How do I create a segment or a contact list from my mailing?

Environment:

Outreach and Feedback, Contact List

Resolution:

In Outreach and Feedback, you can create two types of audiences: a contact list which includes specific contacts you identify and remains static over time or a segment which is dynamically generated each time you send a mailing to that audience.

Segments and contact lists are used when sending mailings or when sending surveys. If you send a mailing/survey to multiple lists or segments and a contact record is listed more than once, i.e. the contact is included in multiple lists or segments that you are sending a single mailing to, the contact will receive only one copy of the mailing. The contact will not receive multiple mailings if they are included in multiple segments or lists.

The global opt-in is not included automatically when defining a list or segment. However, when you create a mailing or survey, the Audience tab defaults to honor the global opt-in so that the mailing is sent only to contacts whose global opt-in field is set to Yes or if the field is null. 

With this default audience, only contacts whose records have the global opt-in set to No are excluded from receiving the mailing.  Therefore, you do not need to explicitly include a filter to exclude contacts with the global opt-in field set to No.

For more information on lists and segments, refer to Answer ID 1927: Differences between contact lists and segments in Outreach.

To define a contact list from within a mailing or survey use the steps below:

1. From the Audience tab of a mailing or survey, click the Add Contact List link. The Select Contact List window opens.
   
   
2. Click the New Contact List link.
   
   
3. On the Contacts tab, click the Add drop-down menu and select either Add New or Add Exiting to add a new contact record or to search existing records for a specific contact. 
   
   
4. If you want to allow your list to receive proofs of your mailings, enable the Available for Proof checkbox.
   
   
5. Click Save & Close. 
   
   

To remove a contact from a list, open the list and click the Remove link in the Action column or right click and select Remove.

To define a segment from within a mailing or survey use the steps below:

1. From the Audience tab of a mailing or survey, click the Add Segment link. The Select Segment window opens.
   
   
2. Click the New Segment link.
   
   
3. Drag and drop a column name from the Fields section to the center of the Criteria tab. The Edit Filter window opens.
   
   
4. Define the name, expression, and value fields for the filter. Click the OK button to close the window.
   
   
5. Drag and drop additional column fields if necessary.
   
   
6. Click Save & Close.

Note: To include an OR join between filters, select Add OR Node from the Actions menu.  To view the logical expression used with your segment, in the Actions section, click View Text Definition.

You can preview part or all of your segment by clicking the Preview tab and selecting from the three options listed: View Top Contacts, View Random Contacts, or View All Contacts. To refresh the audience count, click Refresh in the Count section.

It is also worth noting that, while there is not a technical limit of how many mailings can be sent, there are logical limits in how segments are built to help avoid max join errors. Building segments is similar to creating a custom report.  Please refer to Answer ID 5612: Best practices for table joins in Analytics for recommendations.

For additional information, refer to the 'Add Contact List' and 'Create Segments' sections in online documentation for the version your site is currently running. To access Oracle B2C Service manuals and documentation online, refer to the Documentation for Oracle B2C Service Products.