Create and Send to a Segment
Segments help you send emails to contacts based on e-commerce data, location, and more. Learn how to create segments and send to your subscribed contacts.
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Your audience contains a lot of information about your contacts, such as when they were added, where they live, and how they interact with your marketing. Use this information to filter contacts into segments, and then send them targeted emails, text messages, or ads.
In this article, you'll learn how segments work in Mailchimp.
Segments are used to create targeted messages to contacts who share data. When you create a segment, you'll set conditions to filter contacts based on the information that's available in your audience.
For anyone with a Free or Essentials marketing plan, each segment can include up to 5 conditions with a single and/or logic operator. Anyone with a Standard, Premium, or Legacy plan with Mailchimp Pro can use the advanced segment builder. Each segment with the advanced builder can have unlimited conditions, with nested and/or logic operators.
Depending on the segment’s and/or logic, only 1 or all conditions must be met.
Term | What it does | Example |
---|---|---|
And | This logic tells our system to show you contacts who meet all of your conditions. | All contacts who opened your last email and made a purchase in your store. |
Or | This logic tells our system to show you contacts who meet 1 or more of your conditions. | Any contacts from either Boston or Chicago. |
Here's an example: You want to invite new subscribed contacts to your online store. You can create a two-condition segment of contacts who signed up for your audience in the last 30 days, but haven't made a purchase yet. For this example your logic will be “and”, because both conditions must be met.
After you build the segment, you can send a targeted message to your contacts, such as a welcome message or special offer.
Build and save segments to use with emails, text messages, and ads. If you're working with an email or text message, we'll automatically remove anyone who isn't subscribed to receive your email or SMS marketing.
Segments can be created in the email builder, the SMS builder, or the contact table. Save a segment in the contact table if you know you want to target contacts on a regular basis. Create as many segments as you want and add contacts to multiple segments, as long as they share data that meets the segment criteria.
Mailchimp also offers a selection of pre-built segments based on email engagement, purchase history, and other valuable information. These segments can be found in the To section of the email checklist and on the audience Segments page.
Advanced segments are similar to regular segments, but you'll find more depth to their logic and structure. The advanced segmentation builder is a feature available to anyone with a Standard, Premium, or Legacy plan with Mailchimp Pro. It allows you to efficiently filter contacts and test your emails. This builder can include nested conditions that allow for different combinations of data you’ve collected, such as purchase activity, gender, age range, and more.
For example, instead of sending 2 emails to 2 regular segments, you can send a single email to 1 advanced segment that includes the same contacts.
When you combine and/or logic in a single segment, you're able to include contacts who meet significantly different conditions. There's no limit to the number of conditions in an advanced segment, but the generation process may slow down as you add more conditions.
The advanced segment builder is a powerful tool that can help you identify complex relationships that your contacts share.
The advanced segment builder combines individual conditions to sort contacts into nested groups. A top-level segment filter is required, and shares its logic with the groups that follow it. Secondary logic can be applied to the conditions inside each group, but each group is taken collectively and weighted equally.
Read our article on logic in the advanced segment builder to learn how to build your segments and view examples of complex segments.
Regular segments | Advanced segments |
---|---|
Available for Free and Essentials plans | included with the Standard plan or higher |
Contain up to 5 conditions | Unlimited conditions |
Preferred for simple, straight-forward contact filtering | Preferred for more complex and flexible contact filtering |
Can't combine and/or logic | Can combine and/or logic |
Mailchimp offers a lot of segmenting options that will help you make the most out of your audience. With the right kind of data, you can create focused segments of your contacts for emails, text messages, or ads.
When you choose your segment conditions, you may have these options, depending on the data you’ve collected and your marketing plan.
To learn more about the conditions listed here, take a look at All the Segmenting Options.
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Segments help you send emails to contacts based on e-commerce data, location, and more. Learn how to create segments and send to your subscribed contacts.
With saved segments, you can send targeted campaigns to sets of similar subscribers. Learn how to view, edit, and delete saved segments.
There are endless possibilities when creating segments in Mailchimp. View some commonly used combinations for certain segmenting tasks.
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