Segments Overview
Segments are named groups of people who share characteristics or behaviors.
A Segment can have many people and a person can belong to many segments.
You can use segments as recipient lists, campaign triggers, filters, conversion criteria and more. Whenever you need to reference a subset of the people in your workspace, you’ll use a segment.
Types of segments
You can create two different kinds of segments in Customer.io. The way people enter and exit your segments depends on the type of segment you create.
Data-driven Segments: People enter and exit data-driven segments automatically when they match and stop matching the conditions that you set for the segment. These segments help you take action based on your audience’s real-time actions. You should use data-driven segments when you want Customer.io to move people in and out of your segments automatically based on the data that Second Door sends to Customer.io for each person.
Manual Segments: People enter and exit manual segments when you explicitly add them to, or remove them from, the segment. You might take advantage of manual segments when you want to move people in and out of segments based on business logic outside of Customer.io. You can add people to manual segments through a CSV upload, as part of a campaign workflow, or using our API. You can remove people from manual segments using the “Clear Segment” option, a campaign workflow action, or using our API.
When to create a data-driven vs manual segment
Customer.io shines best when you have an active data integration between your system and ours. This allows you to utilize attributes and behaviors of your end-users to set up automated messaging from our app.
That is the power of Data-driven Segments, and for the most part this is the type of Segment you should be using.
Manual Segments are available in instances where you need more hands-on control of the Segment, you are expecting limited changes or a data integration is not available to you.