Create simple segments

Segments are one of the central hubs in Marketing Automation. They are the link between your contacts and the emails you send them.

(source of segment icon)

Using segments, you can classify your contacts into groups with certain characteristics. Then you can send personalized emails to these groups according to their specific needs.

Later you can also use segments to launch campaigns tailored to this group. In this tutorial, we'll focus on your first steps with segments: Create segments and send emails to your segments.

Your first segment: contacts with email addresses

In Friendly Automate, you have known and unknown contacts. Unknown contacts are website visitors who have not yet provided you with any personal data. They are identified only by their IP addresses.

Known contacts are visitors from whom you have received a name and an email address. Of course, you can only send emails to these contacts. So the first segment we create will be: Contacts with email addresses.

To do this, in Friendly Automate click on Segments on the left and then on "New" in the upper right corner.

You can now enter a name for your segment, for example "Contacts with email addresses". If you think that the name is not self-explanatory, you can briefly explain what is contained in this segment under "Description". You can save your progress at any time by clicking the "Save" button in the upper right corner.

The fields "Alias" and "Public name" will be filled in automatically when saving if they are left empty. You can ignore the settings on the right for your first segments as well.

Now click on the next tab called "Filters". Here you can set up one or more filters for your segment.

In order for this segment to contain only contacts with email addresses, select the "Email" option from the drop-down menu. Then select the condition "not empty".

You have already successfully created your segment! You can now save and close the segment by clicking the button in the upper right corner.

This will take you to the overview page for the segment. Scroll down to see all contacts that are included in the segment. It may take 1-2 minutes for the segment to update.

By the way, segments are dynamic. This means that new contacts that meet the criteria for the segment are automatically added on an ongoing basis. And contacts that no longer meet the criteria are continuously removed.

📣 What about leads without email addresses?

What about the leads that visit your website anonymously and therefore can't be reached via email or campaigns? Motivate these leads to contact your company via focus items (popups) or contact forms. You can easily create both with Friendly Automate.

Here you can find a tutorial for a contact form:

More segments

You can now create more segments to categorize your known contacts into meaningful groups for personalized content.

Here are some examples that are very simple to implement, but already give you first opportunities to reach your leads in a more personalized way. From there, there's no limit to your creativity – with a little imagination and knowledge of your company profile, you can target exactly the right customers with exactly the right message that's relevant to them.

Communicate in the right language

A simple but potentially important personalization is related to language. (Our company Friendly is based in quadrilingual Switzerland!) If you have the opportunity to address your leads in their preferred language, take advantage of it.

To do this, create a new segment as described above for example with the title "German language". Switch to the "Filters" tab and first create the filter "Email" – "not empty" again.

Now create a second filter for the language. Select "Preferred locale" from the upper drop-down menu and then, for example, "German" from the lower drop-down menu.

Now you can save and close the segment.

📮 Send an email to your segment: To send an email to this segment, in Friendly Automate click on "Channels" on the left, then "Emails", and then "New" in the top right.

A popup will open. Select "New Segment Email".

On the right, you can now select the respective contact segment to which the email should be sent.

Now you can choose one of the existing templates or create a completely new email (for this we recommend the template "Hello"). You can then edit the email using the "Builder".

Convince your most curious leads

Curious visitors are characterized by the fact that they have visited your website frequently recently, but without making a purchase. For your curious visitors, you want to remove the last barriers to purchase. For example, show them product reviews, explain the return policy or offer them free shipping for their first purchase.

So create a new segment again as described above for example with the title "Curious Leads". Switch to the "Filters" tab and first create the "Email" - "not empty" filter again.

Then create a second filter "Visited URL Count". This filter asks how many different URLs, that is, subpages of your website, a lead has visited.

Choose the condition "greater than" and a value that makes sense for your website to represent an interested lead. If you sell only one or two products or services, this value will be smaller than if you run a webshop with 200 different products.

Another way to query high interest is through the "Page sessions" filter. This filter reads out how often the lead has visited your website in total. Again, choose "greater than" as a condition and a value that represents an intensive interest according to your website content.

Of course, you can also decide to use only one of the two filters "Visited URL Count" and "Page sessions", depending on what suits your offer better.

Next create a filter "Date Last Active". As a condition you select "greater than" and then the desired time value, for example "-30 days". This means that all contacts that were active within the last 30 days will be included.

Finally, you want to check that your lead is not yet a customer of your company. To do this, select the "Stage" filter from the drop-down menu, select the condition "not equal" and the value "06 Customer". Then create a second filter "Stage" with the condition "not equal" and the value "07 Evangelist".

There is another simple way to check the customer status without using stages or sales integration: query whether the customer has already visited the order-completed page of your website.

Create a filter "Visited URL", select the condition "not like" and as value enter the part of the URL that uniquely identifies the order-completed page of your website.

With this, you have created all the filters to validate that your lead has an email address, has visited your website recently and often, and has not yet made a purchase. Now you can write a personalized email to your curious leads as described above.

Reactivate cold leads and inactive customers

Conversely, another useful segment can involve your cold leads, those who became interested in your brand or products a long time ago, but have been inactive for a long time. It can make sense to offer special discounts or interesting information only to this group that needs new motivation.

Create a new segment for this again as described above, for example with the title "Cold Leads". Switch to the "Filters" tab and first create the "Email" – "not empty" filter again.

Then select "Date Last Active" as a second filter from the dropdown menu. As a condition select "less than" and then the desired time value, for example "-90 days". This means that all contacts that have not been active for 90 days or more will be included.

A similar segment concerns inactive customers. For this you would create the same filters as for the cold leads (email not empty and last active a long time ago), and additionally you would query whether the person is already a customer or not. To do this, select the filter "Stage" from the drop-down menu, select the condition "equal" and the value "06 Customer".

Or you can again use the option described above: You ask whether the customer has already visited the order-completed page of your website.

Create a filter "Visited URL", this time select the condition "contains" and as value enter the part of the URL that uniquely identifies the order-completed page of your website.

Save and close the segment. Now you can target cold leads and inactive customers with the message they need to renew their interest in your business.

Reward loyal customers

Retaining existing customers and motivating them to buy again is 5 times cheaper than recruiting new customers (read our blog post). Reward the loyalty of your existing customers with special offers like free gift wrapping, surprises, special bundles, fast reordering or early access to new products.

Create a new segment for this as described above, for example with the title "Loyal customers". Switch to the "Filters" tab and create the filter "Email" – "not empty" again.

To query the customer status of your most engaged customers you have several options. On one hand you can check the stage of your customer. Select the filter "Stage", the condition "equal" and the value "07 Evangelist".

Another option is to filter customers based on lead scoring. For this, select the filter "points", the condition "greater than" and as a value a score that represents a particularly engaged customer in your lead scoring model.

Of course you can also use the filters "Visited URL Count" and "Page Sessions".

If you want to map your customers' shopping behavior in more detail in Friendly Automate, you need an advanced integration of your sales software with Friendly Automate. This integration is available from the Business subscription of Friendly Automate. ☎️ Contact us, we'll be happy to help.

Target the interests of your visitors

Finally, send your leads personalized emails that match their interests. You have two simple filtering options for this.

Create again a new segment as described above, for example with the title "Interest in crime fiction". Switch to the tab "Filters" and create again the filter "Email" – "not empty".

You can now ask for tags that you have assigned to your contacts according to their interests. To do this, create the "Tags" filter and then the "including" condition. Now you can select already existing tags from the dropdown menu or add new tags (confirm new tags with Enter).

Another option is to evaluate whether your leads have visited a specific subpage on your website. For this option, select the "Visited URL" filter. Select the condition "contains" and as value enter the part of the URL that uniquely identifies the subpage(s) in question, for example "crime-fiction".

You may want to use both possibilities, but you want one or the other condition to be true. For this you can use the "or" connector.

So far we have connected all filters with "and". With the "or" connector you have to keep the following in mind: "or" refers to all preceding filters.

That means, if you connect the filter "URL visited" with the link "or" to the previous filters: The contact either has an email address and certain tags, or the contact has visited your website – but may not have provided an email address.

This means that you have to query the email address again after the "or" connection:

Now you can write your leads a personalized email as described above that matches their interests.

Next steps

These simple segments are just the beginning. It is especially worthwhile to look at what specific information you collect about your leads according to your marketing strategy and capture just that information in segments. There are countless ways to create and combine filters.

Next, you can not only send emails to your segments directly, but you can also use the segments as the basis of a campaign (workflow). For example, you can capture new customers and send them an onboarding email sequence. Or send emails based on an identified area of interest, then evaluate whether your lead opened the email and which links they clicked on, and follow up with further actions accordingly.

Learn more about campaigns here: