When creating email and mobile behavior criteria segments, please take into account that behavior targeting will only consider emails sent within the last 13 months. Segments will include contacts based on their responses to your email campaigns within this period. For this reason, Email and mobile behavior criteria segments that were created more than 13 months ago will not work.
These are based on the contacts’ responses to your email campaigns (or lack of them). For example, you can filter for contacts that have received more than three email campaigns in the last month but have not made any clicks, or for those contacts who have clicked the most links in a particular category.
A single segment can contain a maximum of 120 contact and 20 email behavior criteria. If you need to add more criteria to your segment, then we recommend creating a combined one.
Triggered emails in email behavior segments
Triggered (transactional and triggered marketing emails) campaigns are listed in the drop-down when you select specific email campaigns to which contacts did or did not respond. As a result of this improvement:
- You don’t need to include on-event campaigns in an Automation Center program and don’t have to assign an Email category to these anymore when you would like to use them in email behavior segments.
- You can create segments based on your contacts’ responses to Triggered emails.
- Email campaigns used in Interactions programs will be available for email behavior segmentation. You can also use email behavior segments that were created based on Interactions campaigns and optionally, you can exclude such segments from Automation Center programs if those contacts already have received a message from your Interactions program.
These improvements will change the results of your email behavior segments if the segmentation criteria are based on email categories. Previously, transactional campaigns were not available in the following filters:
◦ Email response (open or click)
◦ Email response (click only)
◦ No email response (open or click)
◦ No email response (not clicked)
◦ Received an email
◦ Not received an email
If you assigned a category to a transactional campaign but it was not used in an Automation Center program, then this campaign was not taken into account when calculating the results. Due to this improvement, such results may change, therefore, you need to adjust your email categories accordingly if you would like to avoid the results being affected by data related to transactional emails.
Nevertheless, transactional emails were available in the following filters (and this behavior will not change):
◦ Email bounced (bounce notification)
◦ Individual link clicked
◦ Individual link not clicked
◦ Links in category clicked
◦ Links in category not clicked
Changes in email behavior segment results
If you create an email behavior segment, then the related email campaign's launch date will be adjusted to your account's default time zone.
For example, if your account's default time zone is in Australian Eastern Standard Time (UTC + 10) and you run an email behavior segment at 15:00 (in your time zone) that contains those contacts who received the email sent on the current day (between 00:00 and 15:00, so you set the timeframe to Between 0 and 0 days ago), then your segment will return those contacts who received your email between 00:00 and 15:00 on the current day.
Email and mobile behavior criteria filters
The following behavior criteria are available in the pop-up window:
- Email response (open or click)
If you use the Email response (open or click) criteria with the Responded to all the following (that the contact received) option and select a recurring campaign, then the segment will only include those contacts who have opened ALL child campaigns.
- Email response (click only)
- Email bounced (bounce notification)
- No email response (open or click)
- No email response (not clicked)
- Individual link clicked
- Individual link not clicked
- Links in category clicked
Important:
- If there are multiple campaigns containing links of the same category and a contact clicks only one of these links, then the segment will include this contact.
- Besides links that were clicked in the last X days, the Links in category clicked filter also checks emails containing links that are assigned to the selected category that were sent within the specified timeframe. For example:
- When you are using the criterion Links in category clicked in the last 2 days, Link category: My links, and the email containing the relevant link was sent 4 days ago, then those contacts who clicked the link on the given day will not be returned by this segment.
- If you sent no emails within the last 2 days that contain the link with the assigned category, then the segment will include no contacts.
- Links in category not clicked
If there are multiple campaigns containing links that belong to the same category, then the segment will include contacts even who didn't click at least one of those links. For example, if there are 5 campaigns containing links of the same category, then contacts who clicked all of them except for one will be included.
If you would like to filter out those contacts who clicked any of the links belonging to the same category, then we recommend creating a combined segment as follows:
1. Create a segment that includes contacts who clicked a link of the same category.
2. Create another segment you would like to filter contacts by (this could be any filter condition available).
3. Create a combined segment by using these segments and exclude the first segment from your combined segment.
- Received an email
If you use the Received an email criteria with the Received all of the selected emails option and select a recurring campaign, then the segment will only contain those contacts who have received exactly one of the child campaigns of the selected emails.
- Not received an email
Depending on the criteria you choose, you can further refine your filter with a number of additional options.
- Timeframe – Restrict the response to emails sent in a specific time period.
- Volume restriction – Restrict contacts by the number of emails they responded to.
- Device (Mobile/Desktop) – Select between desktop or mobile (or both), and if mobile, select from a range of platforms.
The contact behavior here depends on the notifications returned by the target email client. This may not always exactly reflect the behavior of the recipient. Therefore the following points should be considered when filtering for contact behavior:
- An email which is opened without images does not return an open indication.
- Emails which are read in the mail client preview window also do not return an open indication, unless the client is set to display images.
- A contact may click a link several times to open it. Depending on the click speed and browser settings, each click could be counted separately even though the link was opened only once.
Privacy Opens in email behavior segments
The iOS 15 update, that was released in September 2021, gives users the option to block the tracking of email opens in the iOS, MacOS or iPadOS Mail app. For more information on the iOS 15 updates, see What is happening?
Privacy Opens are automatically generated email opens for contacts using Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (opened on an iOS, MacOS or iPadOS device) and they also affect the Emarsys email reporting and segmentation based on email behavior. It cannot be determined whether Privacy Opens are real or fake opens. You can manage Privacy Opens flexibly when using the Email response (open or click) and No email response (open or click) email behavior filters.
Please note that the Privacy Protection practice used by Apple might change (i.e. the way Apple is handling these open events). In this case, we cannot ensure that these events will be identified with 100% accuracy.
Email response (open or click)
With regards to Privacy Opens, you can choose from the following options:
- Do not include opens with Privacy Opens - Your email behavior segment will include all opens except for Privacy Opens which will be excluded from it. This option is selected by default when you create a new segment using the Email response (open or click) filter.
- Include opens with Privacy Opens only - Your email behavior segment will only include contacts with Privacy Opens for the selected emails who did not click the email within the same Privacy Open.
A Privacy Open with a valid email click is considered a real open.
- Include all opens with or without Privacy Opens - Your email behavior segment will include all opens as well as Privacy Opens for the selected emails.
No email response (open or click)
- Include Privacy Opens for the selected emails - If you check this checkbox, then your email behavior segment will include contacts who did not respond to the selected emails or responded with Privacy Opens (without valid clicks).
By default, contacts with Privacy Opens are not included in the No email response (open or click) filter because it cannot be determined whether a Privacy Open without a valid click is an actual open or not.
What happens to existing segments?
Your existing segments will work as before, this means that the following Privacy Opens options will be selected:
- Segments using the Email response (open or click) filter: the Include all opens with or without Privacy Opens option will be selected for these segments.
- Segments using the No email response (open or click) filter: the Include Privacy Opens for the selected emails checkbox will not be checked for these segments.
You can change these settings in existing segments according to your needs.