How do I use the search and segment feature?

Dear Phobic,

Think of your account's search and segmenting power as simply the ability to arrange your audience members more dynamically and spontaneously than before. You can find (and send to) people based on any combination of factors, like when they joined your audience, to which groups they belong, their age, their location - any information you're collecting and storing about your members. And searches will always find the people who meet that criteria right now - at the moment you view the search or send to its matching members.

To show you how search and segment can help you tailor your mailings even further, we've put together 8 sample searches of our own. Below each search is a link to a screenshot of how you'd create it.

8 practical uses for search and segment:

1. Send a welcome email to everyone who signed up this week.
Your subscribers already receive a simple text welcome email when they sign up. But you might want to send a more formal welcome newsletter to your newest fans. Create a Welcome Newsletter and keep it on hand in your campaign menu, then use your Member Since field to find the people who signed up today, this week, or this month.
(see the screenshot)

2. Send a special offer to people with birthdays this month.
Surprising your customers or members with a special birthday coupon or note is a great way to reach people on a personal level and, well, make them feel really good. You can create a custom birthday field for your signup screen, and then find people whose birthday is today, or this week, or this month.
(see the screenshot)

3. Send a Register-Now email to people who still haven't RSVP'ed.
You have a group of members, and you've just created a separate group of people who've registered so far. To send a Remember-To-RSVP email to those who haven't yet replied (what are they waiting for, those slackers?), you'll use search and segment to find the people in your Members Group who aren't in your new Registrations group.
(see the screenshot)

4. Send a concert announcement to people within driving distance.
Let's say you manage a rock-and-roll band, because frankly it'd be a whole a lot cooler if you managed a rock-and-roll band. (Are there any openings for assistant band manager? We're interested.) And let's say your band has a gig in Boulder, Colorado coming up. Why not send a special Coming-To-Town alert to folks in that city, or state, or general vicinity.
(see the screenshot)

5. Send a fund-raising campaign to past donors.
An easy way to personalize your fundraising campaign would be to use donor status information you're storing to help tailor your campaign message, which might be altogether different if you're reaching out to high-level donors instead of the general membership.
(see the screenshot)

6. Tailor your campaign's message to women ages 18-34.
Really, this one is just to remind you that targeting by gender, age and other demographics is entirely possible once you begin collecting and storing that information.
(see the screenshot)

7. Send a campaign to your international customers.
If your organization crosses borders, the country information you're storing lets you easily create different messages for different countries, or one campaign for your home country and another for your internationals.
(see the screenshot)

8. Locate people in your audience who aren't part of any group.
This is the Limbo query - basically locating anyone in your audience who isn't assigned to any audience groups. With search and segment, you'll basically exclude every group in your account and see who's left. Then copy those members into a new group, or an existing one, or leave them to float blissfully in limbo, and let search and segment find them.
(see the screenshot)

We hope these ideas spark a few of your own. Remember that the more audience information you store, the more useful search and segment will become. Give it a try this week and, as always, let us know how this feature and others are working for you.

Cheers,
Emma

• Can I search by company?
• How can I add new information (like company) to existing records?

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