Create a segment

A segment is a saved filter that gathers the contacts who match your conditions. Membership updates on its own as contact details and activity change, so you never add contacts to a segment by hand.

If you would rather not write the rule yourself, start from a ready segment.

Build the segment

1. Click New segment on the Segments page

   An empty rule box opens. Click the pencil at the top and enter a name in Segment name.

2. Click Pick a field

   The field list opens. Type a few letters in Search fields, or browse the groups: Contact, Lists and tags, Engagement, Email campaigns, Automations and Website. Custom fields and Preferences appear once you have defined fields of that kind.

3. Choose the condition and the value

   Each row has three boxes: field, condition and value. The conditions depend on the field type. Text offers contains, numbers offer at least and dates offer in the last … days. The value box shows a dashed outline until you pick a field.

4. Click Add filter

   A new row opens. And between the rows means every condition must match. Or means any one of them can. If one part of the rule needs And and another needs Or, click Add filter group.

5. Check the live preview and click Save

   Live preview on the right shows how many contacts match, their share of your active contacts and a few examples. Click View all matching contacts for the full list.

The This segment matches sentence at the top sums up your rule in plain words. A segment can hold up to 50 rules.

Fields worth knowing

• Temperature looks at the latest emails a contact received: Hot, Cooling, Cold or New. Engagement stars rate overall interest out of 5. See Read engagement stars and status.
• Clicked leaves out clicks made by security scanners. Those have their own field, Scanner clicks.
• Fields in the Unsubscribes and blocks group hold the date something happened to a contact: Unsubscribe date, Spam complaint date, Hard bounce date, Soft bounce date and Block date. Use in the last 30 days for a recent group, or on or after and before together for a date range. Date updated is the last change to the contact record, not the date they unsubscribed.
• Last device, Last email client and Last location do not use a date range. They use the latest value seen in a genuine open or click.
• Fields in the Preferences group take Yes, No or Not set. The Segment field uses membership of another saved segment as a condition.
• Email campaign and Automation select by one specific email or flow. See Segment by automation or email campaign.
• Visited a page in the Website group counts visits to the site where your site code is installed. You choose how to match the page address, the period and the minimum number of visits. One browsing session counts as one visit, and only visits already matched to a contact count.
• Fields in the Orders group work once order data reaches your account. Until then the group stays locked.

Use the segment

To send to a segment, choose Segments on the Audience step of a campaign and tick the segment in the list.

On the Segments page, the row menu holds Edit, Rename, Duplicate, Export and Delete. When you open a saved segment, Create list in the Segment actions menu makes a fixed copy of the contacts who match at that moment. That list does not update afterwards.

The Contacts column shows the count from the moment you opened the page. To update it while the page is open, hover over the row and click the refresh icon that appears.