Manage segments 0 0

Segments provide ways to easily organize your contacts. These segments can be configured from a variety of fields.

When viewing all segments you will notice the column on the right which shows the number of contacts matching that particular segment.

Creating a segment

To create a new segment navigate to Segments in the menu, and click on 'New'.

Naming segments

Since the 3.2 release it has been possible to provide a public name, in addition to an internal name, for a segment.

This is used if the segment is displayed in the Preference Centre, allowing the contact to choose to remove themselves from it. The Public Name is what will be displayed to the contact in the preference centre.

Public and private segments

It is possible to create a segment which is accessible to everybody who uses your MSM instance - a public segment - or just for your own use - a private segment.

Making segments available in the preference centre

There are many approaches that can be taken when it comes to allowing contacts to choose communications they wish to receive from you. If you wish to allow them to subscribe and unsubscribe based on segments, you can select the option to make a segment available in the Preference Centre.

Use this in conjunction with the public name to provide a user-friendly description of the segment.

Publish status

If a segment is unpublished, it will not be available for use in MSM, and will not show in any dropdown fields.

Segment Filters

Filters are used to define the contacts who will be in the segment.

In addition, these filters can be combined to either be inclusive or exclusive depending on your needs.

Once you have selected the field you can then choose the type of operation to perform. These vary depending on the way you wish to filter your contacts.

If you want to divide your segment based on certain criterion, and you wish to avoid sending duplicate emails to the (sub)segments, you can view and alter them through typing the alias name of the contact segments separated by '+' only. You can add n contact segments to show the contacts they have in common, but you will always receive the result as the intersection of the subsets. You can then manipulate the contacts to remove them from either one subset or all, hence avoiding sending duplicate emails to the same leads in the subsets.

Matching part of a string

There are 5 filters you can use for matching part of a string - starts with, ends with, contains, like and regexp. First three filters match strings as you enter it. like filter is for advanced users - you can specify which type you want to use with % character:

• My string% is the same as starts with filter with My string value.
• %My string is the same as ends with filter with My string value.
• %My string% is the same as contains filter with My string value.
• My string is the same as contains filter with My string value.

A few notes for text filters:

• starts with, ends with, contains filters were added later than the like one, so you can easily specify what you need now.
• % character in the middle of the string has no special meaning. contains filter with my % string will search for a string with % in the middle. The same is true for like filter with %my % string% value. There is no need for escaping this character.
• MSM searches for % character in a value for like filter and no modification is performed if at least 1 % is found.

You can use regular expressions in a regexp filter. MSM recognises all common operators like | for OR (first string|second string), character sets ([0-9], [a-z0-9] etc.), repetitions (+, *, ?) and more. You have to escape special characters with \ if you want to use them as matching character. Learn more about regex at https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/regexp.html. Please note that MySQL (and MSM) uses POSIX regex, which could behave differently from other types of Regex.

Date options

Date filters allow you to choose a date via DatePicker:

Hovewer you can specify much more here. MSM recognizes relative formats too (these string are not translatable):

• +1 day (you can also use 1 day)
• -2 days (you can also use 2 days ago)
• +1 week / -2 weeks / 3 weeks ago
• +5 months / -6 months / 7months ago
• +1 year / -2 years / 3 years ago

Example (Consider that today is 2018-03-02):

• Date identified equals -1 week returns all contacts identified on 2018-02-23.
• Date identified less than -1 week returns all contacts identified before 2018-02-23.
• Date identified equals -1 months returns all contacts identified on 2018-02-02.
• Date identified greater or equal -1 year returns all contacts identified 2017-03-02 and after.
• Date identified greater than -1 year returns all contacts identified after 2017-03-02.

Beside this you can specify your date with text. These formulas are translatable, so make sure you use them in correct format.

• birthday / anniversary
• birthday -7 days / anniversary -7 days
• today / tomorrow / yesterday
• this week / last week / next week
• this month / last month / next month
• this year / last year / next year

Example (Consider that today is 2018-03-02):

• Date identified equals last week returns all contacts identified between 2018-02-26 and 2018-03-04 (Monday to Sunday).
• Date identified less than last week returns all contacts identified before 2018-02-19.
• Date identified equals last month returns all contacts identified between 2018-02-01 and 2018-02-28.
• Date identified greater or equal last year returns all contacts identified 2017-01-01 and after.
• Date identified greater than last year returns all contacts identified after 2017-12-31.
• Custom contact date field equal birthday -1 day returns all contacts identified every year on 03-01 (1st march).
• Custom contact date field equal anniversary -1 month returns all contacts identified every year on 02-01 (1st february)

Segments

Once you have created your segment, any applicable contact will be automatically added through the execution of a cron job. This is the essence of segments.

Manual Addition

In addition to segments you can also manually add any contact to a list by clicking the Preferences button at the segments tab, use the dropdown to select a segment and add the contact to it or click on the x next to a segment in the input field to remove the contact.

Delete all contacts in a segment

Filter the contacts in the segment. The batch delete action in the contact table allows deletion of up to 100 contacts at one time. This is a performance precaution since deleting more contacts at one time could cause issues. This feature can be used for hundreds of contacts.

But deleting thousands of contacts this way in one segment will become a tedious task. Luckily, there is a trick how to let the background workers do the job for you.

1. Create a simple campaign which has the segment as the source \
2. Use the Delete contact action.