Segments

Read more about Creating a Segment.

Segments are filtered portions of your Audience updated by the platform either in real-time or periodically, as well as at campaign send time, depending on the type of filters utilized in the segment.

Creating a Segment

Navigate to Audiences > Segments & Lists from the menu on the left and click on Explore Audience.

Within the Audience Explorer, click on [Account Name] Data source and select the filters of your choice to build your desired segment.

These filter types are available: Properties, Contacts, Events, Experiences, Campaigns, Segments, Demographic Filters, Locations, and Zero Copy Data.

Segment Filters

Sources are grouped by data type, and each type supports a unique set of filtering operators designed for that property’s structure and values.

Segmentation

Properties

One way to target users is to filter them by implicit or explicit property. You can select a variety of properties, from a customer’s city to their last-opened email timestamp.

• Click on the icon to add additional property filters and select the AND to toggle and OR to change how property filters are applied. You can also nest filters here to apply more than one property filter.

• You can also filter properties by the specific data type. For example, by selecting a property and then using one of the following: is before, is after, or if using a numerical property, it can be set to greater than, less than, etc.

Contact Properties

Contact properties are attributes associated with a customer profile, such as contact type, status, preferences, or engagement activity like last opened or last clicked. You can filter records using property-specific operators based on the property’s data type. You also have the option to add another type of filter (events, campaign, or segment) to further refine your Audience. Click on Apply to see the results.

Events

Customer events are events tracked by our system. Events include tracking when a customer last logged in or when they viewed the website. You can also include a time frame, and you have the option to add a different type of filter (campaign, property, or segment) to your Audience. Click on Apply to see the results.

Experiences

Find users who entered, exited from, or skipped specific experiences. You can also include a time frame, and you have the option to add a different type of property filter (e.g., Exit type or Skipped reason) to your audience. Click on Apply to see the results.

Campaigns

You can filter the records by who did or did not open, send, or click on a specific campaign. You can also include a time frame, and you have the option to add a different type of filter (activities, property, or segment) to your audience. Click on Apply to see the results.

Segment Entry/Exit

Here you can find which users have entered or exited a certain segment. The hub keeps this information up to date automatically. You can also include a time frame, and you have the option to add a different type of filter (campaign, property, or activity) to your audience. Click on Apply to see results.

Note: Only trackable segments are available for this option. See Tracking / trackable segments for details.

Demographic Filters

Demographic filters allow you to refine your audience using demographic attributes such as gender, age, income, or multicultural audience categories. These filters help narrow results based on customer demographic characteristics. You can also combine demographic filters with other filter types (contacts, events, campaigns, or segments) to further customize your Audience. Click on Apply to see the results.

There is currently a limitation on the level of nesting you can create when building a segment that checks for membership in another segment.

For example, if Segment A is built with a filter that checks for membership in Segment B and Segment B has a filter criterion that checks for members in Segment C; it reaches the maximum level of nesting. If you further attempt to check for membership in another segment in Segment C, you will be restricted and will see a warning on the interface.

Campaign Properties-Based Segmentation

In addition to qualifying users based on their interaction with campaigns, users can fine-tune the qualification criteria to include properties associated with the campaign event.

For Example, User's a2_city is NYC, and within the campaign, the user clicked the CTA

Tracking

Segment membership and trend tracking can be enabled upon saving the audience by toggling Enable Tracking to ON.

You can also enable it post-save by selecting the segment from the Segments and Lists Summary screen to display the panel. If the segment is eligible for tracking, an option to Enable Tracking will be visible. This option is disabled by default.

For any segment that you want to be able to pull into the content based on your user membership, that segment will need to have tracking enabled to function correctly. 

Tracking Limitations

Tracking is not available for segments with certain types of filters, as detailed below:

Properties

• Supported for any combination of filters.

Events

• Supported for one positive event filter (i.e., Did purchase).

• Supported for non-aggregate property filter within an Event filter (i.e., Did Purchase with purchase_amount >100).

• Not supported for the event with time filter (i.e., Did purchase anytime within last 7 days) or with properties using relative time filter (i.e., Did purchase with purchase_date within last 7 days)

• *Not supported for more than one event filter. (Learn More)

• Not supported for negative event filter (i.e., Did not Purchase).

• Not supported for aggregate property filter within an Event filter.

Campaigns

• Not supported for any combination of filters.

Experiences

• Not supported for any combination of filters.

Segment Entry/Exit

• Not supported for any combination of filters.

Zeta Audiences

• Not supported for any combination of filters.

Query-Based Segments

• Not supported for any combination of filters.

When the Data Cloud toggle is turned off for a segment containing Data Cloud data, the platform will not use the Data Cloud data for that segment. As a result, any targeting or segmentation based on Data Cloud attributes will be ignored, and the segment will rely solely on other available data sources. To avoid disruptions, please ensure that the toggle remains enabled or update your experiences accordingly before the end of the B+ Data Cloud contract.

Segment Build-up Transparency

The Segment Build-Up Transparency feature enables users to see how long their audience will take to process. This includes tracked segments and tracked lists that are heavily used by users, and relatively newer types of lists, including Matched and Lookalike audiences.

The following are the different transparency views:

Transparency into the estimated time while updating a segment

Once you have created your segment and attempted to save it, a modal appears with the estimated completion time.

Transparency into the estimated time while creating a segment

This feature allows you to see how long it will take for a tracked segment to be ready.

Transparency into the progress of segment creation

On the main Segments & Lists screen, you will see a progress bar indicating the estimated time for the segment to be ready for use. You have the option to stop the segment from processing and archive it by clicking on the red X icon.

Segmentation Based on Page Views

ZMP enriches page view signals from your site visitors and processes them through its powerful AI engine to deliver outcome-focused insights that you can act on. While these signals were previously internal, there are times when you need to use this stream of signals to create a cohort of visitors for your specific use cases and activate them in ZMP.

We can now use these enriched page view events through the existing interface and segment your customers based on their visits to specific pages, product categories, or demographic changes.

Segment Membership Count Update

The membership count for segments is updated based on a scheduler. For low-priority segments, whose criteria have not been updated in 60 days, the longest time it can take to update is 30 days. However, if you want the update to occur more frequently, ZMP can refresh the metadata to make the segment high-priority according to the updated_at field. 

It's important to note that if the segment was used for a campaign, the latest membership would be calculated before execution, regardless of when the membership count refresh was last done.

Untracked segments

The UI display of membership count for untracked segments is updated based on a scheduler. The scheduler works on a round-robin basis across all your segments to keep the count on the UI refreshed based on the recency and frequency of use. ZMP also offers the ability to override this behavior and apply a faster cadence for select segments if needed. Please reach out to your account team to discuss your use case. Note: When the segment is used in a campaign, ZMP always computes the latest member count before execution of campaigns, regardless of the count being displayed on the UI.

Tracked Segments

The display of membership count on the UI for tracked segments is updated in near real-time. The tracked segment enables the option to track and record events for each entry and exit of members. These events can be used to trigger experiences, report on individual-level membership, restrict messaging frequency, and look up for a person's membership via API. Depending on the size, it can take time for such a segment to be initialized and become ready for activation. Once initialized, they operate in near real-time. Note: A higher number of tracked segments may increase the number of events tracked in your account and subsequently the total cost of ownership. When changing the name of a trackable segment in the ZMP, the modification is primarily at the UI level and does not impact backend functionality. The segment's data or behavior in experiences or campaigns remains unaffected. However, it's important to verify that the new name is reflected in all relevant areas across the platform, especially if the segment is used in multiple experiences or campaigns, to prevent any confusion. While the renaming process shouldn't cause backend issues, confirming its proper usage throughout the platform is a good practice.