Segments

A segment is a group of contacts defined by rules, not a list you fill in by hand. You describe the conditions someone has to meet to belong — country, spend, what they've done — and the segment keeps the list current for you: each contact joins or drops out on its own as their data changes. You build it once, then target it from a campaign or automation.

In short: you define the "who" once, and the segment always hands you back the contacts that match those rules right now. Segments are in Audience › Segments, alongside Lists and Tags.

How a segment is built

You build a segment from the filter builder — the same builder the audience table uses: creating a segment opens that same contacts view with the filters. Search for what you want to filter on and add conditions. Each condition is one of three types:

• Filter by attribute — match on a contact field, such as country, total spent or any custom attribute.
• Filter by activity — match on what the contact did: placed an order, clicked a campaign, abandoned a checkout. Activity conditions can be scoped to a specific event and data source. E-commerce activity only appears for e-commerce projects.
• Filter by audience segment — include or exclude the members of another segment, so you can build on segments you already have. Each candidate is marked Automatic or Custom.

Combining conditions with AND / OR

Conditions are organised into groups, and each group has a join: AND (a contact must match all conditions) or OR (any of them). The chip between two conditions shows the current join and toggles it when you click it. You can add a New group to nest conditions — for example, an outer AND group that contains an inner OR group — to express rules like "in Spain and (a recent buyer or a high spender)".

The contact count updates as you add or change conditions, so you always see how many people the segment currently holds.

This is how a richer segment comes together — activity and attribute conditions nested in groups, mixing what a contact did (placed an order, purchased a product) with what a contact is (their country):

Operators by field type

The operators available depend on the field's data type. The full catalog:

Field type	Operators
Any field	Has any value, Is unknown (no value needed)
Yes/No	Is (True / False)
Text	Is, Is not, Contains, Does not contain, Starts with, Does not start with, Ends with, Does not end with
Number	Is, Is not, Between, Not between
Date	Is, Between, Not between, Relative, Anniversary, Time is, Weekday is
Location	Near to (longitude, latitude and a distance in km)
Segment	Include, Exclude

A few deserve a note:

• Between / Not between (number and date) take two bounds. Provide both for a closed range.
• Relative (date) matches a window relative to now — for example, the last 30 days — which is what keeps time-based segments current. The unit can be minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years.
• Anniversary matches the same day of the year (a birthday), and Time is / Weekday is match a time of day or a day of the week — handy for sends tied to office hours or weekends.
• Include / Exclude reference another segment, which is how the Filter by audience segment condition works.

Live segment size

Every segment shows its current size and share of your audience — a contact count and the percentage of the total it represents, computed live. The baseline is All audience ("Contacts from all data sources"). This is the same count you see updating in the builder as you add conditions.

Dynamic by default

Segments are dynamic: they're a saved query, not a frozen list. A contact joins the segment the moment they start matching its conditions, and drops out the moment they stop — with nothing for you to do. That's why a "purchased in the last 90 days" segment always reflects today's last 90 days, with no manual refresh.

The Segments screen separates two kinds:

• Your segments — the ones you saved. They're editable, duplicable and deletable.
• Suggested segments — a ready-made library Instasent maintains, each badged Automatic. You can't edit or delete these, but you can use them as-is to create a campaign or automation, or as a starting point.

The suggested library is broad. A sample of what's available: Recently seen contacts, Contacts with recent campaigns, Contacts without recent campaigns, Recent contacts not having purchases, Latest updated contacts, Has purchased anytime, Has not purchased anytime, Has purchased but not recently, Top customers by total spent more than €500, Top customers by total spent from €100 to €500, Periodic customers, Office-hours customers, Weekend customers, Nightly customers, Black Friday purchases, Next month predicted purchases, Predicted purchases lost, Automation recently triggered, Automation recently sent, and SMS Marketing consent NO / UNKNOWN, among others.

Lists and tags

The Segments screen has three tabs — Segments, Lists and Tags:

• Tags are free labels you apply to contacts. They're listed read-only; opening one filters the audience to the contacts that carry it.
• Lists are memberships, usually populated by a data source, and can be faceted by data source.
• Segments are the dynamic queries described above.

The difference that matters: a segment recomputes itself from rules; a list or tag is a fixed membership you control.

Acting on a segment

For your own (non-dynamic) segments, the available actions are:

• Save segment — saves the current builder as a segment. Naming rules: the name is required, 5 to 50 characters, and the description 5 to 80 characters.
• New segment — start a fresh segment.
• Edit — change a saved segment's conditions.
• Duplicate — copy a segment as " (copy)".
• Delete — remove a segment, with a confirmation.
• Download stats — export the segment's stats as a CSV.
• Create campaign / automation — target the segment directly.

Suggested (Automatic) segments can't be edited, duplicated or deleted — only used to create a campaign or automation.

The attributes and events you filter on are defined in Attributes & events. To use a segment as a campaign's audience, see Audience & targeting.