Legacy: Create a segment

A segment is a section of your contact database that you have pre-selected based on certain criteria. You can use segments to send targeted messages that only concern a part of your audience, and, most importantly, do so quickly and easily. 

This article will take you through the steps of creating a segment and the different possibilities to build a segment - your target group.

Create a segment 

1. Go to the Contacts > Segments section of your account. 

   

2. Here you will be able to see all the segments you have created so far. Next, click on Create segment.

   

3. When your segmentation panel expands, click on Advanced Settings in order to be able to access all possible segmentation settings.

4. Now, you have everything you need to manage the rules for your new segment.

   • Name your list at the top.
   • (Optional) Link a specific opt-in form. Any time contacts from this list click on an update link, they will go to the special opt-in form/update form tailored to them to confirm their subscriptions and preferences. 
   • (Optional) Select the unsubscription level. When a user unsubscribes, you may choose if you blacklist their email from the segment or from the database. The latter is recommended. (In General Settings you can specify to put unsubscribers in the central blacklist - that way they will be removed from your database. As long as the email address is on the blacklist, the email address cannot be created again or be imported in the database.)
   • (Optional) Custom headers. You can reorder the details of your contact that you want to see first. The information in your database stays the same, but when you are reviewing your segment, you will have better visibility over the included contacts.  
   • (Optional) Preferences. You can pre-assign a preference list for the contacts in your new segment. The preference(s) will be applied to the contacts that already belong to that segment and to any contact that ends up in that segment in the future. 
   • You need to have at least one trigger (criterion), based on which to create a segment. Triggers (criteria) are a little tricky to navigate, so we made sure we add several examples of how many triggers (criteria) you can have and how to combine them. See below.

Build a segment 

Below you will find 5 examples that demonstrate the various ways you can build your segments/target groups. All you need to do is define the rules that make a contact end up in a segment - what rules, how many rules, and the relationship between the rules. 

1. One rule example

Let's say you want to create a segment to easily reach your English speaking audience only:

1. Give your segment a name.
2. Create the rule: 
   1. For the Trigger, make sure Contact field is selected
   2. For the Field, make sure Language is selected
   3. For the Function, make sure Equals (Exact) is selected
   4. For the Value, make sure English is selected
3. Click on Save to finish.

2. Two rules example - AND

Let's say you want to create a segment to easily reach your English speaking audience with Interest Accessories:

1. Give your segment a name.
2. Create your first rule:
   1. For the Trigger, make sure Contact field is selected
   2. For the Field, make sure Language is selected
   3. For the Function, make sure Equals (Exact) is selected
   4. For the Value, make sure English is selected
3. Click on the plus sign to introduce the second rule.
4. Make sure the operator AND is selected as a relationship between your rules.
5. Create your second rule:
   1. For the Trigger, make sure Interest labels field is selected
   2. For the Field, make sure Accessories is selected (the interest must be created already)
   3. For the Function, make sure Is member of is selected
   4. For the Value, you do not need to enter anything in this case
6. Click on Save to finish.

3. Two rules example - OR

Let's say you want to create a segment to send messages in English. You have not discovered a translator for German yet, so you want to send the German speakers messages in English, too. Flexmail automatically will go through your database anyone who is an English OR a German speaker:

1. Give your segment a name.
2. Create your first rule:
   1. For the Trigger, make sure Contact field is selected
   2. For the Field, make sure Language is selected
   3. For the Function, make sure Equals (Exact) is selected
   4. For the Value, make sure English is selected
3. Click on the plus sign to introduce the second rule.
4. Make sure the operator OR is selected as a relationship between your rules.
5. Create your second rule:
   1. For the Trigger, make sure Contact field is selected
   2. For the Field, make sure Language is selected
   3. For the Function, make sure Equals (Exact) is selected
   4. For the Value, make sure German is selected
6. Click on Save to finish.

4. Three rules example - AND and OR 

Let's say you want to send a promotional campaign about the new fashion collection that you sell. The campaign is in English and is interesting for your contacts that are interested in shoes or clothing. 

1. Give your segment a name.
2. Create your first rule:
   1. For the Trigger, make sure Contact field is selected
   2. For the Field, make sure Language is selected
   3. For the Function, make sure Equals (Exact) is selected
   4. For the Value, make sure English is selected
3. Click on the plus sign to introduce the second rule.
4. Make sure the operator AND is selected as a relationship between your rules.
5. Create your second rule:
   1. For the Trigger, make sure Interest labels field is selected
   2. For the Field, make sure Shoes is selected (the interest must be created already)
   3. For the Function, make sure Is member of is selected
   4. For the Value, you do not need to enter anything in this case
6. Click on the plus sign to introduce the third rule.
7. Make sure the operator OR is selected as a relationship between your rules.
8. Create your second rule:
   1. For the Trigger, make sure Interest labels field is selected
   2. For the Field, make sure Clothing is selected
   3. For the Function, make sure Is member of is selected
   4. For the Value, you do not need to enter anything in this case
9. Before you finish, click on the link icon between the two interest labels rules - between your second and your third rule. You do that because you need to place parenthesis so that those rules will be calculated first. If you do not put parentheses, you will add in your segment all English speakers, who are interested in shoes, and then all contacts, interested in clothing, regardless of the language they speak.
10. Click on Save to finish.

5. Multi-level segmentation example (making a subsegment) 

You can create new segments within a segment. 

1. Create your first segment. In this case, we use the example in step 1 and created a segment for English speakers.
2. After you have successfully created your segment, you will see a message Segmentation completed, and the segment will show up in your list. 
3. You can now further segment it if you click on the gear icon next to your first segment and click on Create segment to create the subsegment.
   
   
   Attention
   If you want contacts to end up in the subsegment, you must ensure that the contact certainly meets the criteria of the original segment.

   

4. You can continue subsegments using our examples or your own criteria. This time, you don't need to filter for language, because you already filtered for it in step 1. 

Video

Still not entirely clear how to build a segment? In this video, we’ll explain it to you based on the Interest labels and Preferences triggers.

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