Add contacts to your new segments after the Contact Converter
You have gone through the steps of the Contact Converter and converted your contacts to the new contact management. So your old lists have been converted to segments now.
So how do you now add contacts to your new segments?
What happened during the Contact Converter?
Before you start adding contacts to your new segments, it is important to know exactly what happened during the process of the Contact Converter and how your segments were created.
The Contact Converter goes through all your lists and asks you to set a name, fallback language and source for each list. This language and source are used when a contact from that list, now segment, does not have its own language or source.
After going through all the lists, the existing lists are converted to segments, based on a source. This source has as name the name of your old list preceded by Segment:
- Name old list: List A
- Source for the new segment: Segment: List A
Your new segment is then automatically set up by the Contact Converter:
This way we can ensure that all contacts that were in your old list are also in the new segment.
Adding contacts to your new segments
Now that you know that your old lists have been converted to segments (based on a source) you can add new contacts to them. You can do this in 2 different ways:
1. Give contacts you add the same source
When importing contacts (or adding a single contact), you can give them the source of the segment where these contacts should end up.
In the last step of the import, you can add the desired source to your contacts. You will be asked to add a fallback language and source to the contacts. At source you can then choose the source name Segment: name of the old list.
This applies to all your segments. For contacts to end up in your segment, they have to meet the specific conditions of your segment. So a segment is really just a filter.
2. Editing your segmentation such that contacts that meet a certain condition are added to that segment
Suppose you had a list in which all new registrations ended up. In the new contact management, all new contacts end up in your general database and therefore no longer in the list.
You can then edit your segment by adding an extra trigger to it. You edit your segment so that when contacts have registered via a certain opt-in form they also end up in this segment. Make sure you choose the OR operator. A contact will end up in this segment if he has the right source or if he, in this case, signed up through the opt-in form.
Your segmentation then looks like this:
If you work with preferences or custom fields, you can also choose to select the desired preference or custom field as a trigger instead of an opt-in form.
Are you stuck setting up your segments or don't know how to use your new ones? Then read our white paper on segmentation for email marketing. This step-by-step guide will definitely get you started. For each step, you'll find behind-the-scenes examples of our segmentation strategy.