Understand your Insight data
Good email marketing relies on sending relevant content to your contacts. Your data is crucial to this and the richer it is, and the more intelligently you can use it, the more effective your marketing.
For instance, let’s say you’re a books, film and music retailer. If there are customers who are regularly high spenders on DVDs, then you are going to want to let them know about the latest DVD releases in stock. On the other hand, if there are customers who have only made a handful of book purchases some time ago, then you might want to re-engage these customers by letting them know about your upcoming multi-buy offer on books for the month. These are only simple examples. The tool of course allows you to segment based upon more complex requirements.
Create an Insight data segment
Insight data segments are created like normal segments, with a few differences owing to the differing nature of the data.
If you're new to data segmentation, check out our Segmentation section.
Go to Audience > Segments.
Select NEW SEGMENT to use the segmentation tool. Firstly, select a segment template. Then provide your new segment with a name and choose a location for it.
Select CONTINUE.
Expand the Data section in the left-side column, and drag an Insight data collection onto the canvas.
Select the Insight data collection you dragged in to open the segmentation editing window.
If you’re familiar with using segmentation already, this allows you to construct your segment rules in the usual way but with a few differences.
There are two possible parts of an Insight data rule – a contact filter and an optional record filter. The contact filter selects the contacts that meet the conditions of your rule. An additional record filter will then include the records connected to those contacts which meet the conditions of your Insight data rule.
The contact filter firstly requires you to choose whether your rule is a Number of, Total of, or Average of statement.
Information
For example, if you have the values 1, 3, and 6 in three records, then:
The number of (Number of) them is 3 because you have three values; think of it as how many.
The total of (Total of) the values is the sum of all values and is 10 because, for this example, 1+3+6=10; think of it as combined value. Total of takes all records for one field and adds up the values; it doesn't add up values across multiple fields for the same record.
The average of (Average of) the values is the average of all values and is 3.33... because, for this example, the average of 1, 3, and 6 (1+3+6)÷3=3.33....
Switching between the radio buttons changes the statement below it accordingly.
The following is a very simple example of creating an Insight data segment based on the data of just a few customers who have purchased DVDs. Let’s say you want to discover who has made more than one purchase from your online store but has not made a purchase in the last three months, so you can target them for re-engagement.
Create the rule by firstly setting your contact filter as The number of records is more than 1. This is done using the Number of radio button, followed by selecting is more than from the comparison operator selection box.
The full choice of comparison operators are:
is equal to
is not equal to
is more than
is less than
is greater than or equal to
is less than or equal to
starts with
is between
Next, you need to select 1 from the numerical stepper (selecting the up and down arrows increments the number accordingly).
Selecting Between as a comparison operator produces two numerical stepper boxes so you can choose the desired range.
After setting this, the next step is to create the appropriate rule in the record filters selector. Here you want to create your rule by selecting the record data field of PurchaseDate followed by selecting the comparison operators occurs, before, the date and then set the date back by 3 months. Selecting the data value box, in this instance, produces the date picker from which to select your date.
You can, of course, increase the number of record filters your segment uses should you wish to, thus constructing more complex queries.
You can delete any of these record filters at any point by selecting the red cross next to the filter on the far right.
You can also cancel a selected record filter and choose a different one by selecting the cross next to it in the Insight data field selector box.
For the purposes of this demonstration, your Insight data rule is now set. Select OK to exit the segmentation editing window and view your rule as a sentence.
Next, select Save in the top right which will automatically generate a count for you whilst saving. At this stage, your Insight data segment has been created and will now be listed with all of your other segments under ‘Segments’.
The count of your segment will be displayed.
Looking to create a segment of contacts who have no records for a given Insight data collection?
If you create a contact filter inclusion rule that states 'The number of records is less than 1', you won't get any contacts returned. This is because the query logic can't recognise contacts without any records in a collection. Instead, you'll need to create a contact filter exclusion rule that states 'The number of records is greater than or equal to 1' to be left with contacts without any records.
Select View to see the contacts in your Insight data segment.
To view a contact's Insight data, select a contact and then select the Insight data tab on the Single customer view.
If you have more than one Insight data collection, select the relevant one from the dropdown at the top of the page, and select a particular purchase from the list to open its details on the right.
A flexible and powerful tool
The insight segmentation editing tool gives you plenty of flexibility to make more complex, powerful rules to greatly increase the accuracy of your campaign targeting.
In the example above we've demonstrated looking at selecting Number of for the contact filter but you can also select Total of. The contact filter statement changes as shown below.
You can select the Insight data field of choice from the dropdown, and can also cancel the choice using the red cross next to it.
The choice of comparison operators are the same as Number of:
is equal to
is not equal to
is more than
is less than
is greater than or equal to
is less than or equal to
starts with
is between
When using record filters, the comparison operators change depending upon the Insight data field selected, and thus so does the value input box depending upon the data value type of the data field.
For instance, if you select an Insight data field that is a product ID and it has a value type that is text, then the comparison operators will become is equal to, is not equal to, starts with or is one of, with a value input box that must have text typed into it.
However, if the insight field is TotalIncVat which has a number value type, then the comparison operators will extend to a choice of is equal to, is not equal to, is more than, is less than, is greater than or equal to, is less than or equal to, is one of or is between, whilst the value input box will require a number entry, and so will feature the numerical stepper functionality.