About Pre-Built Segments

After you've sent a few emails in Mailchimp, it won't be long before you've got lots of useful data to work with. Segments are a great way to use that data to send targeted emails to contacts who have something in common.

Mailchimp offers a selection of pre-built segments based on email engagement, purchase history, and other valuable information.

In this article, you'll learn about pre-built segments and how to use them.

Definitions

Before we go into more detail, let's go over some terms we use when we talk about pre-built segments.

Contact
Someone in your audience with information stored in your account.

Subscribed contact
Contacts who opt-in to receive email marketing.

Segment
A section of your audience that includes contacts with common audience field information.

Pre-built segment
An automatically generated segment based on contact information or activity.

Email builder
The part of Mailchimp you'll use to create, design, and send a regular email, automation, or landing page. The email builder has different sections where you'll choose recipients, set up email information, choose a template, add content, and send or schedule delivery.

Ad builder
The part of Mailchimp you'll use to create a social media ad campaign. The ad builder has different sections where you'll choose an audience, add content, and schedule your ad.

Predicted demographics
A Mailchimp feature included with the Standard plan or higher. Predicted demographics uses data science to predict the gender and age of your contacts. To learn more, check out About Predicted Demographics.

How pre-built segments work

Each contact has traits and behaviors that are tracked when they join your audience. Some behaviors, like email engagement, for example, are part of the predefined segments we've created for you. The conditions to the pre-built segment are added already, so all you have to do is select the segment to see who all meets the criteria.

For example, if you have a subscribed contact who's opened at least one of your recently sent emails, they’ll meet the criteria for the Engaged Subscribers segment. Meanwhile, a subscribed contact who hasn't opened any of your last five emails will end up in the Disengaged Subscribers segment. Pretty neat, right?

If none of our pre-built segments work for you, use them as inspiration to build your own custom segments. To illustrate, let's consider the Disengaged Subscribers segment. This pre-built segment is based on a contact not opening any of the last five emails you sent to them. If you want a different standard for inactivity, create a new segment defined by a higher or lower number of unopened emails.

Here are some other resources to help you learn more about segments.

• Getting Started with Segments
• Create and Send to a Segment
• All the Segmenting Options

Types of pre-built segments

Pre-built segments fall into three categories.

• Subscriber engagement
• Customer behavior
• Demographics

Subscriber engagement

Subscriber engagement segments are available to all Mailchimp users. These segments are based on the date contacts joined your audience, as well as how they interact (or don't interact) with your emails.

Customer behavior

Customer behavior segments require e-commerce data in your account from version 3.0 of our API. This data can come from integrations like Mailchimp for Magento, Mailchimp for BigCommerce, or a custom API 3.0 integration.

Demographics

Demographics segments are based on data from predicted demographics. The Predicted Demographics feature is included with the Standard plan or higher.

Location of pre-built segments

You can find pre-built segments in your audience and in some campaign builders. In the audience, they are located on the audience dashboard, and in the Segment section.

To find pre-built segments inside of an email, use the Send to drop-down inside the To section of the email checklist. For Multivariate and RSS emails, click the radio button next to Segment or tag.

On the audience dashboard

Your Mailchimp audience includes a dashboard with clickable insights about your contacts, so you can quickly launch emails for specific segments. You'll find pre-built segments based on signup source, location, email marketing engagement, customer lifetime value, likelihood to purchase again, predicted demographics, and more, depending on your Mailchimp plan and the data in your audience.

To learn more, read About the Audience Dashboard.

Segments section of your audience

If you visit the Segments section of your audience, you can choose from a list of pre-built segments, or create your own segment.

On the checklist for a regular email

When creating an email campaign, click the Send to drop-down on the email checklist to select a pre-built segment. Use this strategic marketing tool to engage with contacts who are most loyal to your company.

In a Multivariate or RSS email

On the Recipients step of a Multivariate or RSS email, click the radio button next to Segment or tag to select a pre-built segment.

What you can do with pre-built segments

We designed our pre-built segments to help you quickly find the right recipients for your emails. For example, you may want to use the pre-built segment New Subscribers to send a friendly welcome series to people who recently signed up for your email marketing.

Here are some other ways you can use pre-built segments.

• Send repeat customers a promotional email with a special reward or discount.
• Target contacts between the age of 35-44 with a promotional email for a specific product.