🎯 Segmentation in the CDP

Smarter Segmentation, Better Results — Here's How

Segmentation is where all the hard work of data collection and unification turns into value. It’s how you identify your fans, customers, or audience members in meaningful groups — and then take action on those insights. Whether you’re sending targeted communications, analyzing audience behavior, or sharing with ad platforms, segmentation is where data becomes strategy.

Let’s walk through how segmentation works in the CDP — no code, no SQL, just results.

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🧩 Configuration: Laying the Foundation

Before you can build segments, the segmentation engine needs to know what to work with.

This setup is handled by the Customer Success team during your onboarding or whenever you add new data sources. They’ll define which attributes are available to segment on — things like ticket purchases, email activity, merchandise behavior, and more. You won’t need developers or consultants to use segmentation — the technical part is already done for you.

Regular Admins also have the ability to:

• Rename attributes for clarity (Field Alias)

• Organize attributes into Categories (e.g. Ticketing, Email, Profile)

• Change free text values to dropdowns and view what values are available in the database for Dropdown attributes

• Toggle visibility of attributes in the UI

This keeps your dropdowns clean and your segmentation experience focused. These options are available under Admin / Segmentation. 

🧠 Defining Conditions with Attributes

Conditions are the rules that decide who belongs in a segment. They’re built using the available attributes, which can be sorted in three main categories.

1. Source-Related Attributes

These are based on raw data from your connected systems — like ticketing, e-commerce, or CRM. Any field from any of your sources can be used as a segmentation attribute. Example:

“Bought a match ticket for Event X”

2. CDP-Defined Attributes

These are calculated or aggregated behaviors tracked within the CDP. Example:

“Opened last email”, “Opted in to marketing”, "Belongs to another existing segment"

3. Custom Calculated Attributes

These are advanced logic-based attributes built during onboarding to reflect your business goals. Example:

“Attended 5+ away matches and bought merchandise”

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✍️ Creating a New Segment

Building a segment is straightforward and entirely visual.

You start by clicking on Segments on the menu and then on Create New Segment:

• A segment name (each segment will get a unique ID as well once saved)

• An optional description

You then define the audience using a visual rule builder. The system lets you combine conditions using simple “AND” / “OR” logic, create nested rule groups, and apply filters without ever needing to write a query.

As you build your segment, click Preview at any time to see how many profiles match your criteria. This gives you real-time confidence in the quality of your audience before launching any actions.

Setting Values with No-Code Controls

Depending on the type of attribute, you’ll see different input controls:

• Dropdowns (e.g. for event names) (Dropdowns display a maximum of 100 values (e.g. event names). If there are more, the UI switches to a free-text input for performance reasons. Need a higher limit? Contact support via the chatbot.)

• Radio buttons (e.g. Yes/No)

• Date pickers

• Free-text fields

• Number inputs

You can use condition types like:

• Equals, Not equal

• Contains, Starts with, Ends with

• Between, Greater than, In, Not in

• Empty, Not empty

You can also negate any condition (e.g. "Not opted in") to include or exclude specific groups.

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🌀 Segment Types: Ad-Hoc vs. Recurring

When saving a segment, you’ll choose between two formats:

🔹 Ad-Hoc Segment

This is a static snapshot in time. The audience it contains won’t change unless you manually re-run or edit it. Ideal for one-time reports or exports.

🔁 Recurring Segment

This is a dynamic segment that updates automatically on a schedule — daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. It’s perfect for use cases like birthday emails, event countdowns, or re-engagement campaigns.

You can define:

• Start and end dates (to stop recalculation after a specific event or campaign)

• Update frequency (daily is most common)

For example:

A recurring segment for “Fans with a birthday today” will update every morning to reflect that day’s birthdays — no manual work needed.

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✏️ Editing Existing Segments

You can always edit the rules or schedule of both an ad-hoc and a recurring segment — for example, update the filters or change the end date.

However, it’s important to know:

Ad-hoc segments will run as you save it and update immediately.

Recurring segments don’t update immediately after edits.
Instead, the changes take effect the next time the segment is scheduled to run.

So if you modify a daily segment at 4 PM after it already ran that morning, the updated logic won’t apply until the next day’s run.

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🔎 Exploring Segment Details

Clicking on a saved segment brings you to the Segment Details view — a helpful page for reviewing and managing what you’ve built.

Here, you’ll find:

• Total number of matching profiles

• Segment rules and logic

• Creation and Last modified date

• Export options to CSV

• Indication whether the segment is actively shared with any 3rd party tool, such as Meta or Google Ads

Under the Profiles tab, you can even see a list of profile names and emails in the segment. This lets you validate your logic, troubleshoot, and confirm whether someone should (or shouldn’t) be included. There’s also a search function to find individual profiles quickly.

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📤 Exporting Profiles to CSV or External Platforms

Sometimes you’ll want to take your segment data outside the CDP — and that’s easy too.

From the Segment Details page, you can:

• Export matching profiles as a CSV

• Choose which profile fields to include

• Use the data for reporting, analysis, or import into other systems

While Data Talks encourages working within the CDP for consistency, exports are there when needed.

Segments can also be shared directly to connected platforms like:

• Google Ads, Meta, and X (formerly Twitter) — for building custom and lookalike audiences. For Meta, you can configure multiple Ad accounts as well to share to simultaneously

• Loyalty apps — to reward certain groups

• Mobile apps — to send targeted push notifications

• Marketing automation tools — for advanced workflows
  

These integrations turn your CDP into a powerful activation engine on top of the in-built channels, ensuring your audience strategy is aligned across every tool you use.

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⚡ Triggered Actions: Set It and Forget It

Segments can trigger automated communications, emails and SMS as soon as someone enters them. Learn how to configure Triggered Actions and what the most typical automated newsletter types are HERE.

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🤖 AI Assistant: Smarter Segment Suggestions

Not sure where to start? Let the AI help.

Inside the segment builder, switch to the AI Assistant tab and describe your goal in plain language, such as:

"I want to sell more family tickets for Saturday’s game."

The assistant will suggest relevant combinations of filters — up to three ideas at a time — based on the attributes available in your system. You can accept, reject, or adjust the suggestions as needed.

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🚀 What’s Next: Story-Based Segmentation

Data Talks is currently developing a new, next-generation segmentation engine called Story-Based Segmentation.

This future approach will be:

• Truly real-time, updating segments as events happen

• Fully self-service, without needing setup from Customer Success

• More user-friendly, allowing deeper drill-down and richer visualizations of your audiences

Stay tuned — this evolution will bring even more power and simplicity to your segmentation work.