Like a sheepdog is trained to round up and direct a flock, the Segments module allows you to produce lists of users that can either be exported or targeted in a campaign. 🐑 Creating a segment is accomplished by combining rules that will exclude or include profiles based on who matches your criteria.

Segmentation is a powerful way to dynamically track clusters of users to collect meaningful data, reach out to people and minimise staff effort towards static manually-made lists! ⚡️

➜ What can I use segments for?

➜ What are segmentation rules and what results are displayed?

➜ Where can I build a segment and how do I start a segment?

➜ How do I set up, edit and remove segmentation rules?

➜ The anatomy of a rule

➜ What kind of rules can I create?

➜ How do I create multiple rules?

➜ View and export the results of a campaign or shared segment

➜ Export and perform bulk actions on the profiles of a Class, Application or Evaluation segment

You can turn to segments for four main intents: gather a group of people to send a campaign to, elect which people can see a portal page, collect user data to produce statistics, and export user data to somewhere else outside FULL FABRIC.

The segment builder can only display user profiles and not applications, the main reason being that it's designed for universal use, and so it cannot fish all of the unique fields and responses in application forms; to obtain info on started and submitted applications access the application overview of an application template. That said, the application overview does have a segment builder of its own, as will be expounded upon below. 😁

In addition, segments can't compare datasets on their own, but you can easily export the data into Excel and run comparisons there. 😃

So, as mentioned, a segment works by determining a combo of rules, and in turn segmentation rules are the attributes you set for your profiles to meet. A segment can contain one or numerous rules, but please be mindful that the more rules you add, the more restrictive your segment will be. Profiles that fail to meet your rules are filtered out.

There are six dedicated areas for this: Shared segments, Campaigns, Portal pages, and then the Class overview, the Application overview and the Evaluation overview. Manipulating the rules is essentially the same and the ensuing records are exportable everywhere, but each area presents advantages and limitations according to end goal.  🎌

If the purpose of your segment is to send a targeted campaign, just enter a campaign and jump to the tab Audience. Click here to learn how to start, duplicate or edit a campaign. Please note that an audience segment lives inside the campaign, i.e., it can't be reused.

If your segment is likely to be useful across several campaigns or even be of high interest to teammates, you're better off using Shared segments. As the name implies, it's the only place where you can build shareable segments that exist independently, meaning that you can create a segment just for the sake of research and keep it so, or upload it to unlimited campaigns as audience.

To create a shared segment:

     1) Click the gear at the top right-hand corner and choose Shared segments    
​     2) Click Create a new segment, NAME it and then click Create segment and add more info

Next you'll be automatically redirected to the tab Builder of your segment, which, unsurprisingly, is the segment builder.

The other tab, Details, allows you to change the Name of your shared segment and features who it was Created by and when it was Created at (the last two fields aren't editable).

If you want to edit an existing shared segment, go to Shared segments and click the gear at the end of a segment. Click X to delete.

View let's you look for an existing shared segment by staff member or department who authored it.

Building a page for your applications portal raises important questions of availability, and although it's not compulsory – because, obviously, the point is to serve your vision and necessities –, you may create a segment to set the audience of the page.

To do so:
​     1) Click Apps on the sidebar and then Portal
​     2) Enter a page and open the Audience tab
​     3) Press Create access scope

The segment builder will then appear down below. Please note that it only allows for segmentation by context (defined later), and that, just like with Campaigns, the audience segment can't be reused (it lives inside the page).

By going inside a class, an evaluation or an application form to manage its' respective users, you have the possibility to build a quick segment right there and then. The segment will exclusively admit users who belong to the class, evaluation or application form you're at. This spares you the trouble of navigating to Shared segments, stands for one less context rule to create, and puts you at the heart of a class, evaluation or application form of your choice to pull its' data entries and create a segment.

And what's more, there you can also build, save and apply views: custom mixes of rules, filters and columns to quickly find and analyse specific records. Get more info here!

To start a segment:

     a) Class overview
​          1) Click Programmes on the sidebar
​          2) Choose a programme and then a class to enter

     b) Application overview
​          1) Click Applications on the sidebar and stay on the APPLICATIONS tab
​          2) Select a form to enter

     c) Evaluation overview
​          1) Click Applications on the sidebar and switch to the EVALUATIONS tab
​          2) Select an evaluation to enter

Lastly, press the inverted triangle on the list search bar:

The segment builder will open as a pop-up window.

Unique to the programme and application overviews is that they also possess an additional segmentation tool to instantly filter by status. 😃

Inside a class, this means filtering by profile state:

And inside an application form, this means filtering by state of progress:

Wherever it is that you're building a segment, the process is almost identical.

When building a segment inside the portal and campaign Audience tabs or inside a Shared template, by default there's always a "profile ⇢ is a ⇢ applicant" rule, but feel free to edit or discard it. 😉 There's no default rule in the Class, Application or Evaluation overviews.

To create a brand new rule: click the button Add new rule.

To delete a rule: click the X on the right-side of the rule.

To edit a rule: The body of a rule comprises dropdown menus and a multi-select area field, so just click to select, and hold CTRL/CMD to pick several values from the multi-select area field.

Apart from this, the Class, Application or Evaluation overviews have two more buttons: Clear to scrap the segment, and Done to execute.

A rule is composed of two to three elements: the subject of the rule, the actual rule, and if necessary a range of values. 

Since segments are meant to display profiles, that's the primary and fixed subject of every first rule of a segment. Additional rules offer a variety of subjects related to profiles, namely all of the fields from a profile, application or evaluation schema (e.g. gender, date of birth, nationality, etc.)

The second section allows you to set the criteria you need to run. Some rules are self-contained (e.g., "profile ⇢ is inactive", "profile ⇢ has accepted the privacy policy", etc.), where others are open-ended and require a third step to define a complementary range of values ("first language ⇢ is equal to ⇢ [choose value/s]", "profile ⇢ is owned by ⇢ [choose value/s]", etc.)

This third step is like the other half of a rule, there sometimes to complete it (e.g., "profile ⇢ is a ⇢ prospect::cold", "GMAT score ⇢ is greater than or equal to ⇢ 700").

When you take all of the combinations into account, there are literally hundreds of rules to be created, so let's sift through this together to make sense out of it. 🤓

Context refers to the class and lifecycle stage that the user is associated with, as well as potential, withdrawn status, tags, source, position towards privacy and marketing policies, account activation state, the existence of applications and evaluations and if the primary email is bouncing.

This allows you to create rules based on the data that's been captured by any of the fields within the profile, application, evaluation, organisation and experience schemas. The latter includes both professional and academic entries.

Segmenting by campaign retrieves data from sent campaigns and users' interactions with them. This is particularly useful to send follow-up emails (e.g., to encourage readers into a certain action). 💃

With the rules below, you can retrieve data on event registration and attendance, which is especially handy to send information to registrants of upcoming events (like an event program, a course summary for registrants to prepare their questions beforehand, etc.)

It's possible to build segments based on form submission. For example, you may decide to send further information on part-time courses for anyone that downloaded the part-time course brochure. 📑

You can segment profiles and contacts by organisation, which is achieved by grabbing all of the primary contacts or all of the people in the community of an organisation:

Suppose you want to send an email campaign, for instance: you could combine the rule "profile ⇢ is in the community of ⇢ [select organisation/s]" with "profile ⇢ is a primary contact" or even "profile ⇢ is in ⇢ [choose value/s]" to target the respective candidates and contacts! 📨

Furthermore, overlapping with point b, it's also possible to return profiles based on the information we have about the organisations in their experience entries, namely the Industry, Name, Country and Summary of the organisation:

As was heretofore mentioned, all it takes to create a new rule is click Add new rule, and there's no limit to the number of rules you can generate.

In that sense, when combining two or more rules you can adopt an AND or OR logic. AND is always default, but just click it to switch to OR and the other way around. A segment can only be built with one type of logic, because otherwise it would conflict with itself.

When you bond your rules with the AND logic, users have to satisfy the entire set of attributes in order to be comprehended into the segment.

Consider the diagram below, where each circle represents a distinct rule. The AND logic targets the overlapping region – put simply, the users who fit both categories.

When you lay down the rules using the OR logic, your users are only required to meet one of them in order to be comprehended into the segment.

Again, consider the diagram below, where each circle represents a distinct rule. The OR logic targets all of the regions – that is, the users who fit any of the pre-established categories.

At the very top of the page there's a quantitative bar that displays how many users fulfil the preordained requisites and then breaks them down by delivery potential.

TOTAL — How many profiles comply with the rule(s).
​ADDRESSABLE — How many users are actually addressable by email after excluding unsubscribes. 📤
​BOUNCED — Number of email addresses that cause campaigns to bounce.
​SPAM — Recipients that have marked a previous campaign as spam.
​UNSUBSCRIBED — Users who opted-out of campaign emails. 😪

Underneath the set of rules you'll have a detailed view of all of the resulting records:

Every row begins with a visual clue to impart the subscription status of that particular profile:

What's more is that you have various nifty tools at your disposal to manoeuvre the records! 😃
​The search field — Write in a name or email address to filter a specific profile on the table.
​The profile shortcut — Use the icon at the end of each row as a direct route to that person’s profile.
​The column manager — Select and deselect to add and remove columns to the table depending on what data beseeches your attention.

Export — Click the three dots to export the dataset into an Excel, PDF or CSV file.
​Unsubscribe — Likewise, click the three dots to unsubscribe all profiles at once from marketing communications.
​Delete profiles — Click the three dots to delete every person in the segment from FULL FABRIC (this action is irreversible, so use carefully).

Different overviews provide different bulk actions, as will be shown below. Meanwhile, it's worth noting that both overviews possess the column manager to add and remove columns to the table view and exhibit the exact information you want to see.

The three dots on the search list bar let's you Export the profiles and respective applications that your segment harvested. No other profiles other than those in your active segment or view will be exported.

Similarly, the programme overview lets you Export profiles and much more: Update state and substate, Withdraw or Unwithdraw from that class, Assign to owner and Unsubscribe from marketing communications. Again, only the profiles narrowed down by an active segment or view will be impacted.

You have reached the end of this article. Thanks for reading! 🤓 If you have any questions or comments on the topic at hand, or if you enjoy reads like this and have article requests, let us know. Also, please leave a rating below. Your feedback is highly appreciated! 💖

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PUBLISHED: March 21, 2019
​LAST UPDATED: March 3, 2021 at 11:41 a.m.