Getting Started with Segments

Your audience contains a lot of information about your contacts, like when they were added, where they live, and how they interact with your marketing. Use this information to filter contacts into segments, and then target them with emails, text messages, or ads.

In this article, you'll learn how segments work in Mailchimp.

Definitions

• Segment
  We use the term segment in 2 ways: as a verb and a noun. To segment is to take the action of filtering and dividing similar contacts. The resulting list of contacts is also called a segment.
• Conditions
  The rules that determine what filters contacts into a segment.
• Logic
  The and/or variable that determines whether a single or all conditions must be true in a segment.
• Subscribed contact
  Someone who has opted in to receive your email or SMS marketing.
• Unsubscribed contact
  Someone who previously received your email or SMS marketing, but has opted out.
• Non-subscribed contact
  Someone who has interacted with your online store, but hasn't opted in to receive your email or SMS marketing.
• Cleaned contact
  A non-deliverable email address. Hard bounces, as well as repeated soft bounces, become cleaned addresses. Cleaned contacts refer to email contacts only.

About segments

Segments are used to create target audiences based on shared data. When you create a segment, you'll set conditions to filter contacts based on the information that's available in your audience. Each segment can include up to 5 conditions. Depending on the segment’s logic of and/or, only 1 or all conditions must be met.

Here's an example: If you want to attract new subscribed contacts to your online store, create a two-condition segment of contacts who signed up for your audience in the last 30 days, but haven't made a purchase yet. For this example, your logic will be and since both conditions must be met.

After you build the segment, you can target it with a welcome message or special offer.

Build and save segments to use with emails, text messages, and ads. If you're working with an email or text message, we'll automatically filter out anyone who isn't subscribed to receive your email or SMS marketing.

Segments can be created in the email builder, the SMS builder, or the contact table. Save a segment in the contact table if you know you want to regularly target the same contacts time after time. Create as many segments as you want, and add contacts to multiple segments.

For a shortcut to targeted emails, Mailchimp offers a selection of pre-built segments in the To section of the email checklist.

Create and Send to a Segment
Save and Manage Segments
About Pre-Built Segments

Segmenting options

Mailchimp offers a lot of segmenting options, so you can make the most out of your audience. With the right kind of data, you can create hyper-targeted segments of your contacts for emails, text messages, or ads. Segmenting options will vary based on the data you've collected.

Here are some examples of segments you can create.

• Subscribed email contacts who opened any of your last 5 emails
• Subscribed email contacts who didn't click in your last email
• Subscribed SMS contacts who often interact with your SMS marketing
• Subscribed SMS contacts who clicked any of the last 5 text messages that you sent
• Contacts who recently purchased a product from your connected store
• Contacts who live in a certain location
• Contacts who spent more than $500 in your connected store

All the Segmenting Options
Common Segmentation Combinations

Enhance your segments

To increase your segmenting options, try some of Mailchimp's advanced tools.

Segment by an Audience by Purchase Activity
About Advanced Segmentation