Segmentation allows a business to group Contacts based on common criteria, so that they can be targeted appropriately. Segmentation is used throughout the software to focus on specific groups of Contacts, e.g. to send Communications, to apply Reward Offers, to apply Promotions, to differentiate between product Pricing etc.

THE ESSENTIALS

Firstly, let’s get familiar with some simple terms used in Segmentation.

Refresh

When a Segment is first created, a number of Contacts are retrieved which comply with the set conditions at that particular point in time. In some cases, though, Segments may need to be refreshed regularly (e.g. refresh a Segment every evening to retrieve new Contacts who registered today). The minimum Segment refresh frequency is 1 hour.

Accessibility

Accessibility defines who has access to a Segment defined by a Business. Normally, all members of the business network would have access. However, this can also be restricted to just the business and selected merchants.

Conditions

Conditions are the criteria applied to a Segment to retrieve only those Contacts who fulfil the criteria. Conditions are always based on Contact data or actions they have/haven’t performed.

Managing Segments

To view or create a Segment, navigate to CRM > Segmentation from the main menu on the left-hand side of the screen.

Segmentation summary screen

On the summary screen, the number next to the person icon indicates the number of Contacts in each Segment. Select Create Segment to create a new Segment.

Sample Segment

Once the Segment conditions have been specified, select Save to retrieve the Contacts for the Segment.

Segment Refresh Frequency

When you create a Segment, it will examine and pull Contacts based on your specified criteria. However, since Contact data constantly changes, you may wish to refresh your Segments regularly. There are two ways of refreshing Segments - automatically or manually.

Automatically

A Segment can be configured to automatically refresh (update) its Contacts at specific time intervals, e.g. on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis. This can be set either during creation or when editing the Segment.

Exercise caution when setting the automatic refresh frequency for a Segment. Consider the following:

Is it necessary to automatically refresh the Segment?
Set a reasonable refresh frequency
If the Segment is to be refreshed at a specific time of day, then make an effort to set the refresh time during off-peak hours
Don’t set all your Segments to refresh at the same time; space them out

Manually

Refresh an existing Segment manually from the Segment summary screen by selecting more options (…) > Refresh.

One-off Segments

If you create a Segment and wish to run it only once without ever refreshing it again, simply disable the Segment can be refreshed toggle.

Segments which have not been set up to refresh automatically can still be refreshed manually, as explained above from the summary screen.

Business Network Accessibility

Segments are defined at the Business level but can also be made accessible at different levels of the Business Network. Options include:

Only by the business - Can only be used by the business
Across business network - Can be used by the business, as well as by all merchants or service providers of the business
By business and specific merchants/service providers - Can be used by the business, and specific merchants or service providers

Segment Conditions

Conditions are the criteria by which Contacts will be retrieved for the Segment, i.e. only those Contacts complying with the set conditions will be selected.

Condition Types

Condition types allow the user to create conditions based on Contact information or events performed by/on behalf of the Contact. There are four conditions types to choose from. Condition types define the condition format which follows.

HAVE and DO NOT HAVE - Refers to information about the Contact, e.g. Contacts who have the category ‘VIP’, Contacts who do not have the `category ‘VIP’.

DID and DID NOT - Refers to events that did or didn’t take place, e.g. Contacts who did place at least one order in the last month, Contacts who did not place at least one order in the last month.

Attribute

Select the data attribute to be examined for the Contact.

Selection Options

Segment conditions use any or all logic, meaning that you can create a Segment of Contacts who meet any of the individual conditions or all of the specified conditions.

any - Retrieve Contacts who fulfil at least one of the set conditions, e.g. Contacts in reward tier Orange or Contacts in reward tier Green.

all - Retrieve Contacts who fulfil all the set conditions, e.g. Contacts in reward tier Blue and with more than 10 purchase transactions within the last 3 months.

When using last month's x condition, note that filtering is not based on calendar months but 30-day intervals, e.g. last month's 1 is calculated as 30 days prior to today's date and not the previous calendar month.

Condition Groups

Segment Conditions are separated into groups and combined using AND and OR operators, thus allowing the user to apply several conditions in order to select the required Contacts for a Segment.

Using Custom Fields

Any configured Contact custom fields can also be used to define criteria for Segments. When using checkbox type custom fields, use the is true or is not true conditions to extract those Contacts whose check box has been selected or not, respectively. Using is false instead of is not true will not deliver the correct results.

In the following examples, Student is a custom field.

View the Contacts of a Segment

To view the selected Contacts of a Segment, navigate to the Segments Summary Screen > select more options (…) > View Contacts.

Copy a Segment

Copying a Segment will copy all the Segment conditions and prompt the user for a new Segment name.

Export the Contacts of a Segment

After creating a Segment of Contacts, you can export the basic details of those Contacts for your own use. By selecting Export Contacts, an email will be sent to your signed-in email address with a link to access the exported Contacts .csv file. The following data is exported: