Creating Segments

Segments are collections of subscribers that are grouped based on rules that you define. For example, if you have custom field data like your subscriber’s city, you can create segments containing all subscribers in one or more cities.

To create a segment within your subscriber list, click on Segments.

Let’s set up a segment for all subscribers that show San Francisco as their City.

You’ll select the City custom field, set the segment rule to matches exactly, and select San Francisco. Now you have a segment of subscribers whose city is San Francisco.

While the segment we just made is based on a specific text value, there are many other ways to group subscribers. You can create and use segments in the following ways:

• A custom field value exists, or doesn’t exist. Like an RSVP. That custom field would be either RSVP is Yes or RSVP is No.
• A numeric value. For example, where a subscriber’s Order Total is 3 or greater.
• Email addresses. Segment all email addresses from a specific email domain, like gmail.com.
• The date subscribed. You could use this segment to send a personal message to all new signups in the previous week.
• Campaign behavior. Segment based on how subscribers interacted with a campaign, like those who opened or didn’t open an email.

Note that you can also exclude segments from your campaign, sending to everyone except the subscribers in the segment. So you can use segments to either include or exclude specific subscribers.

Using segments to target subscribers is one of the most powerful techniques to drive engagement. Building off a single list will also prevent errors and potentially save money by reducing duplicate subscribers in your Campaign Monitor account.