Segments, timeline & merge
Tags label contacts, segments select them, and merging fixes the same person appearing twice.
Tags
A tag is your own label - vip, wholesale, spring-event. A contact can carry any number.
Tags are worth applying at the moment you learn something, not in a tidy-up later. What you know about a customer is at its sharpest right after you have spoken to them.
Keep the vocabulary small and lowercase. VIP, vip and Vip are three tags, and you will only
remember one of them.
Segments
A segment is a saved rule that selects contacts automatically, used when sending a campaign. Rules include:
- Has any of these tags
- Engagement - opened recently, clicked recently, or not opened recently
- Joined after / Joined before
- Only people who have placed an order - your paying customers
Segments re-evaluate every time you send, so a segment made today keeps meaning the same thing next month with different people in it. That is the difference between a segment and a tag: a tag is a fact you recorded, a segment is a question you saved.
Merging duplicates
The same person can arrive twice - ordering as [protected] and subscribing as [protected], or
simply typing their name differently.
Merge joins them into one contact. Their orders, bookings, tags and history are combined, so nothing is lost and the totals become true.
Check before you merge. Two people at one company genuinely can share a phone number, and a merge is not something to undo casually.
Good to know
- Merge before you segment. Duplicates make every count wrong, and quietly email the same person twice.
- A segment is not a list. It selects from your contacts each time; it does not hold a fixed set of people.