Segments are dynamic and help you define target groups based on the properties or behavior of your contacts. You can use segments for specific targeting in marketing campaigns.
In this article
- What are segments?
- Available segment types
- The difference between segments and contact lists
- Supported functionality
Product documentation
- Before you start with segments
- End-user guides
- Troubleshooting
Training material
As a quick reminder, here is the onboarding video about Segments:
What are segments?
You can create segments by running filters on all the contacts in your database. Segments help you define target groups based on their properties (e.g. interests, locations, demographics, etc.) or their behavior (how they react to your emails). These segments can be used for specific targeting in future marketing campaigns, and can also be exported.
Segments are dynamic, meaning they are always generated again before they are used; if you want to keep a segment exactly as it is, you can save it as a contact list.
Available segment types
- Contact, email behavior, geolocation and Smart Insight segments: You can create a segment based on the attributes, email behavior, geolocation and customer lifecycle data of your contacts.
- Mobile Engage segments: You can create a segment based on mobile app device and behavior data collected by Mobile Engage.
- Web behavior segments: You can create a segment based on web behavior using data collected by the Web Extend scripts.
Web behavior is only available as a pilot feature since December 2018 and requires a signed service-level agreement (SLA). For further details on the feature and how to enable it in your account, contact Emarsys Support.
- AI segments: You can create a segment that relies on the Emarsys AI learning algorithms that train themselves continuously, so you can predict the behavior of your customers more precisely.
- Relational segments: You can create a segment using your own business-specific data stored in external databases.
The difference between segments and contact lists
Segments are dynamic and will always be refreshed before they are used. We recommend using segments for defining target groups based on the properties or behavior of your contacts and for specific targeting in future marketing campaigns.
Contact lists are static, meaning that they do not change. We recommend using contact lists in the following cases:
- If your Automation Center program uses huge segments that contain, for example, 100 million contacts, then running such segments may cause performance issues because segments are always refreshed before they are used. To avoid performance issues, you can save the contacts in your segments into contact lists, for instance, on the day before launching your program, and use them in your program.
- When you import a contact list from an external CRM or data warehouse containing data that are not available in the Emarsys database, you can create a contact list from the data import.
- If you would like to keep a segment as it is, you can save it as a contact list.
