All the Segmenting Options

With Mailchimp, you can use audience and contact information to target and filter contacts into segments. Our segmentation options are extensive, so you can choose a single condition or combine up to 5 conditions with positive and negative relationships to target the right contacts.

In this article, you'll learn about all the segmentation criteria available to you. For more information about segments, check out Getting Started with Segments and Common Segmentation Combinations.

• You can create segments based on scheduled and draft email or SMS activity. However, these future segments only work after the email or SMS is sent and Mailchimp generates its report.
• If you're using the Mailchimp API, check out our segmentation resources.

How your contacts are tagged

Tags

Tags are customizable labels you create for your contacts. Learn more about tags.

Contact details

If your imported audience contains extra information about each contact, you can use it to target your emails. In the segment builder, you'll see the custom column labels you imported with your audience.

These fields vary for each user and audience. In this section, you'll see some common examples.

Address fields

Address segments use address field data that was added or imported to your audience. Address segments don't include data from Zip code audience fields or geolocation data.

Text fields

Text field segments use text field data created from a contact's typed responses. This field type is good for general questions, but character limits for audience fields prevent long responses. By default, new audiences include text fields to collect first and last names.

Date fields

Date field segments use data from date fields. Birthday fields include month and day. Other date fields include month, day, and year.

Contact rating

Use the contact rating condition to create a segment of your most or least engaged subscribers.

Email client

If you have specific email designs for people who use different mailbox applications, you can segment based on email client. Only 1 client can be selected per condition, but up to 5 conditions can be selected for any segment.

Info changed

Use the info changed condition to create a segment based on the most recent update made to a contact’s profile.. Each time a contact updates their profile with Mailchimp, we'll make a note.

Language

Mailchimp uses language segments to create a segment based on the user’s preferred language. Mailchimp will detect your contact's language when they sign up or click links in your email.

Phone number

Use phone number data to identify and target your contacts with personalized email content. The phone number segment option pulls data from the general phone number field in your audience, and it’s different from the SMS phone number segment option.

Predicted demographics

Use age, gender, and location data to identify and target your contacts with personalized email content. To learn more, check out About Predicted Demographics.

SMS phone number

If you have subscribed SMS contacts with an SMS phone number in your audience, you can segment based on that data. The SMS phone number segment option pulls data from the SMS phone number field that is specific to your SMS Marketing program. This is different from the phone number segment option.

VIP status

If you've marked a contact as a VIP in Mailchimp, you can segment for those contacts.

Zip code

Zip code segments use Zip code field data that was added or imported to your audience. This segment type only works with 5-digit United States Zip codes. Zip code segments don't include data from Address audience fields, or geolocation data.

How your contacts were acquired

Email Date Added

Use the email date added condition to create a segment based on the date a contact signs up or is imported to your audience. The email date added operator automatically converts each contact's signup time to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) This is important to remember if your email date added segments appear to return results outside the chosen timeframe.

Signup source

Choose signup source to segment your contacts by how they were added to your audience. You'll only see the sources you used to create your audience, so if you've never imported an audience or you haven't used an integration, you won't see those options.

Email, SMS & automations activity

For each segmentation condition we show here, you'll find a short description of what it controls and a table that displays all of the action options. In most cases, there are only 2 choices to make, but for some condition types, a third option will appear.

In almost all cases, you won't see all of the options that appear on this page in your account. The data that appears in your account is limited to the data available for the audience you're working with.

Automation activity

Automation report data is available in segmenting options, so you can pull segments of subscribed contacts based on whether they've started or completed a certain automation.

Email engagement

Use email engagement to segment based on how contacts engage with your emails. You can then send more targeted content or re-engage inactive contacts. To learn more, check out About Email Marketing Engagement.

Email interaction

Create segments based on how subscribed email contacts have interacted with your emails. For example, use a combination of segmenting criteria to target contacts who were sent recent emails but didn't open them.

Here are some examples of how email interaction segments work.

• Email interaction | was sent | All of the Last 5 Campaigns
  Subscribed email contacts who received all of your last 5 emails
• Email interaction | was not sent | All of the Last 5 Campaigns
  Subscribed email contacts who received none of your last 5 emails
• Email interaction | was not sent | Any of the Last 5 Campaigns
  Subscribed email contacts who were not sent 1 or more of your last 5 emails
• Email interaction | was sent | Any of the Last 5 Campaigns
  Subscribed email contacts who have received 1 or more of your last 5 emails
• Email interaction | did not open | Any of the Last 5 Campaigns
  Subscribed email contacts who did not open 1 or more of your last 5 emails
• Email interaction | did not open | All of the Last 5 Campaigns
  Subscribed email contacts who opened none of your last 5 emails
• Email interaction | opened | Any of the Last 5 Campaigns
  Subscribed email contacts who opened 1 or more of your last 5 emails
• Email interaction | opened | All of the Last 5 Campaigns
  Subscribed email contacts who opened all of your last 5 emails

Be careful when sending to activity segments based on scheduled, drafted, or paused emails. The total recipient count of your segment won't be finalized until your email is sent.

Email subscription status

Use email subscription status to segment based on your email contacts' relationship to your audience. Everyone but subscribed contacts will be automatically filtered out of email marketing, but anyone can be targeted with an ad.

SMS engagement

Use SMS engagement to segment based on how contacts engage with your SMS marketing. You can then send more targeted text messages or re-engage inactive SMS contacts. Before you can use this segment option, you need to set up an SMS Marketing program and send a text message.

SMS interaction

Create segments based on how subscribed SMS contacts have interacted with your SMS marketing. For example, use a combination of segmenting criteria to target SMS contacts who were sent recent text messages but didn't open them. Before you can use this segment option, you need to set up an SMS Marketing program and send a text message.

SMS subscription status

Use SMS subscription status to segment based on the current marketing status of the SMS contacts in your audience. Before you can use this segment option, you need to set up an SMS Marketing program and import SMS contacts to your audience.

E-commerce activity

When you integrate your e-commerce platform with Mailchimp, we'll track your subscribed contacts’ purchase activity so you can target emails to specific buyers. You can segment based on specific items, categories, amount spent, and more. Check out all of our e-commerce segmenting options.

Likelihood to purchase again

If you have a connected store, you can segment based on your customers' likelihood to purchase again. We'll only display this option if you have enough data from your store for us to make accurate predictions. To learn more, check out About Customer Lifetime Value and Purchase Likelihood.

Customer lifetime value

If you have a connected store, you can segment based on your contacts' customer lifetime value. We'll only display this option if you have enough data from your store for us to make accurate predictions. Learn more about customer lifetime value.

Other activity

Available options will vary depending on what integrations are connected to your Mailchimp account.

Custom engagement

If you record events from outside of Mailchimp via the API, you can create segments based on if and when an event occurred.

Conversations activity

If you use Mailchimp Inbox, use conversations activity to segment your contacts based on whether they’ve replied or not. At this time, you can only target email contacts with this segment.

Postcard activity

Use the postcard activity condition to segment your contacts based on whether they’ve been sent a postcard campaign.

Website engagement

If you have Track with Mailchimp enabled for your Mailchimp website, you can create segments to view pages and links your contacts interact with. Page views and link clicks are only tracked for visitors who subscribed to your Mailchimp audience from your website and haven't opted out of tracking.

Landing page activity

Segment subscribers based on if they completed the form in the Signup Form content block on your published landing page.

Poll or survey activity

Use the poll or survey activity condition if you have emails that use our poll or survey merge tags. You can segment by which subscribers did or did not respond. Surveys allow you to segment on votes for specific responses.

SurveyMonkey activity

After you create an email using our SurveyMonkey integration, you can build segments based on whether your recipients have interacted with your survey.

Operator glossary

When you create a segment, you choose an "operator," which is usually the second choice, and something like "is" or "is not." Different conditions display different operators. Here's a list of the operators you might use in a segment.