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Understanding Segments - Intersect with Distribution List

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Dear Community,

We are setting up our first Customer Journey for our first Event and I am trying to understand the role of Segments for our use case.

We have groups of Contacts we want to invite to the Event, and to remind them to register, etc. via the Customer Journey

These groups of Contacts already exist as Distribution lists - for example Members of Committee A, Members of Committee B.

1. Would I create a separate Segment for each Distribution List, or combine all of the Distribution Lists into a single Segment?

2. Would the the syntax for the Segment (under Query) be something like:

PROFILE(contact_xxxxxxxxcrm4dynamicscom)
INTERSECT PROFILE(list_xxxxxxx4dynamicscom).FILTER(listid == 'Members of Committee A')

When I tried the above I got two errors:

- The segment query can't be empty

- The segment query isn't valid or the target profile doesn't atch

Any help, conceptual or otherwise is most welcome!

Kathleen

  • Suggested answer
    RE: Understanding Segments - Intersect with Distribution List

    Hello,

    For each customer journey you would define the starting point, which often is a segment. Within the customer journey you can use triggers to react on your audience activities - or not taken activities in a certain timespan - and then take respective action. In those cases you would not need to create a segment.

    But you could decide to indeed run a parallel journey for certain purposes, like reconsenting journey or general nurturing which should target customers based on status provided in the other journey. In that situation you would indeed create a new segment in order to identify the audience.

    Essentially you are flexible in the way you design your journeys in larger complex structures or split it into smaller parallel journeys and use more segments. It depends on your use case and on how independent the streams for your marketing outreach need to be.

  • thurs72 Profile Picture
    thurs72 on at
    RE: Understanding Segments - Intersect with Distribution List

    Thank you Megan,

    What is the purpose of the last "AND" clause? To go out to the Contact records and get more information?

    When setting up an Event Customer Journey, do I have to create new Segments for each stage of the Journey?

    For example (1) Send save the date (2) Send registration invitation (3) If people haven't yet registered, send them a reminder.

    Do I have to create a new segment for step (3) comparing my initial segment to registrants or does the Customer Journey take care of that for me?

    Many thanks!

  • Suggested answer
    megcda Profile Picture
    megcda 2,192 on at
    RE: Understanding Segments - Intersect with Distribution List

    Hi Thurs72,

    You would need to setup your dynamic query to look something like the below where the Marketing Lists are listed separately but then eventually tie back to the Marketing List Contacts.

    MarketingListNameSample.png

    I hope this helps.

    Thanks,

    Megan

  • thurs72 Profile Picture
    thurs72 on at
    RE: Understanding Segments - Intersect with Distribution List

    Thanks very much Christian!

    We have a very very simple set up - we do not want to use subscription lists if possible.

    We want to combine a bunch of dynamic distribution lists and invite those people to an Event

    After reading your reply, I created a dynamic segment

    So far in Designer I have one group

    Maketing list - listname - is (a bunch of lists)

    And I am getting the error

    "The segment query isn't valid, or the target profile doesn't match"

    And the message

    "The following groups are incomplete: 1."

    What do I need to add to complete my group? Where do I define the target profile?

    Once again, thanks for your help!

  • Suggested answer
    RE: Understanding Segments - Intersect with Distribution List

    Hello,

    There are several ways to achieve your goal based on how you manage your subscription lists or segments.

    You will probably use subscription lists which are static marketing lists with the flag "Subscription = true". This would allow you to use marketing pages, subscription centers and email confirmation flows to manage the subscription process with your audience.

    Next you desire to build a segment that loads all contacts from the group of segments. You can do so by starting from the Segment entity, filter on all segments you are interested in and the traverse to get all the member contacts. And in case you have lists that contain Accounts (not then formal subscription lists) you could traverse for example from lists to member accounts and from there to the respective Primary contact or all contacts under an account.

    DistrSegm1_2D00_segment1.png

    Alternatively you could also manage static segments - manually or by API and use a compound segment to reach the union audience from all those segments.

    There might be a few more options, but I think this names the core capabilities.

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