The six RFM segments

In short

Every scored member sits in exactly one of these six segments. Each one points to a different kind of action — or, just as importantly, to not sending a message at all.

Segment	Who they are	Typical action
Champions	Visit often, spend well, came in recently	Reward — keep them feeling seen
Loyal	Visit often, decent spend, recent	Engage — invite to launches, ask for feedback
Promising	Visit recently but not yet often	Nudge into the second or third visit
At Risk	Used to visit, falling off now	Win back — single strong message
Lost	Long since last visit	One reactivation try, then leave alone
New	Too recent or too little activity to score	Onboard — make the first weeks land

These segments are relative to your own customer base, not absolute. A Champion at a coffee chain looks different from a Champion at a steakhouse. The platform handles the comparison; you read the segment.

Champions

Who they are. Members who visit recently, visit often, and spend at the high end of your base. The smallest segment by count, the largest by revenue contribution.

What to do.

• Send a personalised birthday gift or anniversary asset.
• Invite them to launches, tastings, soft opens.
• Ask for reviews and referrals — they're the members most likely to oblige.
• Keep the cadence light. They will come back anyway; the point is recognition, not persuasion.

What not to do.

• Don't blanket them with aggressive discounts. A Champion who learns they get 20% off every month becomes a trained discount-hunter, not a champion.
• Don't ignore them because "they're fine." Champions move into At Risk faster than you expect — the snapshot-not-identity rule applies to them most of all.

Loyal

Who they are. Members who visit often and recently, with solid (but not top-tier) spend. The middle of your engaged base.

What to do.

• Use them as the audience for new-product announcements and seasonal pushes.
• Run small surprise-and-delight assets — a free coffee, a complimentary side — without prompting.
• Invite feedback. Loyals will tell you the truth about a menu change before Champions do.

What not to do.

• Don't treat them like Champions and over-spend on rewards.
• Don't treat them like At Risk and panic-message them — they're fine.

Promising

Who they are. Members who visited recently but haven't yet visited often. Some are on the path to Loyal; some will drop off after the second visit.

What to do.

• Send a "second visit" nudge — a small incentive timed two to four weeks after their first visit.
• Make the path to a punch-card reward visible: "two more visits to your free X".
• Pair the offer with a Wallet Pass so it rides with them.

What not to do.

• Don't pile on offers. If the first nudge doesn't land, a second one in the same month rarely does either.

At Risk

Who they are. Members who used to visit regularly and have stopped. Their last visit is far enough back that the daily refresh flagged them, but recent enough that they probably haven't fully churned.

This is the single most valuable RFM segment to act on. Catching an At Risk member before they slide into Lost is the highest-return campaign a loyalty program runs.

What to do.

• Send one strong win-back message — SMS plus an asset they can redeem.
• Make the offer time-bounded (a week, two at most). Urgency matters.
• Re-check the segment two to four weeks later. Did they move back to Loyal? That's your success metric.

What not to do.

• Don't run At Risk as a drip. One strong message beats four soft ones.
• Don't measure success by sends or opens — measure by segment movement. If At Risk members aren't moving back into Loyal, the offer wasn't strong enough.

Lost

Who they are. Members whose last visit is well past your lookback threshold. Most of them are gone for reasons that have nothing to do with you — moved, changed jobs, changed habits.

What to do.

• Run one annual reactivation push with your strongest one-time offer.
• Pair it with a survey link so the message earns its keep even if they don't return.

What not to do.

• Don't keep messaging Lost members on repeat. A drip to people who left a year ago is annoying, hurts deliverability, and trains them to ignore you the next time.
• Don't include Lost in routine sends. Filter them out, not in.

New

Who they are. Members who joined too recently — or have too little activity — to be scored on the full R/F/M dimensions. The platform holds them in New until they have enough history.

What to do.

• Treat the first weeks as the onboarding window. Welcome, explain the program, give them a reason to come back a second time.
• Send the welcome flow once, and only once.
• Watch the transition. A New member who moves into Promising or Loyal is a win; one who moves into Lost without ever passing through Promising tells you the onboarding didn't work.

What not to do.

• Don't re-fire the same Welcome campaign to the same person — once they're scored, the campaign should no longer match them.

What about "Big Spenders"?

A seventh segment — Big Spenders — singles out members who spend at the top of your base but don't visit very often. This is mostly useful for fine-dining and event-driven venues, where a customer who comes twice a year and spends €400 each time is genuinely different from a customer who comes every week and spends €15.

For most chains this distinction doesn't add value — those members already land in Champions or Loyal. If Big Spenders is enabled for your brand, you'll see it alongside the six above; treat it as a Champion in spend terms, but design the cadence around their natural visit rhythm (occasions, not weeks).

How segments update

Segments are recomputed once a day, overnight. A member who was At Risk yesterday and visited last night will show as Loyal (or Champion) by morning. There is no manual "move this member to another segment" action — the segment reflects what the member actually did, and re-classification follows from new activity.

For the full mechanics — the lookback window, the spending measure, the template that maps the underlying scores to these segment names — see Set up RFM .

Next steps

• Want to message a segment? See the Smart Campaigns playbooks for ready-to-use templates.
• Want to see segment distribution at a glance? Open the Dashboard.
• Want to filter the Customer list by segment? See Filter members.