Segments Overview

Use segments to identify and target a subset of your contacts that meet your specified criteria.

What is Segmentation?

Segmentation is a marketing strategy used to increase campaign engagement and improve campaign results by targeting the right contacts, at the right time, with the right campaign.

Using the Constant Contact user interface (UI) or the V3 API, you create segments that Constant Contact uses to evaluate and identify a resulting subset of contacts meeting your specified segment criteria.

You specify contact-related data as segment criteria from the following data sources:

Tracking activities (tracking): Constant Contact tracks how a contact interacts with your past campaigns. To include contacts based on contact tracked activities, specify the tracking activities to use in the segment criteria. For example, you can choose to include contacts that opened and clicked an email campaign activity within the last 60 days.
Contact details (contact): To include or exclude contacts based on contact details and custom contact fields, specify the contact data to use in the segment criteria. For example, you can create a segment that includes contacts that have birthdays in April, and that do not live in Maryland.
List memberships (contact list_membership): To limit the number of contacts Constant Contact evaluates, specify the contact list(s) to use. If no contact list is specified, all contacts in your account are evaluated.
Tags (tags): To include or exclude contacts based on tags, specify the tags (by tag_id) to use in the segment criteria.

The following shows segment criteria and data source examples.

After creating and saving a segment, review the segment's contact results. To correct or refine the results, update the segment criteria. When you are ready, use the segment to target contacts for the intended campaign.

Unlike contact lists, segments are dynamic. A segment's contact results can differ over time based on changes to contact interaction with campaigns (tracked activities), contact details, and contact list assignment.

To help determine your segmentation strategy, you can use V3 reporting endpoints to gain insights about your past email campaigns.

Learn More about using email reports that track how contacts interact with your email campaigns.

Learn More about how a specific contact interacts with your email campaigns.

Segment Criteria

You can create a segment using either the Constant Contact user interface or using the V3 API POST /segments endpoint. Both require that you specify a segment name and the segment_criteria to use.

For readability purposes, many of the JSON examples in this topic are not formatted to use single-string escaped JSON (required).

Use a text formatter or editor of your choice, such as the JSON Formatter, to remove white spaces, extra lines, and to replace ” with \” in the segment_criteria.

Segment Properties

The following table lists and describes segment properties:

Property	Type	Description
`segment_id`	`integer`	The system generated ID that uniquely identifies a segment.
`name`	`string`	The unique name that you specify for a segment.
`created_at`	`string`	The system generated date and time that the segment was created. The read-only date and time displays in ISO-8601 format. For example: `018-02-06T22:09:15.000Z`.
`edited_at`	`string`	The system generated date and time that the segment's `name` or `segment_criteria` was last edited. The read-only date and time displays in ISO-8601 format. For example: `018-02-06T22:09:15.000Z`.
`segment_criteria`	`string`	Specifies the data source and criteria to use to evaluate and filter through your contacts to identify only those contacts that meet your specified criteria. Segment data sources include: `tracking` (supports "and" and "or" joins) `contact` (supports "and" and "or" joins) `list_membership` (supports "or" joins) `tags` (supports "or" joins)

Learn More about creating new segments.

Grouping Data Sources

When using the V3 API to group contact data from different data sources, a top-level group must exist in the segment criteria ("segment_criteria\":{\"type\":\"and\",\"group\":). Under the top group, you add groups from different data sources. For example, you might want to create a segment used to evaluate and identify contacts that are members on a contact list "and" that did not open any of your last five email campaigns. This requires grouping list_membership data with tracking data.

Using the V3 API, you group data from different data sources using "type": "and",.

Grouping Rules

When grouping segment criteria from data sources using the V3 API, the following rules apply:

Segment criteria

The segment_criteria must begin with an and.

Different data source groups

Must be combined using and. For example, you cannot use or to combine tracking or contact groups.

Grouping data from the same data source group

Supports and and or for contact and tracking data using the following group combinations:

(contact or contact) and contact
(contact or contact) and (contact or contact)
(tracking or tracking) and tracking
(tracking or tracking) and (tracking or tracking)
(list_membership or list_membership or list_membership)
(tags or tags or tags)

Does not support:

list_membership and list_membership
tags and tags

Chaining data from the same data source group

Supports or when chained with and, but does not support and when chained with or.

Not supported: (tracking and tracking) or tracking

Nesting data

Supports for an or group when nested within an and group.

Combining fields from the same data source

Supports combining fields using or. For example: state eq MA or postal_code eq 02451, as well as intra-fields such as, state eq MA or state eq RI.

Using Operators

Depending on the data source and parameter being specified, the V3 API supports the following operators:

Equals (eq) - is case-insensitive.

  {
     "source": "tracking",
     "field": "sent",
     "op": "eq",
     "value": "4c08372c-957a-48b5-bc45-72c7f00796cd"
   }

Not Equals (ne) - is case-insensitive and applies to null value.

  {
    "source": "tracking",
    "field": "sent",
    "op": "ne",
    "value": "4c08372c-957a-48b5-bc45-72c7f00796cd"
  }

Starts with (starts-with) - is case-insensitive and applies to string values.

  {
     "source": "contact",
     "field": "title",
     "op": "starts-with",
     "value": "dir"
  }

Contains string (contains-string) - applies to string values and is case-insensitive.

  {
     "source": "contact",
     "field": "state",
     "op": "contains-string",
     "value": "Connecticut"
  }

Is Blank (eq blank) - is equal to null for an empty string or whitespaces in string values.

  {
     "source": "contact",
     "field": "state",
     "op": "eq",
     "const_value": "blank"
  }

Is Not Blank (ne blank") - is not null, for an empty string or whitespaces in string values.

  {
     "source": "contact",
     "field": "state",
     "op": "ne",
     "const_value": "blank"
  }

Tracking Activities Data Source

Use tracking data as segment criteria to get contacts that engaged or did not engage in specific tracking activities for one or more of your sent email campaigns.

Using the V3 API, specify one or more of the following tracking activity fields to use as segment criteria:

Name	Description
`sent`	Contacts that were sent an email campaign activity.
`not_sent`	Contacts that were not sent an email campaign activity.
`opened`	Contacts that opened an email campaign activity.
`not_opened`	Contacts that did not open an email campaign activity.
`clicked`	Contacts that clicked an email campaign activity.
`not_clicked`	Contacts that did not click an email campaign activity.

The default maximum number of email campaign activities to evaluate is 500. To avoid returning a 400 error response, when specifying the segment_criteria do not request more than 500 email campaigns or a date range greater than 1825 days (5 years) be evaluated.

Contact Data Source

The contact data source supports and and or to join contact data in the segment criteria. For example, you can create a segment used to identify contacts that have a job title of Director and live in Massachusetts.

The data source includes the following types of contact data:

Standard contact fields: Property fields from the contact's profile information such as birthday month.
Custom contact fields: Property fields that you named and defined (must already exist).
System defined fields: Property fields such as the date the contact was added, date updated, and the source of the contact.

Use the V3 API, to specify multiple contact field properties to include or exclude in the segment criteria (using "op":"eq" and "op":"ne" operations). You can also use starts-with and contains-string operations with value strings. The system generated date_added and date_updated fields only support the contains-any operation with const_value for either in-range (array of two dates) or last-n-days (integer).

List Membership Data Source

To limit the number of contacts that the segment criteria must evaluate and process, specify the contact lists to use. The list_membership data source only supports joining list data using or.

Example: List Membership Data Source Segment Criteria using the UI

Example: List Membership Data Source Segment Criteria using the V3 API

Specify which contact lists (list_id) to use. To include contacts that are not on a list, set the const_value to none and leave the list_id blank. If no contact lists are specified in the segment criteria, all contacts in your account are evaluated and processed. You can use or to specify more than one list to include in the segment criteria.


 "criteria": {
    "type": "and",
    "group": [
       {
        "type": "or",
        "group": [
          {
            "source": "list_membership",
            "field": "list_id",
            "op": "eq",
            "value": "04fe9a-a579-43c5-bb1a-58ed29bf0a6a"
          },
         {
            "source": "list_membership",
            "field": "list_id",
            "op": "eq",
            "value": "08bd8c-a579-43c5-bb1a-58ed29bf0a6a"
         }
       ]
      }
    ]  
  }

Tags Data Source

To include or exclude tagged contacts in the contact results, in the segment criteria, specify the tag_id to include (eq) or exclude (ne). The tags data source only supports joining list data using or.

Example: Tags Data Source Segment Criteria using the UI

Example: Tags Data Source Segment Criteria using the V3 API

To include contacts that are not tagged, set the const_value to none and leave the tag_id blank. You can use or to specify more than one tag to include in the segment criteria.

  "criteria": {
      "type": "and",
      "group": [
         {
          "type": "or",
          "group": [
            {
              "source": "tags",
              "field": "tag_id",
              "op": "eq",
              "value": "{tag UUID}"
            },
           {
              "source": "tags",
              "field": "tag_id",
              "op": "ne",
              "value": "{tag UUID}"
           }
         ]
        }
      ]  
    }

Methods and Endpoints

To create and manage segments using the V3 API, use the segment endpoints that follow.

POST /segments

To create a new segment, use the POST /segments endpoint to specify the name and segment_criteria for the segment.