Create and manage segments
Segments establish groups of related contacts that you will target with your marketing initiatives. You can create segments by using the segmentation designer, which enables you to query across multiple related entities, including contacts, leads, accounts, events, marketing lists, and more. Segments also enable you to query the marketing-insights service to find contacts that have shown engagement with your marketing initiatives or contacts that you might be failing to reach (due to issues such as email bounces).
Building segments is about accessing the customer data that you have available. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys gives you the ability to target customers based on behavioral and profile data.
Behavioral data is generated automatically in response to contact interactions such as opening an email, clicking a link in an email, submitting a form, or registering for an event.
Profile data is the information that is captured and stored on the entities that you regularly work with, such as contacts, accounts, leads, and any other entities that you select to sync with. You can add to the profile data that you have in the system by developing new marketing forms (or expanding current ones) to capture additional information about your customers.
Segments can be dynamic or static.
Dynamic segments are set up by using logical expressions, such as "all contacts from New York" or "all contacts who like The Mets." Membership in dynamic segments changes constantly to reflect new or removed contacts and updated contact information. Both demographic and firmographic segments are examples of dynamic segments.
Static segments establish a static list of contacts who are selected on a per-contact basis rather than created logically based on field values. Marketers and salespeople might create and populate a static list based on private knowledge or offline interactions.
Design a dynamic segment
To view, edit, delete, or create a new segment, go to Outbound marketing > Customers > Segments.
To create a new dynamic segment, click + New in the command bar.
Select +New Dynamic Segment.
When creating a dynamic segment, the Segment template dialog box opens, showing a list of available templates. Each template provides a fully or partially defined query designed for a particular purpose, as indicated by the template name.
- To start from a template, select the template then click Select.
- To start from scratch, select Skip.
Enter a Name for the segment.
Design your segment.
If you selected a template, segments blocks will be added for you. You can modify, add to, or remove any of those blocks.
If you chose to skip the template, a blank designer opens, allowing you to start your segmentation from scratch.
Within the segment designer, there are 3 options to build the segment:
Query block - A query block is a collection of logical clauses and clause groups. A query block can be simple (possibly with just one clause), or complex (featuring multiple nested groups and relations). You can query any entity that's synced to the marketing-insights service. However, each query block must end with the Contact entity.
For more information, see Create or edit a demographic or firmographic segment.
Behavior block - These blocks query interaction records stored in the marketing-insights database. Each of these records is generated automatically in response to something a contact did (such as open an email or visit a web page) and is related to the specific contact record associated with that action (if known). Interaction records are used to generate various insights displayed in the Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys UI. Interaction records aren't synced to the Dynamics 365 organizational database.
For more information, see Design behavioral segments.
Segment block - You can design your segment to include multiple query blocks and then set rules for how to combine the groups. This process works by adding any segment that is currently live into your new segment. Often, you could obtain the same results with a single, complex query block, but it can sometimes be easier to design and visualize your segment using multiple query blocks instead. As you add query blocks, the query block operator defines the logic for combining the groups.
To find contacts that appear in either of the blocks, select or. To find contacts that appear in both blocks, select and also. To find contacts that appear in the first block but not in the second, select but not.
For more information, see Combine multiple query blocks.
Tip
Use the View selector to select your preferred view for the query designer. Select Tree view to show clause groups the way you see them in this diagram, with the operator (OR/AND) that applies to the group shown at the top of the group. Select Natural to show the operator (OR/AND) at the start of each row.
Save your changes.
When you're finished designing the segment, select Go live on the toolbar to start running the segment, find all its members, and make it available for use with your customer journeys.
Review the segment members.
When your segment is live, the Members tab will become available. This tab is where you can see exactly which contacts are included in the segment.
For dynamic segments, the members can increase and decrease continuously as new contacts are added to your database or as those contacts interact with your marketing activities.
To export dynamic segment members to Excel, select Export members in the command bar. For more information, see Export dynamic segment members to Excel.
For more information, see Working with segments and Segment go-live operations and status.
Important
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys works together with the marketing-insights service, which operates by using its own marketing-insights database to provide advanced segment definitions and customer analytics. The integration is seamless and results in powerful combined functionality when the two systems work together. Your contact records and marketing lists are continuously synchronized between the two systems, which lets the marketing-insights service apply its powerful data processing and analytical tools to your contacts and combine these tools with information from other types of Dynamics 365 records. For more information, see Elements in a Marketing environment and Sync entities and track insights using Dataset configuration.
Design a static segment
To view, edit, delete, or create a new segment, go to Outbound marketing > Customers > Segments.
To create a new static segment, select + New on the command bar.
Select + New Static Segment.
In the Quick Create window, enter a Name for the segment then select Save and Close.
To add members manually (one by one):
Select the Add button in the Members tab of the static segment editor. After you select the button, the Lookup Records pane will appear on the right. To search for a specific record, enter a contact name in the Look for Records search box. To see the full list of contacts, select the Look for Records search box and press Enter.
To add contacts, select each name you want to add. The selected contacts will be shown in the gray field on top of the pane. When you’re done with selection process, select Add at the bottom of the pane. The selected contacts will be added to your segment.
To add members by query (selecting multiple contacts once):
Select the Add by Query button in the Members tab of the static segment editor. A window titled Manage Segment Members will appear. In the Manage Segment Members window, you can edit the query and execute it by selecting the Find button.
In the list of query results, you can manually select contacts by selecting to the left of the contact name. You will see a check mark appear next to each selected contact. To add the selected contacts to your segment, select the Add Selected button at the bottom of the window and close the query window. To add the entire query list, select the Add All at the bottom of the window. If you need to refine your query, select the Edit Query button.
Save your changes.
When you're finished designing the segment, select Go live on the toolbar to start running the segment and make it available for use with your customer journeys.
For more information, see Design static segments.
Use natural language to create segments
Natural language input enables you to use common words and phrases to describe the people you want to include in dynamic and static segments without learning all the specifics of the Common Data Model (CDM) and best practices for building queries.
To use natural language when creating a dynamic segment:
Create a new dynamic segment.
Select Add query block.
Within the natural language query field (found above the entity selector), select from one of the samples provided or type your statement in the field above the entity selector.
Press enter or click the arrow icon to build the query.
To use natural language when creating a static segment:
Create a new static segment.
Click Add by Query.
Select Add query block.
Within the natural language query field (found above the entity selector), select from one of the samples provided or type your statement in the field above the entity selector.
Press enter or click the arrow icon to build the query.
Once your new segments are created, you can decide how to use your segments.
Note
You'll need your administrator to turn on the feature switch for the Natural Language queries for Segmentation functionality under Segmentation before you are able to access it.
Important
The natural language feature for segments currently only supports English language queries. For more information, see Use natural language to create segments.
Manage segment memberships from a contact record
Instead of working directly with a segment definition, you can add or remove a contact to/from any static segment while viewing their contact record. This enables users such as salespeople, who know their contacts well but don't have access to the segment entity, to manage the segments a contact belongs to while working directly with that contact record.
Note
You can only use contact records to add or remove contacts to or from static segments, not dynamic segments. Both live and draft segments are supported.
To add or remove a contact to/from a static segment using their contact record:
Go to Outbound marketing > Customers > Contacts.
Open or create a contact record.
On the command bar, click the drop-down arrow next to Lists and segments and select from the following:
Add to subscription list – To add the current contact to one or more existing subscription lists.
Add to marketing list – To add the current contact to one or more existing marketing lists.
Add to segment - To add the current contact to one or more existing static segments.
Remove from segment - To remove the current contact from one or more existing static segments.
A dialog box should open, showing a list of available lists or segments. Select each list or segment that you'd like to update and then choose Select to apply your changes.
For more information, see Manage segment memberships from a contact record.
Segments vs. lists
Even without Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys installed, some Dynamics 365 apps provide a few basic marketing features, which include the ability to create both static and dynamic marketing lists that you can use with the quick campaigns feature that is also included with these apps. However, Dynamics 365 Marketing predominantly uses marketing segments to target its full-featured customer journeys, both of which are unique to Marketing.
To create a segment, you must work directly in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys, whereas marketing lists can be created by using any of the several different Dynamics 365 apps and add-ons.
Unlike marketing lists, marketing segments run on the marketing-insights service, which is designed to process large amounts of data without impacting the performance of your Dynamics 365 user interface and other functions.
The primary role of marketing segments is to create collections of related contacts that you can target by using a customer journey. You can use a dynamic segment, static segment, or subscription list to target a customer journey, but you can't use a dynamic marketing list, so the only way to target a customer journey based on a dynamic database query is to create a dynamic segment.
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Journeys makes use of static marketing lists to create subscription lists, which enable contacts to sign up for your various mailing lists. Subscription lists are a special type of static marketing list that can only contain contacts. Unlike most marketing lists, you can also use subscription lists to target a customer journey directly.
For more information, see Marketing segments vs. marketing lists.