A lot of marketing relies on sending relevant content to your contacts. To simplify the process of finding the right contacts for a campaign, we have two types of grouping for managing contacts: lists and segments.
Lists
Lists are static collections of contacts. Contacts are added or removed from lists based on actions by you, or by the contacts themselves; lists can be exposed to your contacts by using signup forms and preference centres.
Read more in the Email lists section of our Help Centre.
Segments
Segments are dynamic collections of contacts that meet certain criteria defined by you. Some simple segments might be:
All contacts under the age of 25
All contacts living in London
All contacts that have never opened a campaign
Or segments can be more complicated. For example:
All contacts between the ages of 16 and 25, living in London, who have received at least one campaign in the last six months, haven't opened any email campaigns in the last six months, aren't in the list named Gap year, and haven't received any re‑engagement campaigns.
The segment builder is extremely flexible. This means the more detailed the data that you capture for your contacts is, the more targeted your segment criteria can be.
Create a new segment
1. Create and name your segment
Go to Audience > Segments, and select NEW SEGMENT.
Choose blank template to build your segment from scratch, or choose one of our pre-built templates which works for your purposes.
For Segment name, enter a name.
Expand the Segment location drop-down menu and select a folder location.
If you don’t want to specify a folder, then by default newly created segments are placed in the top-level Segments folder.
Select CONTINUE.
2. Set the rules for your segment
Segments consist of one or more rules. By default, a segment starts by including all of your subscribed contacts (the contacts found in your account’s Contacts master list).
To start defining your rules, drag blocks from the left side of the segment builder into the Include or Exclude drop zones. For example, drag a Data fields block into the Include drop zone.
3. Configure each rule
After selecting a rule, you must set up the configuration. To do this:
Select the rule – in this example, select [click to select a datafield].
From the rule options, select the relevant contact data field (or campaign, or list, depending on the rule type).
Based on the type of contact data field selected, there are additional options at the bottom of the form to configure your rule.
In this example, because we selected the Mobile number contact data field in order to find all contacts we have a phone number for, we want the option to target contacts where this field Is not empty.When complete, select OK.
If you want to move the rule, select the rule block title and drag it to another position in the Include or Exclude drop zones.
Read more in Segmentation rules.
4. Group rules together (AND/OR)
As you add rules to your segment, they build up. For example, when you add rules such as:
Data field GENDER must be equal to Female
Have not opened any campaign
By default, only contacts that satisfy both conditions are found in the segment because the grouping is set to AND.
Female contacts that have opened campaigns are not in the segment, as well as male contacts that haven't opened any campaign. If you want your segment to include contacts that match any (but not necessarily all) of the rules, then select OR.
By dragging in new AND or OR groups from the left-hand menu, you can mix them to form complex segments. For example, by mixing rules and groups you can build a segment that finds all contacts who:
have both made a purchase within the last 30 days AND visited your website at least three times
ANDhave EITHER been sent a specific campaign OR opened any campaign they were sent in the last 30 days.
That segment looks like this:
If you want your segment to contain both And rules and Or rules, you can use multiple groups.
5. Add specific exclusions
At the bottom of the segment builder, there is a second drop zone to define contacts that should be specifically excluded from the query.
The exclusion rule works after the inclusion rule has run, meaning it only applies its rules to any contacts that first made it through the include rules.
To create exclusion rules, simply drag blocks from the left-hand menu and build your rules in the same way as above.
6. View your contacts
Once you build your segment, you can preview the number of contacts it contains by selecting GENERATE SEGMENT above the segment builder canvas.
The segment count is then displayed.
You can then select VIEW to see a list of the contacts in the segment.
Work with segments
There are many things you can do with segments once you create them, besides sending to them.
Refresh segments
All segments need to be refreshed in order to show the most up-to-the-minute contact count. This can be done manually, either from the segment builder screen or by going to Audience > Segments and selecting the Refresh icon. You can also set segments to refresh automatically before a scheduled send.
Segments can:
be edited, copied, renamed and deleted
be moved to other folders
be checked against the Global suppression list
have the value of a data field bulk updated for their contacts
have a random sample taken to create a smaller list of the specified contacts
be removed - along with their contacts - from your account
be converted or copied into a list
Read more in the Email segments section of our Help Centre.
Geographical queries
You can create location-based segments using the segment builder based on location-specific contact data fields such as town, state, country, or postcode.
However, if you want to segment your contacts using a map view, then check out Create a list based on contacts' geographical location.