Customer segmentation is more than a marketing tactic—it’s a strategic approach that drives revenue, improves customer experience, and enhances operational efficiency. However, many companies struggle with knowing which customers to prioritize and how to act on segmentation insights. This is where 180ops changes the game.
Not all customers contribute equally to revenue. A well-structured segmentation strategy enables companies to focus on high-value accounts, tailor messaging to different customer needs, and allocate resources efficiently. But without the right data, businesses often waste time on accounts that won’t move the needle.
According to McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect personalization–but it is impossible to do well without effective segmentation tailored to your business and customers.
Toni Keskinen, co-founder and CPO at 180ops, explains:
"Too often, companies think segmentation means just grouping customers by industry or company size. That’s not enough. You need a system that tells you exactly which customers to focus on, and more importantly, what actions to take. That’s what 180ops does—removes the guesswork from segmentation and turns it into a revenue-driving strategy."
One of the most used segmentation practices is founded on current value, Annual Revenue Per Account (ARPA).
This approach feels intuitively correct, which explains its widespread use. In this model, customer relationship resourcing is based on the idea of investing the most resources into customers delivering the highest revenue today.
While intuitive, this model focuses solely on past revenue and creates a blind spot that can prevent companies from identifying future growth opportunities. Relying on historical data alone can introduce a dangerous bias into management decisions. Financial reporting often reinforces this bias by only reflecting available past performance data, rather than forecasting potential growth.
Consider two customers that both generate €1M ARPA:
Even though both customers appear similar in revenue contribution, they require entirely different strategic approaches. Without visibility into growth potential, companies risk misallocating resources.
Many B2B companies default to segmentation based on company size—SMB, mid-market, enterprise—assuming that revenue brackets alone define customer behavior. But this approach is dangerously simplistic. Businesses within the same size category can have vastly different sales cycles, decision-making structures, and product needs.
For example:
While enterprise accounts bring in substantial revenue, they are often resource-intensive, requiring extensive pre-sales work, custom implementations, and dedicated account teams. If these customers don’t have a high enough lifetime value (LTV) to offset these costs, they may ultimately be less profitable than smaller, more efficient accounts.
On the other hand, SMBs are easier to close but may have lower deal sizes, requiring a high-volume, low-touch sales model to make them viable. Companies that understand this dynamic can optimize their segmentation strategies to prioritize accounts that offer both high revenue potential and an efficient cost-to-serve ratio.
Traditional segmentation—firmographics, industry, and company size—only scratches the surface. The next evolution is predictive segmentation, which integrates real-time data and behavioral insights to forecast which accounts are most likely to expand, churn, or require additional support.
180ops takes segmentation a step further by providing actionable insights rather than just static categories. Most segmentation tools stop at categorization, leaving businesses uncertain about next steps. 180ops, in contrast, offers:
As a McKinsey report puts it:
AI coupled with company-specific data and context has enabled consumer insights at the most granular level…Winning B2B companies go beyond account-based marketing and disproportionately use hyper-personalization in their outreach.
According to McKinsey, organizations that leverage customer behavioral insights outperform peers by 85% in sales growth and more than 25% in gross margin.
However, segmentation alone isn’t enough—without actionable insights, businesses risk making assumptions rather than informed decisions. With 180ops, the segmentation problem is solved in the following ways:
Your business will reduce wasted sales efforts, knowing exactly which accounts to direct teams to. As a result, revenue efficiency increases, further boosted by assigning the correct tasks to sales and customer success. Finally, your business can scale with confidence knowing its decisions are data-driven, not based on outdated models.
"Sales should be acquiring new customers, not managing offering penetration in existing accounts—that's a customer success role. 180ops makes this clear by identifying which accounts need customer success intervention and which should be the focus for sales."
–Toni Keskinen, 180ops
Customer segmentation isn’t just about organizing data—it’s about making smarter business decisions. 180ops removes the uncertainty and provides a clear, actionable approach to segmentation. By focusing on the right customers with the right message at the right time, businesses can optimize revenue, enhance engagement, and build long-term loyalty.