Segmenting SaaS customers so your sequences don't read like spam
Segmentation by company size has become lazy. Three more useful axes to drive outbound, onboarding and expansion.
"SMB / Mid-Market / Enterprise" is sales segmentation, not product behavior segmentation. To drive sequences, you need a more operational view.
Axis 1 — Product maturity
- Discovery:< 5 sessions per user, base features only.
- Adoption: stable weekly usage, 2 to 3 key features activated.
- Expansion: cross-team usage, third-party integrations wired up.
A relevant sequence speaks to a product state, not an ARR band. An SMB in expansion looks more like an enterprise in adoption than an SMB in discovery.
Axis 2 — Recent intent signal
A customer whose usage is up 30% over the last 14 days is a candidate for an expansion sequence. One down 40% is a candidate for CSM intervention, not a generic marketing campaign.
Common anti-pattern
Sending an upsell campaign to an account that just opened a critical ticket. Exclusion rules on "open high-priority conversation" prevent massive CSAT damage.Axis 3 — Known engaged decision-maker
You either know the signer or you don't. This binary axis changes everything: if the decision-maker is in the workspace and engaged, run the expansion sequence directly. Otherwise the sequence goal shifts to introducing a new persona.
Compose axes, don't stack them
The temptation is to build a 3×3×2 = 18-segment matrix. Unmanageable. Identify the 4 to 6 cells holding 80% of the volume and focus sequences there. The rest falls into the generic fallback, shamelessly.