The sheer amount of options in the segment builder might overwhelm you at first, but don't worry, they will make perfect sense only after a few minutes of playing around with the builder.

Note: This document is about the conditional options that are available if you go for the list-based segment builder. If you want to build segments off of reports, check out this document.

In case you need the extra confidence or want to double check what each option in advanced segment builder does, this is the right document for you.

If you know that "Fields" in here is short for "Prebuilt & Custom Fields" I think you will already know how to use this option. It basically allows you set conditions based on the values inside of different subscriber fields.

All you have to do is click on the "Fields" button and you get a condition added to your builder that lets you define things based on the content inside of a field.

The first dropdown on the left lets you choose the field you want our builder to look into. In this screenshot you can see we have just the regular pre-built fields like "Name", and "Zip". You might also see these fields called "test 3", "test 2", "test".

This is because I'm making these screenshots on a test account. In your case it will show more practical things based on things you have built. You might for example have a custom field called "Interests" or "Company Size".

The second dropdown is where you choose what kind of lookup you want our builder to perform. In this image we are telling it the condition is that a subscriber has City equal to Chicago.

The first two options are the ones you will use the most

You also have a couple of numeric ones

You would use these for custom fields where you store quantifiable numeric data. Such as for example "Number of Employees".

And finally, you have more advanced lookup types

Substring*

*Substring

Not Substring*

Not *Substring

This just tells us to look for certain content at the start or the end of a custom field. Let's make up an illustrative example just for the sake of illustrating how it works. Let us say you have a custom field where you store someone's sport and role. For example the custom field might store "Basketball Player" or "Baseball Coach".

With the Substring* option we could identify all coaches regardless of the sport. So you would just choose "Substring*" and "Coach". If on the other hand you're interested in the sport and not the role, you would use *Substring. So you would set it as "*Substring" and "Basketball". This would match all of the Basketball people, regardless if player or coach.

These are really crucial to building proper segments both in terms of deliverability and conversion. In fact, the options here are the most important ways to measure engagement, which in turn is the single biggest factor in your profitability and deliverability. But that's separate article.

In here we have 6 different options

Note that all of these options are in regards to your emails in general, not any one specific email. So have they opened an email in general, any email. Or have they clicked inside of any email, at all.

If you want to build a segment off of people's behavior around a specific email you can build a segment off of a report.

This option is short for "When did they subscribe (Set in terms of a set number of days). It offers you to match your number in 3 ways. Let us say you put in the value 14 days. Here's how each of the 3 modes would work.

Equal to - This is if you want to identify people who joined exactly 14 days ago.

Less than - Identifies the people who joined less than 14 days ago

Greater then - Only matches people who joined more than 14 days ago

This option is short for "When did they subscribe (Set in terms of a date range). So with this option you might tell the builder to match any people who joined between March 1st and June 15th.

The tags condition is pretty simple and straightforward. You just choose to set the condition to either IS (has these tags) or IS NOT (doesn't have these tags).

If set to the first one, it will match all subscribers who have said tags. If said to the second one, it will match all subscribers who do not have these tags.

If you are familiar with our old segment builder, this option used to be called "amount". It is an advanced broadcasting feature where you might want to break up a broadcast in smaller chunks.

Let's say that you build a segment of openers that matches 10,230 people. But you don't want to broadcast to 10,000 people all at once and want to split it in two chunks.

You would first create a segment called "Openers, first 5k". In it you set a condition to people who have opened your emails. And a second condition of volume set to go from 1 to 5,000.

Then, you would create an identical segment that volume set from 5,001 to 10,000. You might name this segment "Openers, second 5k".

You would then send the broadcast to the first segment, and then maybe later on, or a day later send it to the second segment, i.e. "openers, second 5k".

This options is for those of you who are using GDPR forms for your subscribers. As part of the GDPR model whenever a person subscribes for your list, you need to offer them the option to explicitly say what they are interested in hearing about.

For example, they might give you GDPR permissions for:

One subscriber might give you permission to email them about all 3 types of things. Another might only "allow you" to email them about "weekly tips" and nothing else.

So, when you are building a segment, you might need to add a condition based on what permissions a subscriber has given you in a GDPR form.