How segments work

A segment is a set of rules about your contacts, saved under a name — and everyone who matches those rules is in it.

How we decide who's in it

The rules define membership rather than freezing a hand-picked list. Qcom evaluates those rules as information changes. A stored count or membership list can lag behind the underlying change; it is not a promise of an immediate update.

We work it out again when:

• a fact one of your rules asks about changes for someone — they pay you, an order completes, a lead moves stage
• a rule counts a rolling period, like *in the last 30 days*, and the clock moves someone out of it
• you import a batch of contacts
• you save a change to the rules
• you open the segment for editing and choose Update count

Background evaluation also refreshes stored membership. The time depends on the rules, available source information and whether evaluation is waiting to run. Check the evaluation result and any coverage notice rather than relying on a fixed completion time.

When something reads a segment — a campaign audience, or a Catalog item's eligibility rule — it reads who's in it at that moment, not who was in it when you set the rule up.

Matching contacts and people you can send to

When a segment is evaluated for a sending audience, these contacts are excluded whatever the rules say:

• Anyone who unsubscribed, or reported one of your messages as spam. They remain in your records, but are excluded from bulk sending audiences.
• Contacts held back because you're at your plan's contact limit. You can still reply to them one to one — they're just kept out of bulk audiences until you free up room.

Deleted contacts and old profiles merged into another contact are excluded from the active contact population, not just the sending audience.

A view of matching contacts or saved group members can include people who are not eligible for bulk messaging. A sending count can equal or be smaller than the matching count. The campaign also checks its channel, addresses and consent; being in a segment does not authorise a message.

A segment holds contacts, not customers

Everyone in a segment is a contact. Whether they're a customer is a *fact you can filter on*, not something being in a segment implies — and messaging you has never made anyone a customer.

If you want customers, say so in the rules: Recognised customer, Has paid, Number of orders. If you want the people who hold one particular Catalog item, that's a different question again, under Relationships. See Leads, contacts and customers for why those three numbers disagree.

Segments and groups sit side by side

Under Audience you'll find Segments (rules) and Contact groups (people you pick yourself). Both count as an audience anywhere Qcom asks for one.

Distinct members

The Distinct members count includes each contact once across the active groups or segments in your current list. A person in two of them still counts as one. Archived audiences do not contribute.

This is a membership count. A campaign also checks addresses, channel preferences and sending eligibility before sending. Being a member does not mean someone can receive a message.

If you cannot read an audience's rules, or the information behind them is incomplete, the total is unavailable. Open the audience to review its members and rules; an unavailable count does not mean there are no members.

If an update is queued or a count is unavailable, wait for the result or ask an admin to check access and source coverage. Do not edit contact facts just to make a count match. See Why someone isn't in a segment.

Related

• Build a segment rule
• Segments and contact groups
• Where you can use a segment
• Why someone isn't in a segment
• Leads, contacts and customers