Segment Prioritization Lists

Often, you create a campaign that targets multiple segments. Then you create another campaign. What happens if contacts are in more than one segment and thus targeted by more than one campaign? Multiple messages. To avoid over-communicating, use Segment Prioritization Lists.

For example, let's say you're a travel provider. Browsing destinations indicates your customer is considering traveling. Clicking a flight link shows your customer has intent to travel somewhere specific, and adding dates focuses their intent even more. You have three segments created already:

• one for destination browsing
• one for flight searches
• one for selecting dates

Depending on the campaigns you have set up, this adventurous customer could potentially receive three different communications focused on:

• traveling in general
• a specific destination
• a specific time period

However, with Segment Prioritization Lists you can prioritize which campaign a customer should be part of. Maybe you want to target the dates first since they are the most focused, with clear intent to buy? You can prioritize the time period search segment, and suppress the rest, so that if a customer fell into all three, they'd still only get one email, more personalized to them.

Take a look at this tutorial and the guide below to get started!

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Creating a Segment Prioritization List for the first time or exclusion logic involved?

Creating a Segment Prioritization List using segments that already include exclusion logic (i.e. a segment that excludes contacts in another segment) is not advised and may lead to poor performance. If you’re creating a Segment Prioritization List for the first time or your segments include exclusion logic, please reach out to your account manager to walk you through the process.

How to Build a Segment Prioritization List

You can have up to 30 Segments per Segment Prioritization List at a time. To create a new one:

1. Navigate to Segments
2. Click the Prioritization tab:

3. Click Create Prioritization List.

4. Name your prioritization list.
5. Optionally, describe the function of this list so you can easily re-use it.
6. From the drop-down, search for and select a segment to suppress. Click Add Segment to add an additional segment to this prioritization list.

• A segment is greyed out/disabled if it is used in another live or draft prioritization list.
• You can only use segments in one prioritization list, draft or live, at a time.
• 30 segments max.

7. Use the arrows to prioritize which segment gets suppressed first. The first segment is not suppressed; any contacts in subsequent segments that were in a previous segment will be suppressed. See How does it all work? for more logic detail.
8. If you're not ready to use this list, click Save For Later to return to it without going live.
9. If you're ready to use this list now, click Launch. You can still edit it later if you need to make changes, but all logic will go live as you make changes.

View and Edit Existing Prioritization Lists

1. Navigate to Segments
2. Click the Prioritization Lists tab.
3. All existing list names appear with a status of Live or Edit.
4. From the drop-down, you can choose to edit the list, or view the associated segments and contact counts.

5. Optionally, you can tag the list for easy searching. Click the + and search for a tag or add a new one.

View How Many Contacts Are Suppressed

1. Navigate to Segments
2. Click the Prioritization Lists tab.
3. Search for or scroll to the list you're looking for. From the drop-down, click View.
4. The associated segments display. Click Load Counts to get a real-time count of contacts in that segment (up to the last data load).

• Click Edit to change the segments in this list, or click Prioritization Lists to return to view all existing lists.
• Click the name of the segment to go edit or view that specific segment itself.

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Note

• If the list is a Draft, the contact count represents all contacts who fit those segment criteria.
• If the list is Live, contact count will reflect the suppression logic applied.

Archive a Segment Prioritization List

You can delete a Segment Prioritization List by archiving it. This will allow you to use those segments in a new Segment Prioritization List. You may also recreate a new Segment Prioritization List with the same name as a previously archived list.

There are two ways to archive a Segment Prioritization List:

From the list view:

1. Navigate to Segments.
2. Click the Prioritization Lists tab.
3. Search for or scroll to the list you're looking for.
4. From the drop-down, click Archive.

From the Segment Prioritization List detail page:

1. Navigate to Segments.
2. Click the Prioritization Lists tab.
3. Search for or scroll to the list you're looking for.
4. From the drop-down, click View.
5. Click "Archive" at the top of the page.

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Note

When archiving a Segment Prioritization List from either the list view or the detail page, you will be asked to confirm if you really want to archive the list. If any of the segments included in the Segment Prioritization List you're trying to archive are being used in live flows and you archive that list, the prioritization logic that applied from the list will no longer apply to your live flows.

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Note

If a segment is tied to a live or draft Segment Prioritization List, that segment cannot be deleted.

How does it all work?

Let’s say this is a segment membership:

• Group A: Sara, Claire, Layla, Eli, Quentin, and Doyle
• Group B: Claire, Elwin, Hershel, Quentin, and Doyle
• Group C: Layla, Eli, Quentin, and Brennan
• Group D: Ali, Troy, Claire, and Doyle

But, if you create a Segment Prioritization List with all these segments in the same order, the final membership would look like this:

• Group A: Sara, Claire, Layla, Eli, Quentin, and Doyle
• Group B: Claire, Elwin, Hershel, Quentin, and Doyle
• Group C: Layla, Eli, Quentin, Hershel, and Brennan
• Group D: Ali, Troy, Claire, Brennan, and Doyle

Now the contacts in Groups B, C, and D that are already part of a previous campaign will receive one message, not multiple different messages. The flow or journey logic works through the segments in the order you set.

It is important to also know that it doesn’t matter if these segments are actually associated with an existing flow or not. If you created a new segment, Segment E composed of all members of Segment B plus all members of Segment C then created a new flow with Segment E, then Quentin and Hershel will get more than one message because Segment E is not suppressed.