Niches: 26 Discrete and Complete Household Segments

As a follow-up to our SnapShot article last month, we thought we would drill down with a discussion of Niches. Niches is a proprietary segmentation tool that uses demographic elements such as age, income, presence of children, economic activity, and interests to group a household into one of 26 specific clusters. Niches are applied at the household level for superior targeting and customization of marketing messages. As they pertain to SnapShot, the Niches segments help to validate (or tell the story, if you will) the results of the profile we have built.

What's really interesting about Niches is that it provides insights using the spectrum of big data sources. Like a number of big marketers and recent successful political campaigns, Niches data sources include social media, search history and web purchases for each individual.

When compared to the more traditional select options for print lists (age, income, subscription, geographical, gender), it offers a much more nuanced segmentation of potential targets. Niches refines your strategy to help you get better response from your direct mail investment. With tools like Niches, list sourcing has added a new dimension of insights into your market.

Remember, to get the most from Niches and SnapShot in general, you should really approach it as a two-step process. First profile your most successful customers by having us upload and profile the individuals on it. Then, we can use this profile to source your new targeted prospect lists. You can use Niches as a stand-alone tool to acquire a list, to separately validate a profile used to build a list, or as a control to compare to your own uploaded list as part of the SnapShot process.

Below are all 26 Niches segments. They paint a fascinating portrait of how a combination of targeting data points can come together to paint a picture of a valuable household demographic.