Segments

A segment is a group of your subscribers: the paid ones, the ones who joined this month, the ones with a given label. You can look at the people in it, export them, and choose to send an email to that group only. Only you and your editors see your segments.

Segments live in Studio > Audience > Segments. In the Studio, Audience is now a folder with two pages: Subscribers (the table you already know, with the import buttons) and Segments.

Three kinds of segment

Each segment row says how it's made.

• By conditions. You write a rule, and the members follow it. When a subscriber starts to match, they come in; when they stop, they leave. You don't maintain the list.
• Picked by hand. You choose the members yourself, one selection at a time.
• Snapshot. A frozen copy of the members of a by-conditions segment at the moment you froze it. It doesn't change afterwards, even if those people change.

Default segments

Every publication has three segments that Peakub makes for you: All subscribers, Free subscribers and Paid subscribers (the basic paid level and up). They carry a Default badge and are the first ones offered when you choose who an email goes to. They are ordinary segments: you can rename one, change its rule or delete it. A default segment you delete is not made again. For a publication that existed before, they appear the first time you open the segments.

Make a segment

1. Go to Studio > Audience > Segments and choose New segment (or Segment in the Create menu at the bottom of Studio's left menu, which opens the same window). Or click one of the templates under Start from: Paid subscribers, Free subscribers, Imported, not yet active or Joined this month. A template opens the same window with its rule already filled in, so you can change it.
2. Give it a Name (up to 60 characters) and, if you want, a Description (up to 300).
3. Choose By conditions or Picked by hand.
4. For a by-conditions segment, build the rule (below).
5. Choose Create.

Build the rule

A rule is made of groups. Every group has to match, and inside a group any one condition is enough. In the window, groups are joined by "and", conditions inside a group by "or". Add a condition starts the rule, And… adds a group, and Or… adds a condition to a group.

Each condition picks a field, how to compare it, and a value:

Language and country are the ones on the subscriber's account.

For example, "paid subscribers who joined in the last 30 days, or who have the label VIP" is two groups: one with Plan is Paid, one with Subscribed in the last 30 days or Label has VIP. If the rule has no conditions at all, every subscriber is in the segment.

While you build the rule, the number of subscribers it matches is shown under it and updates as you change a condition.

Pick members by hand

A segment picked by hand starts empty.

1. Go to Studio > Audience > Subscribers and tick the subscribers you want.
2. Choose Add to a segment and click the segment.
3. To take people out, open the segment's members (below), tick them and choose Take out of this segment.

If you have no segment picked by hand yet, the window tells you to make one in Segments first.

What each row lets you do

Each row of the Segments page shows the segment's name, how many subscribers are in it, how it's made (and, for a snapshot, the date it was frozen), and its description. The buttons on the right:

• Insights (the chart icon) opens what the segment looks like. See below.
• See its subscribers opens Studio > Audience > Subscribers showing only that segment's members, under a banner "Members of" the segment. All subscribers in the banner goes back to the full list.
• Edit changes the name, description and rule. A snapshot can't be edited, since its members are fixed.
• Freeze a snapshot (by-conditions segments only) makes a snapshot copy of the current members.
• Remove deletes the segment, after you confirm. Its subscribers stay subscribed: only the group disappears.

Recount at the top of the page recounts every segment. Members already follow changes by themselves, so you'll rarely need it, but it's there when you want to check the numbers.

Look at a segment: Insights

The chart icon on a segment's row, named Insights, opens a window about that segment:

• Subscribers in it: how many people are in it now, and a line showing its size over the last 90 days, with the figure of each day when you point at it. The line appears once there are at least two days of history, and a segment starts building its history from the day it was made.
• Who is in it: how many are Paid and how many Free, how many Joined in the last 30 days, and how many have each status (Subscribed, Invitation accepted, Invited, Unsubscribed), each with its share of the segment.
• Languages and countries, as written on the subscribers' accounts.
• Labels: the labels carried most often in the segment.
• Sent to it: the posts that were sent to this segment, or that left it out, with the date and how many were sent. If your sends can't be read at that moment, the window says so and you can try again later.

Export a list as a CSV file

The Export CSV button above the table in Studio > Audience > Subscribers downloads the list as it's currently filtered: all your subscribers, the members of one segment, or the subscribers with one label. The file has one row per subscriber. The email address is always there; the other columns (name, status, plan, labels separated by semicolons, and the date they subscribed) are the ones you keep on in the Subscribers settings, all of them to start with. See The Subscribers tab. It contains at most 50,000 rows.

Send an email to some of your subscribers

When you publish a piece with the Newsletter switch on, a Send it to choice appears under it, as long as your publication has at least one segment:

• Everyone: the usual send.
• Only…: pick the segments to send to. Someone who is in several of them gets the email once.
• Everyone but…: pick the segments to leave out.

With Only… or Everyone but…, you pick the segments in the same field you use to pick interests: click it, choose a segment, and repeat. Each one appears as a tag you can remove. Once all the segments are picked, the field says there are no more.

The line under the picked segments gives the number of subscribers it will reach, counted again just before the email goes. If the segments you pick have nobody in them when it's time to send, the send is refused and marked as failed instead of going to no one.

This applies to the email only. The piece itself is still published to your site for everyone who can read it.

Imported subscribers are emailed gradually

Subscribers you imported who haven't been active yet (their status is Invited) are emailed gradually, to protect your publication's sending reputation. This applies whenever you send to everyone or to a segment that contains them. On the first day you send to them, up to 200 of them get the piece, then up to 400 the next day, 800 the day after, and so on, doubling each day, until each has had one email. The ones left over aren't sent that piece; the next piece you send tries again. Active subscribers are never held back, and neither is an invited subscriber who already had an email from you.

The Imported, not yet active template is a quick way to see who is still in this group.

Write to a segment

Besides pieces, you can write an email to a segment, with others or on its own, by starting a conversation and picking it in the To field. See Write to your readers.

Not available yet

• Conditions based on what a subscriber does, such as reading, opening or clicking.
• Posts sent by email only, without a page on your site.
• Open and click rates for a segment, and how much its members read. Insights shows the size, the make-up and the sends, not what members did.