Feature: Affinity group

note

For affinity groups to work on a site, the affinity and affinity group features must be enabled for the site. To enable the features, if they're not already enabled, contact Frosmo support.

An affinity group is a group of visitors who share the same affinity. The visitors in an affinity group all share an interest in a specific kind of product, content, or other item, as defined by an item attribute value. For example, visitors who have the "Brand: Kosch" affinity (meaning they have shown interest in items by Kosch) all belong to the "Brand: Kosch" affinity group. Similarly, visitors who have the "Category: Women's Fashion/Shoes" affinity (meaning they have shown interest in women's shoes) all belong to the "Category: Women's Fashion/Shoes" affinity group.

An affinity group is essentially a visitor segment based on a shared affinity. As with segments, the Frosmo Platform automatically places visitors in affinity groups. Unlike segments, however, the platform creates affinity groups automatically for each site. You cannot create, edit, or remove affinity groups, but you can assign modifications to them and view statistics about them.

Figure: Affinity groups in the Frosmo Platform

Why use affinity groups?

Using affinity groups has several advantages:

• Deliver dedicated content and experiences to visitors who have one or more affinities in common. You can assign a modification to one or more affinity groups, allowing you to target the modification only to visitors in those groups.

• Define highly refined target audiences for modifications by using affinity groups together with regular segments.

• Get started with audience analysis for your site, discover promising new visitor segments for targeted content, and gain a deeper insight into what interests your visitors by studying the affinity group statistics for your site. The platform continuously generates the statistics without any work required on your part. The data is simply there waiting for you to explore and use it.

• Enrich customer data in your other platforms and systems by importing affinity group data from the Frosmo Platform.

Affinity groups vs. segments

Affinity groups and segments are complementary features. You can assign the same modification to both affinity groups and segments. However, affinity groups differ from segments in a few key ways, as described in the following table.

Affinity groups vs. segments

Affinity group	Segment
Created automatically by the platform.	Created manually by you.
You cannot edit any settings.	You can freely edit all settings.
Removed automatically by the platform.	Removed manually by you.
Target modifications to visitors who share an affinity.	Target modifications to visitors based on a robust set of segmentation rules and combinations.
Generated independently by the platform.	Generated by the platform once you've created the segment.

How affinity groups work

The Frosmo Platform automatically manages affinity groups for a site. The platform:

• Creates and removes affinity groups as needed.

• Places visitors in and removes visitors from affinity groups based on each visitor's affinities.

You do not need to configure affinity groups in any way.

Creating and removing affinity groups

The platform automatically updates the set of affinity groups for a site once per day. The process flows as follows:

1. The platform goes through all visitor affinity profiles for the site and generates a list of the top affinities: the most common affinities with the highest affinity scores.

2. The platform creates an affinity group for each of the top affinities. If an affinity already has an affinity group created, the platform does not create a new group.

3. The platform removes affinity groups whose affinity has not made it to the top for a certain number of days. If an affinity group has one or more modifications assigned to it, meaning the group is in use, the platform does not remove the group.

note

The platform does not create an affinity group for every single affinity tracked for visitors. The platform creates affinity groups only for affinities that it ranks as the current top affinities.

Example

On a retail site with 10 000 daily visitors, the Kosch brand of products proves extremely popular, while the Hipsteria brand struggles to gain traction. 3 000 visitors gain the "Brand: Kosch" affinity, and the average affinity score is relatively high. By comparison, 200 visitors gain the "Brand: Hipsteria" affinity, and the average affinity score is relatively low. "Brand: Kosch" makes it to a top affinity, while "Brand: Hipsteria" does not. As a result, the platform creates the "Brand: Kosch" affinity group, but not the "Brand: Hipsteria" affinity group.

Should the "Brand: Hipsteria" affinity grow more popular in the future and the "Brand: Kosch" affinity wane, the platform may well end up creating the "Brand: Hipsteria" affinity group and, assuming it was not used to target modifications, removing the "Brand: Kosch" affinity group.

Placing visitors in and removing visitors from affinity groups

The platform automatically keeps a record of the affinity groups to which an individual visitor belongs on a site. The record contains a list of the IDs of the affinity groups to which the visitor currently belongs. The platform stores the record in the Frosmo back end.

The platform updates a visitor's affinity groups every time the visitor's affinity profile gets updated as part of affinity tracking. The process flows as follows:

1. On a site, the visitor either starts a new browser session or performs an action that indicates affinity. This triggers a corresponding event, such a visit event or a product view event.

2. Frosmo Core sends the event data to the Frosmo back end.

3. The platform updates the visitor's affinity profile. If the visitor does not yet have an affinity profile, the platform creates a new profile for them.

4. The platform updates the visitor's affinity groups based on their updated affinity profile:

   • If the visitor has an affinity that matches an affinity group created for the site, and if the visitor is not already in the group, the platform places the visitor in the group. (The platform adds the affinity group ID to the visitor's affinity group record.)

   • If the visitor is in an affinity group that no longer exists on the site, the platform removes the visitor from the group. (The platform removes the affinity group ID from the visitor's affinity group record.)

   • If the visitor has an affinity whose score is below the minimum affinity score required for affinity group membership, the platform removes the visitor from the corresponding group. (The platform removes the affinity group ID from the visitor's affinity group record.) Unless a visitor actively maintains an affinity, their score for the affinity will automatically decrease over time and eventually fall under the minimum score, at which point the platform removes them from the affinity group.

Figure: Keeping a record of a visitor's affinity groups

You can view your own affinity groups in the Visitor section of Frosmo Preview.

Figure: A visitor's current affinity groups listed in Frosmo Preview

You can retrieve any visitor's affinity groups from the Frosmo back end with the Visitor API.

Where to go next

• Learn how to target modifications to affinity groups.

• Learn how to view affinity group statistics.

• If you're a developer, learn how to fetch a visitor's current affinity groups.