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A segment is a saved set of rules. Every contact that matches the rules is a member, and membership changes as your data changes. Nobody is added to a segment by hand. Use segments to:
  • Target a campaign, on their own or together with lists, narrow a campaign (“Newsletter, but only people who opened in the last 90 days”), or exclude people from it. See Send a campaign.
  • Filter the contacts table with one click on a segment chip.
  • Start or branch automations. See Automation triggers.

Create a segment

1

Open the builder

Go to Audience → Segments and click Create Segment. The + Segment chip at the end of the segment chips on the contacts table also takes you to the Segments page.
2

Name it

Enter a Name (required) and an optional Description.
3

Add rules

Under Filter Rules, pick a field, an operator and a value for each rule. Use Add condition to add a rule to a group, and Add Condition Group to start a new group. Click the AND/OR pill between rules or groups to switch it. You can also drag a rule by its handle: drop it on another rule to put the two in one group, or between groups to give it a group of its own.
4

Check the preview

The Filter logic: line spells out the combined rules. Sample Contacts shows a few matching contacts and the total.
5

Save

Click Create Segment (or Update Segment when editing). Membership is calculated as soon as you save.
Describe the audience in plain words in the AI Segment Builder box, for example “active subscribers who joined in the last 30 days”, and click Generate. The rules are filled in for you to review and edit before you save.You can also start from the Segments page: click Ask AI, describe the audience in the chat, and click Apply on a suggestion. A new segment opens with the suggested name and rules, ready to review and save. Nothing is saved until you click Create Segment.
If the rules contradict each other (always 0 contacts), always match everyone, or contain redundant rules, a Rule Issue Detected dialog appears. Choose Go back and fix or Save anyway. A segment needs at least one complete rule. A segment with no rules matches nobody.

Available rules

Profile

Dates

Date Added, Subscription Date and Last Activity support: Calendar periods and dates follow the workspace timezone (Settings → General). Weeks start on Monday. A relative date is worked out each time the segment is evaluated, so Renewal date is on today plus 30 days always means a month from now, and Signup date is before today minus 6 months always means the older half of the list. Before a date excludes that day and After a date starts the day after it; use Between for an inclusive range. The “any year” operators match the month and day only, so Date Added is today (any year) is a signup anniversary. Last Activity also supports Is set and Is not set, and has no “any year” operators. Last activity is updated by email engagement, form submissions and recorded events.

Birthday

The contact’s birthday (set on the contact page, by the API, or by a signup form) supports: Is today (any year), In the next N days (any year), This month (any year), Age is at least, Age is under, Before (date), After (date), On (date), Between (dates), Is set, Is not set. Is in exactly N days (any year) picks one day: with N = 7 it is the people whose birthday is a week from today, which suits a daily campaign because each person matches once. A birthday on 29 February counts on 28 February in a year without one, so nobody is skipped. Age is counted in whole years as of today in the workspace timezone. The date operators compare the birth date itself, for example Birthday before 1990-01-01.

Lists and segments

Engagement and behaviour

Engagement in the last N days

Did not open in the last N days and Did not click in the last N days only match people who were sent that mail, so a contact you have never emailed does not count as lapsed. With Any email sent, every operator counts campaigns and automations together; pick a campaign or an automation to look at that one only. An automation counts across all its versions. Rules saved before automations could be picked show Any campaign and keep counting campaign mail only, until you pick something else. A win-back segment, for example: Contact Status is Active, a group of Opened OR Clicked (any campaign), Did not open in the last N days 90, Did not click in the last N days 90, and Was not emailed in the last N days 14. With Email Engagement → Clicked and a campaign selected, the link box lists every link in that campaign’s email, including links nobody has clicked yet. Choose Any link in this campaign, pick a link, or choose Another URL… and paste one. Links are matched by destination. Tracking parameters such as utm_* are ignored, so a URL copied from a report matches the same clicks as one picked from the list. Parameters that identify the link, such as ?product=42, still count.
On a campaign’s analytics page, the top-links table has a Segment people who clicked this action. It creates this rule for you.

Goal (RFM) rules

Goals are conversions such as purchases and sign-ups. They are recorded as events and goals. The Goals field supports recency, frequency and monetary rules: Choose a goal type (Purchase, Subscription, Lead, Sign-up, Booking, Trial, Other) or Any goal. For the value and count operators, in last … days limits the window. Leave it blank for all time. The “less than” operators also match contacts with no goals at all. Example segments:
  • VIP: Purchase, total value is at least 1000 in the last 365 days, AND Purchase, count is at least 5
  • At risk: Purchase, total value is at least 500, AND Purchase, last one more than 90 days ago

Custom field operators

For a multi-select field such as interests: is any of running, yoga finds contacts with at least one of them; is all of finds contacts with both; is none of finds contacts with neither (including contacts with no interests at all); is empty finds contacts with nothing ticked.

Keep segment counts current

Membership is stored, not worked out each time you look. It is recalculated:
  • when you save the segment’s rules
  • when you click Refresh on the segment’s card on the Segments page
  • when you click the refresh icon (Recompute now) on the segment’s chip on the contacts table
Both refresh controls rebuild membership and update the count, and need permission to edit segments. Hover a chip to see when it was last recomputed. The stored membership is what the segment’s count, its chip filter on the contacts table and Segment membership rules in other segments use.
Campaigns don’t wait for a recompute. When you send from the send wizard, each segment’s rules are checked at that moment, whether the segment targets the campaign, narrows it or excludes people. The wizard’s count is worked out the same way, so it can differ from the count on the segment’s card until you click Refresh.
Each segment is given a colour automatically. The colour is used for its chip on the contacts table, its badge on contact rows, and in the send wizard.

The Segments page

Audience → Segments works like the Lists page:
  • The Folders panel on the left shows your segment folders. Select a folder to see the segments filed in it, or All segments to see every segment.
  • The search box finds segments by name, description or folder name, across every folder.
  • The icons at the top right switch between list view (a table with Rules, Contacts, Updated, Folder, and Edit / Refresh icons) and card view.
  • Drag the line beside the folder panel to change its width.

Organise segments in folders

Click New folder in the Folders panel to create a folder. Hover over a folder to add a subfolder, rename it or delete it. Move a segment by dragging its card or row onto a folder, or by choosing a folder in its Folder dropdown. Drag a folder onto another folder to nest it. Deleting a folder removes the folder and its subfolders. The segments inside them move up a level. No segment is deleted. Segment folders are separate from list folders. Folders don’t change who is in a segment.

Edit or delete a segment

On Audience → Segments, click Edit (or View if your role can’t edit segments) to open the builder, or the trash icon to delete it. Deleting a segment doesn’t delete any contacts.

Troubleshooting

The event name must match exactly, including dots, slashes and capitals: order.completed doesn’t match order_completed, and an event from Segment named Order Completed must be typed with its capitals and space. Copy the name from the contact’s Activity tab or the Events tab of Analytics → Website.
Both show the stored membership, but each page shows the count from when it was loaded. Click Refresh on the segment’s card, or the chip’s refresh icon, then reload the other page.
It only counts contacts who are Subscribed to the list. Use List subscription status to target Pending or Unsubscribed list members.