | RTSE allows you to identify users who have added items to their cart but haven't completed the purchase. You can send a personalized reminder or offer to nudge them towards checkout. |
| Flash sale notifications | RTSE can target users who have shown interest in such products that are a part of a limited-time sale. It allows you to send them instant push notifications or emails as the sale begins. | |
| Travel and hospitality | Last-minute booking deals | RTSE can identify users searching for specific destinations and offer them special last-minute booking deals to boost occupancy rates. |
| Booking milestone | If a traveler frequently books trips and reaches a certain milestone (for example, the fifth booking), you can run a "thank you" campaign with RTSE, offering a discount or upgrade on their next booking. | |
| Retail and quick commerce | In-store purchase follow-up | When a user makes a significant in-store purchase (tracked through a loyalty program), you can trigger an event with RTSE to send a care guide, related accessories promotion, or a satisfaction survey. |
| Order milestone | A user who has ordered a certain number of times (for example, the tenth order) is added to a real-time segment, triggering a campaign to thank them with a discount or free item on their next order. | |
| Entertainment | Content recommendation | OTT platforms could segment viewers based on real-time viewing habits to recommend new episodes or movies instantly. |
| Banking and financial services | Large transaction alert | Users who make transactions above a certain threshold will be segmented in real time and receive an email-triggered campaign to confirm the transaction. |
Create a Campaign with RTSE
You can leverage RTSE in event-triggered campaigns to target customers with personalized messages based on their actions in real time. For example, if a user updates your application to the latest version, you can instantly communicate the new features and capabilities.
Perform the following steps:
- On the left navigation of your MoEngage dashboard, click + Create new > Campaign.
- Select any of the RTSE-supported channels and choose an Event triggered delivery type. For more information, refer to creating an Event-Triggered Campaign.
- In the IF user performs section, select the trigger event, such as App update. This is the primary action that will start the evaluation.
- In the THEN trigger the message section, select Immediately to send the campaign within seconds of the user's action.
- In the Select audience section, select Filter users by and add your segmentation criteria under the User property or User behavior tabs.
| info |
Confirmation If the segmentation criteria you've chosen are supported by RTSE, you will see a confirmation message directly in the UI: "Campaign segments will be evaluated in real-time on the latest data." If this message does not appear, your campaign will use periodic segmentation, which refreshes on a regular schedule. |
FAQs
While creating your campaign, if the segmentation filters are eligible for real-time evaluation, you will see the following message on the UI: "Campaign segments will be evaluated in real-time based on the latest data."
RTSE is designed to react to user actions as they happen. Its core value comes from its ability to evaluate a user's eligibility for a segment at the precise moment they perform a key event (the "trigger"). This makes it a perfect fit for event-triggered campaigns, where timeliness and context are critical for success. For other campaign types that target broader audiences based on historical data rather than immediate actions, periodic segmentation is more suitable.
When you click Show count, you see a snapshot of how many users meet your criteria at that moment. However, the true power of RTSE is that the evaluation happens live for each user who performs the trigger event. This means a user who doesn't qualify now might qualify in an hour after taking an action, and they will then enter the campaign. The count is a helpful estimate, but the actual audience is determined in real time.
| info |
Information The sample users list might show entries with duplicate contact information (for example, the same email ID). MoEngage automatically de-duplicates when sending the campaign, ensuring each unique user receives the message only once. |