Create Segments

Segments are built using the segment builder.

About this task

There are many different options you can choose to build the segment you want. If you need specific information about all of the options available for segments, see the Segment Builder topics.

Warning: The length of time we will keep contact-level sent, opened, clicked, and/or conversion rate metrics are subject to your account's data retention policy at the time the segment was created. If your data retention period changes after you created a segment, the segment will still use the data retention policy that was in place at the time the segment was built. You should consider data retention when building segments using these metrics as operators for your segment. For more information on the data retention policy, see Data Retention Policy.

To begin creating segments:

Procedure

Go to Contacts > Segments.
Click Create New Segment.
Add Criteria to your segment.

Criteria are the details that define which contacts appear on a segment.
1. Click the button for one of the criteria categories.
2. Click on the criteria you want to define.
3. Use the menus and boxes to define your criteria.
There are several dozen types of criteria and each criteria can be defined in multiple ways. For example, you could click Contacts, select Creation Date, and define a date that is after, or before, or in between, etc. a certain length of time. Each criteria option is documented in each of the following sections:
The criteria you just added is part of a rule.
Optional: Add additional criteria to this rule by clicking the Add Criteria button.

By default, multiple criteria within the same rule are treated as OR statements. This means that a contact only has to meet one of the criteria defined within the same rule.
Optional: To add a new rule to the segment, click Add Rule.

Rules are used to group together individual criterion. By default, when a segment has multiple rules they are treated as AND statements. This means that a contact must match as least one of the criteria in each rule in order to be added to the segment.

If you chose to add a rule, define the criteria for that rule:
1. Click the button for one of the criteria categories.
2. Click on the criteria you want to define.
3. Use the menus and boxes to define your criteria.
Optional: To see how many contacts match the segment's criteria, click the Calculate button.
Continue to add rules and/or criteria until you are happy with your segment, then click Save Changes or Save & Close.

What to do next

After you have created and used segments for a while, you can evaluate whether some of them can be archived. This is a best practice if you have segments that are only used one time or if you have more than 100 segments and want to declutter your view. See the documentation for archiving segments for more information.