Understanding ActiveCampaign Segments

• What are segments?
• Why would I use segments?
• Most common use cases
• How do I create a segment?
• Can I create a segment based on automations?
• Standard segments & naming conventions

ActiveCampaign segments are a way to group your contacts to allow for targeted email or newsletter sends.

Why would I use Segments?

Segments can be used to create sub-groups of contacts, but there are a few notes to keep in mind:

• Segments will include inactive contacts that match the criteria. However, when sending a segment it will only send to active contacts, not those that are unsubscribed or bounced.
• Saving segments will save you time in replicating and rebuilding these on a per campaign basis. 
• Segments will also allow you to track the active subscriber counts for each specific sub-group rather than any email that meets the conditions, giving more accurate results.

Most common use cases:

• Filtering for members with an active (or former) membership status:
  • For example, publications may filter for contacts with a former membership status to send targeted follow-ups asking them to re-subscribe or asking them why they canceled.
• Filtering for members with a specific newsletter preference selected:
  • These are useful when a publication is using a single master list with tags to designate newsletter preferences, and can be used to create a sub-group of contacts that are subscribed via a tag to the newsletter.
• Filtering for contacts that have not opened a specific newsletter:
  • If a contact has not opened an end of year campaign email, you can filter those contacts and send out a targeted re-send.
• Filtering contacts by external events:
  • Publications may choose to filter contacts based on an external event that they attended, such as a local news conference or a grand opening.
• Filtering contacts that are part of your organization, board, government, etc.:
  • If your publication has a partnership with a local government or library, you can segment these contacts based upon their affiliation(s).
• Filtering contacts by engagement scoring:
  • A publication may send a campaign to any highly engaged contacts that are not yet members/donors. Within this process, publications may choose to give a special offer to highly engaged contacts rather than the standard offer.

How do I create and save a segment?

• If you’re looking to set up and/or save a segment of contacts, you can learn more about this process and setup here.
  • Be sure to review the sections for creating a segment with advanced search and creating a segment during campaign creation.

Can I create a segment based upon automations?

• For documentation on how to segment for contacts who’ve entered an automation and which triggers they entered through, you can find further details here.

What are our standard segments and naming conventions?

• Campaign: [campaign name] – These segments are used for anything that’s sent out as part of a multi-email campaign or campaign series. For example, our end-of-year campaign would look as such: Campaign: EOY 2023
• Newsletter: [newsletter name] – These segments are used directly for newsletters. For example: Newsletter: Daily Headlines
• Membership: [membership segment] – These segments are used to identify the different membership, donation or subscription statuses. For example, active donors would look as such: Donors: Actives and active members would look as such: Members: Actives
• For Membership, we list out the following statuses: Active, Formers, Nevers and Non-Members/Donors.
  • Actives are current members, donors or subscribers
  • Formers are ex-members, donors or subscribers that don’t currently have a contribution status
  • Nevers are those who have never previously been a member, donor or subscriber AND currently aren’t a member, donor or subscriber
  • Non-Members/Donors/Subscribers is a combination of the Formers and Nevers segment, and shows all contacts who are not currently members, donors or subscribers regardless of previous contribution history
  • One-Time Donors is a segment that’s dependent upon the conditions listed below. Please review and confirm how you typically treat one-time donors to determine how these will be segmented.
• ***Note that one-time donors may or may not be included in these segments depending on how you choose to treat one-time donations versus memberships/subscriptions.
  • If you treat them as members/subscribers, we include these one-time donors in the Actives segment as any donor whose latest payment date is within the last 365 days.
    • Any donors with their latest payment date made outside of the 365 day threshold will be treated as Formers and Non-Members.
    • We will also set up a segment specifically for One-Time Donors in case there are any specific CTA’s a publication wishes to send them.
  • If you don’t offer the same benefits to one-time donors, we will setup these donors in the Nevers and Non-Members segments and will also create an additional segment solely for these one-time donors, with the naming convention of “One-Time Donors”.
• If you would like us to segment one-time donors differently than the above standardized setup, please coordinate with your SSC to make sure these donors will be segmented in line with your publication’s offerings.
  • Please also note that this article & section refer specifically to ActiveCampaign benefits for subscribers and for segmenting purposes as well. This does NOT apply to benefits offered on your publication’s website or your subscriptions management platform.