Use Custom and Smart Segments in Email

A segment is a group of contacts defined by a set of conditions. Unlike a static subscriber list, segments are dynamic, meaning they grow as contacts meet the segment's conditions and shrink as contacts no longer meet them.

Segmented email sends often return more revenue per recipient than unsegmented sends as they can be tailored to a particular situation and thus are more relevant to the recipients. A few examples of how you might use segments to reach different audiences include:

Send a special promotion to customers who currently have any amount in their shopping cart and have never made a purchase.
Attempt to re-engage inactive subscribers who signed up at least six months ago but haven't been seen recently or haven't opened your last few emails.
Send a thank you or special reward to VIP customers who have purchased at least X times before or have spent over X amount of money.
Send a special offer to contacts who have purchased a specific product or an item from a particular collection (Shopify only).

Custom segments

Custom segments allow you to target a group of your contacts by combining various filters. These segments are built from scratch, making them highly customizable to your situation.

Create a custom segment

To create a new custom segment:

Navigate to the Contacts dropdown and select Segments.
In the top-right corner, select the New Segment button.

If you’re on the Settings page of your Campaign, select the Custom Segment box, then select Create New Segment

In the segment builder, name your segment - recipients will not see this name.
In the dropdown menu that appears, select whether you'd like the segment's contacts to Match any or Match all of the category filters you eventually select.

Use the “Choose category” dropdown to add the desired conditions. When building a segment, you can use the following conditions:

Shopping Activity

Cart Value: Include contacts based on the current value of your BigCommerce, Shopify, Squarespace, or Weebly cart.

First Order: Include contacts based on when they first ordered from your store.

Last Order: Include contacts based on when they last ordered from your store.

Lifetime Spend: Include contacts based on their total spending in your Shopify store.

Order Count: Include contacts based on the number of orders they have placed in your Shopify or Weebly store.

Purchase History: Include contacts based on the products or collections they have purchased or have not purchased from your Shopify store in the past 365 days.

Website Behavior

By Display: Include contacts based on their previous display signups.

Last Seen: Include contacts based on the last time they visited your site.

Signup Date: Include contacts based on when they signed up for your email list.

Customer Attributes

By Country: Include contacts based on the country reported by the contact's IP address.

Custom Field: Include contacts based on their custom field values. These values are provided via an import or when submitting a display.

Imported: Include contacts based on whether or not they have been manually imported directly from another service or via CSV.

Name / Email: Include contacts based on their exact name or email address.

Privy Tags: Include or exclude contacts based on the tags applied to their contact profile.

Shopify Tags: Include or exclude contacts based on the tags applied to their customer profile in Shopify.

Email Engagement

Clicked Email: Include contacts that clicked a specific email.

Did Not Open: Include contacts that did not open a specific email.

Opened: Include contacts that opened a specific email.

Was Not Sent: Include contacts that were not sent a specific email.

Finally, select the Create button at the upper right. The current number of subscribers in this segment will appear on the top right.

Reuse a custom segment

To create a new campaign from an existing saved custom segment:

Navigate to the Contacts dropdown and select Segments.
For the desired segment, click the “Create Message” dropdown on the right.
Select Create Email from the menu.

Proceed with the steps to create a newsletter email.

To reuse a custom segment from an existing campaign:

Navigate to the Settings page of your campaign.
Edit the “Sent to” section and select Custom Segment.
Select the “Choose Existing Segment” dropdown and choose from the menu.

A preview of the segment will appear.
Finally, click Save on the top right.

Smart segments

Smart segments allow you to quickly target a group of your contacts without the hassle of creating a custom segment. These segments make sending the right message to the right contact at the right time much more straightforward and typically result in increased deliverability rates and email engagement. Some of the available segments include:

Current Customers: This segment targets the contacts who have placed at least one order with your store.
Engaged Contacts: This segment targets the contacts who opened or clicked an email at least once in the last 90 days.
Potential Customers: This segment targets the contacts who have not yet placed an order with your store.

Use a smart segment

To apply a smart segment to a one-time email campaign:

Navigate to Campaigns and select or create the email you want to segment.
Select the Edit button next to the "Send email to" heading in the Settings step.
In the menu that opens, select a Smart Segment option.
Select one of the prebuilt smart segments and then select the Save button. The card will display an estimated number of recipients. If the selected segment has more than 10,000 contacts, a 10,000+ value will appear.

Don't Send To (optional)

You also have the option to choose a saved segment or Smart Segment to exclude from an email send.

Navigate to Campaigns and select or create the email you want to segment.
Select the Edit button next to the "Send email to" heading in the Settings step.
In the menu that opens, select the dropdown under "Don't send to (Optional)
In the dropdown menu that appears, select one of the prebuilt smart segments or a saved segment and then select the Save button.

This segment will now be excluded from the email send.