Question/Problem Description

Environment

Resolution

Creating Segments

Segments are subsets of your list. They allow you to target specific members of your list based on information you have about them. For example, they could allow you to send a special message to only those list members who

- live in Canada

- have made a major purchase in the last year

- have an email address at a particular domain (e.g., aol.com or hotmail.com)

Note that you can only segment your list based on the information you have about your members. This information must be included when they join or when you import them. See  Adding Members  for more information.

You don't have to create segments for your list. If you don't create and select a segment, your message will simply be sent to your entire list.

The Main Segments Page

The main Segments page shows you all of the segments you've created for a particular list. You can save, edit or test segments on this page. Like the main Contents page, it is a kind of "library" of your segments. Some segments have been created for you automatically—"administrators", "aol" and "not-aol."

Creating a Segment

This example shows how to make a segment of all recipients who work in education—they have .edu as their top-level domain.

1. In the left Navigation bar, click  Segments .

2. Click  Create New Segment . For triggered segments, which are segments that will be mailed to based on a particular action, click  Create New Triggered Segment .

3. Enter  edu  for the segment's  Name . Note: A segment name must contain only lower-case alphanumeric characters (a-z, 0-9), hyphens (-), or underscores (_). There can be no spaces in a segment's name.

4. Enter  Education Addresses  for the segment's  Description .

5. Click  Insert Clause  to set the rules for the segment, for instance, to create a segment for a particular domain, date or action. For this example, select  members_.Domain_  on the  If member text field  on the  Text  tab. For details on each type of insertable clause, see  text ,  numeric ,  date ,  action ,  clickthrough ,  clickstream ,  purchase , and  interest .

6. Click  Insert . The clause you created appears in the  Query  box:

7. Click  Save and Test . You will be taken to the Segments: Test Segment page, where you can see the query generated and a sample of the addresses pulled. Note that if you don't have any .edu addresses, no names will be displayed here.