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What's the difference between a contact list and a segment in Oracle B2C Service Outreach?

Environment:

Oracle B2C Service Outreach

Resolution:

With Oracle B2C Service Outreach, you can define groups of contacts to whom mailings are sent. You can define lists and segments.

A list is a static group of names.  The list includes specific contacts that you select. This list remains the same over time until you manually add or remove contacts from the list. You can add or remove contacts from your list at a later time as you need to.

• From the navigation pane select Audience > Contact Lists Explorer. To add a new contact list, click the New button on the ribbon. To edit an existing contact list, right-click the contact list and click open.
   

You can also upload contacts to a list using the Contact Uploader. Create the list first in your site and then when you upload the contacts, you can set the uploader to assign the contacts to the list. 

A segment is a dynamic group of contacts based on specific criteria (filters) that you specify. For example, you can specify a segment to be all men between the ages of 18 and 30 or another segment as all contacts who reside in California. You can specify multiple filters for your segment.

Once a segment is created, it can be used in mailings. The specific group of contacts involved is generated with each mailing. As a result, as contacts are added to your records, contacts may be included in the segment, even though you do not specifically add that record by name. Similarly, if you edit a record and it no longer matches the segment criteria, that contact will no longer be included in the segment.

• From the navigation pane select Audience > Segment Explorer. To add a new segment, click the New button on the ribbon. To edit an existing segment, right-click the segment and click open.

When viewing the count area of a segment please note that this number does not automatically refresh every time a segment is used, but the segment will still dynamically look for changes when sending out and use the most current results regardless of what the count shows. That is to say; depending on what changes have occurred since the last time the count was manually refreshed by an agent, a segment may send to more or less people than what shows up as the count for the segment.

For comprehensive information on creating lists and segments, refer to the documentation for your version. Documentation for Oracle RightNow CX Products