Using segments: live and daily, growth, and where they work
How quickly people come into and leave a segment, reading a segment's page — members, growth, breakdown, overlap, portrait — and using segments in flows, recipes and agents.
A segment is only worth something when you use it. This page covers how a segment keeps up to date, what its page tells you, and where you can use it. To build one, see Create a segment.
How a segment keeps up to date
- Live segments — the ones you create. A person comes in or leaves as their events arrive, usually within a minute. Conditions about time — "in the last 30 days" — are checked again every hour, so someone whose last order turns 31 days old leaves within the hour.
- Updated daily — segments marked so are computed once a night, between 02:00 and 03:00 Sofia time, not on every event. The ready-made segments for news sites work this way — see News segments: ready-made reader groups and their portrait.
- Inactive segments do not update at all; they keep their last members until you activate them again.
A segment's page
Click a segment on Audience → Segments:
| Part | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Members | How many people are in it now. |
| Growth | The change over 7, 14, 30 or 90 days. |
| Membership Growth | The number of members day by day. |
| The member list | Who is in it — Search by email or userId...; click a person to open their profile. |
| Trait Breakdown | How the members split by a trait — country, device, loyalty tier and so on. |
| Segment Overlap | Compare with: another segment — how many people are in both. |
| Portrait | On news sites: a sample of members against the site's active readers — interests, sections, loyalty, where they come from, time of day, device, authors. |
At the top: Edit, Duplicate, Activate or Deactivate, and Delete.
Where segments work
| Where | How |
|---|---|
| Automation | A flow can start when a person enters a segment — the trigger Profile Entered Segment of the CDP connector. Most recipes, such as abandoned cart or win-back, work this way. |
| Agents | The Segment builder agent turns a description of an audience into a proposed segment for you to approve. |
| Profiles | Audience → Profiles → Filters can show only the members of one segment. |
| Pages | A CDP block in a page can show a segment's numbers. |
E-mail and web push campaigns do not pick a CDP segment directly. To write to a segment, use a flow in Automation that starts on Profile Entered Segment and sends through Push.
Good to know
- A flow that starts on entering a segment acts once per entry. A person who leaves and comes back enters again.
- The first fill of a new segment does not start any flow: only people who enter after it do. That way, switching on a recipe does not write to everyone who already matches.
- After you change a segment's rules, a sudden wave of new members — more than 200, and more than a quarter of the segment — does not start flows either, to protect your customers from a flood of messages. The members are still added. If you want flows to act for them, write to [email protected].
If something doesn't work
A person who matches is not in the segment
Wait a minute, or until the night for a segment marked Updated daily. Check that the segment is Active. Then open the person's profile and compare their data with each condition.
The segment does not grow
Look at Membership Growth. A flat line on a live segment means nobody new matches — check the conditions against recent Events.
A flow did not start for a new member
Check that the flow is published and switched on in Automation and listens to this segment, and that the member has what the flow needs, such as an e-mail address.