Sending the same newsletters to the entire database is inefficient. Not all recipients are interested in everything, and they can stop opening always the same general newsletters very soon. In the end they unsubscribe themselves. You can not only lose the contact from the contact list, but also the potential customer. Sending personalized newsletters to selected groups of subscribers is not as difficult as it might appears at first glance. Look at how you can create segments and send emails that your contacts will really enjoy.

What is the segment?
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A segment is a group of contacts with the same features or the same behavior. According to the selected criteria (rules), you can group all contacts that dispose of the same information. For example: All women. All people under the age of 35. Anyone who has opened an email in the past campaigns/has visited your site /made a purchase in your online store.

Why create segments?
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1. You do not have to work with several contact lists, you can work with the entire database within only one. For more information on what is the best way to work with your database click here.
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2. Segmentation allows you better targeting of your messages. You will send exactly what the recipients might be interested in, and therefore they would open your emails more likely and would shop on your site. Imagine an e-shop with clothes. The latest models of summer dress is not probably very interesting for men, and therefore it is more effective to send a newsletter only to the segment of "women". You will not only send customers what they like, but you will also not bother the wrong target group.

How to segment?

You only need to create a segment once. You do not need to add contacts to the finished segment because the segments are fluent. As soon as the contact meet the rules (eg it will open your campaign), it will be added to the segment itself.

Always create a segment in the relevant contact list. Choose Contacts -> select the list of contacts (in this case the Complete list) -> Segments -> “Create new segment” in the Segments section. Name the segment and click at "Create segment".
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Now you have created the segment and you can start segmenting (filtering) contacts from the entire contact list according to the rules.

How to segment?

Once you have created a segment, just enter the conditions (rules). There are several conditions, so you can create segments based on:

1) contact properties (name, surname, address, birthday, name day, gender, date of registration, rating, note in contact’s detail, etc.)

2) tags

3) custom contact attributes (eg number of points, customer has a dog)

4) preference based contact groups

5) campaign activities

6) activities in automations

7) activity on the web

To use the conditions "Activity on the web" and other advanced segmentation, it is necessary to connect Ecomail to your website. You can use those advanced functions only in the prepaid “Marketer+” tariff.
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In the image above you can see various rules according to which you can create segments. For example, we want to set up a "segment - women". Select the condition "Gender" and "Is woman". The result is a group of all the women we have on the list.
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Each rule allows several additional conditions. In the case of "Gender", you can choose from several options.

You will proceed in the same way when creating other segments. Each rule has different conditions due to the purpose of other segmentation.
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What is the difference between the conditions "AND" and "OR"?

You can set an almost unlimited number of conditions in each segment. The more conditions you set, the more accurate the target group will be. Before you add another condition, you must decide what type of condition you would like to choose. We will show by example what is the difference between them.

AND - If you need the contact to meet both conditions at the same time. If the contact meets only one of them, it will not enter the segment. We set the criteria - "She is woman" AND “City matches Prague". The segment therefore contains only those women who are also from Prague.
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OR - If you enter 2 conditions, but it is enough for you that the contact will meet only one of them. According to the specified conditions in the picture, we will create a segment that will contain all women (who have in the database not only in Prague) and also all those who are from Prague (women and men).
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In the picture you can see that 10 contacts from the whole database meet this condition.

​How do you simplify work when creating similar segments with multiple conditions?

It often happens that the conditions are repeated in several segments and with each new segment the basic conditions are set over and over again. A typical example is the so-called "active segment" when you set conditions for an active customer (e.g. a user has opened an email in a campaign in the last 60 days OR visited a website in the last 60 days OR made a purchase in a store in the last 60 days). Then you mostly need to add other conditions to this active one, e.g. you want the segment "active women".
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In Ecomail, you can start from a pre-finished segment and always just add other conditions. We will explain the whole process with a simple example below.

You work with this segment often, so you do not want to edit it. However, you would like to use the conditions from segment 1. It is ideal to proceed as follows. Create a completely new segment of contacts, e.g. "Segment 2 - All women from Prague who bought" and click on the option "Expand another segment".

Now all you have to do is choose which segment you want to start from. In this case "Women from Prague". The conditions from Segment 1 to Segment 2 will be automatically transferred to you. Within the segment "Segment 2 - All women from Prague who bought something", all you have to do is select an additional condition or more conditions at once. In this case, we added the condition "Purchased something".
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Can I send a campaign to a segment as well as to the contact list?

Of course. Just attach a segment instead of a contact list in the first step of creating a campaign. A segment is always linked to a given contact list, so you need to select the contact list first and then the segment.

How do I collect information to segment?

The principle of quality emailing is data in one place. Therefore, try to get as much data as you have about the customer into Ecomail.

You can get information about your contacts directly from Ecomail sign up forms, which you place on your website or social network. In addition to email, it can be a name, date of birth or even some personal information.

It is also very valuable if you know what the subscriber's preferences are.

You can also collect information from orders (delivery data, what and in what category the customer bought, for how much money and when it was). When you add a tracking code to your site, information about which specific pages your contacts went through is also attributed to them.

There are really many options by which you can segment. It just depends on which segments are settled up right for your business.

TIP: Get inspired by some basic segments or advanced segments.

If you have any further questions regarding segmentation in Ecomail, you can contact us at support@ecomail.app