Before an email campaign sends, you choose who receives it. In the Recipients section of the campaign builder you can select a Smart List or build a Segment, a dynamic group of contacts defined by live filters such as tags, email activity, contact fields, or location. Segments refresh automatically, so your audience is always accurate at the moment you send. This guide explains how to target the right people and, just as important, how to send only to engaged, valid contacts so your campaigns stay deliverable.
A Segment is a dynamic contact group created from filters like email activity, tags, contact fields, Smart Lists, or engagement. Unlike a static list, a Segment updates on its own as contacts enter or exit the criteria you define. Because of this, Segments are well suited to email marketing: you can target a specific group based on behavior or demographics at the exact time of sending.
Key benefits:
Audiences refresh automatically based on contact behavior and attributes
Reusable across multiple campaigns, so you build the logic once
Fewer bounces because you can exclude inactive or unqualified contacts
Combine multiple conditions with AND and OR logic
More relevant emails through precise targeting
No manual contact list maintenance
In the Recipients section of a campaign you control exactly who receives the email by combining the following building blocks:
Tags: Tag is or Tag is not (for example, "Tag is Active Client")
Smart Lists: Smart List is (for example, "Smart List is New Leads"). Smart Lists are saved, filtered contact views you build in Contacts. For the full list of available filters, see the Contacts "Smart Lists" guide.
Contacts: Contact is or Contact is not. If you select multiple contacts, the condition behaves like an OR (A or B or C).
Pre-built Segments: Segment is or Segment is not (for example, "Engaged in last 30 days" or "Not engaged in 30 days")
You can include contacts that match a condition or exclude them with the "is not" version of that condition.
Go to Marketing, then Emails, then Campaigns.
Create a new campaign or open an existing one to edit.
In the Recipients section, choose a Smart List, or select Add Segment to build filter logic.
Choose your filters. You can combine conditions, for example:
Tag is "Active Client"
AND Last Email Opened is within 7 days
OR State is Texas
Use Add Filter or Add OR Filter to build more complex conditions.
Select Save Segment.
Give the Segment a clear name, such as "Active Clients in Texas - Engaged," and save it.
You build targeting rules by stacking conditions:
AND: all conditions must be true. Use AND to narrow an audience down (for example, in Smart List A and Smart List D).
OR: any one condition can be true. Use OR to combine audiences (for example, anyone with Tag A or Tag B).
Conditions are evaluated sequentially from top to bottom, not all at once. The first condition creates an initial group, and each later condition modifies that group, either expanding it with OR or narrowing it with AND. "Is not" conditions remove matching contacts after the conditions above them have resolved. Think of it as a filter stack: contacts pass through one layer at a time until you reach the final list.
Because of this order, keep your exclusion ("is not") conditions near the bottom of the stack so they filter the fully assembled group. If you are unsure how a rule will behave, break it into smaller steps or reorder the conditions for clarity.
Send to contacts with Tag A or Tag B, but exclude Tag C:
Tag is A
OR
Tag is B
AND
Tag is not CThis first builds a group from Tag A or Tag B, then removes anyone in that group who also has Tag C.
Send to contacts in Smart List A and Smart List D, but exclude a specific contact:
Smart List is A
AND
Smart List is D
AND
Contact is not COnly contacts in both Smart List A and Smart List D are selected, and the named contact is excluded.
Who you exclude matters as much as who you include. Sending to invalid addresses or disengaged contacts raises bounce and complaint rates, which can hurt the deliverability of every future campaign. Use Segments to protect your sender reputation:
Exclude unengaged contacts, for example by adding a "Segment is not Not engaged in 30 days" condition.
Build toward engaged audiences using activity filters such as recent email opens or clicks.
Add a "Valid Email" filter to send only to addresses confirmed by email verification. This filter depends on email verification having been run. Verification has a credit cost, and a contact's verification status is cleared when that contact is imported, so re-imported contacts may need to be verified again before they qualify.
Both Smart Lists and Segments group contacts, but they live in different places and serve different purposes. Smart Lists are saved, filtered views you build in Contacts. Segments are built in the campaign builder to dynamically select recipients at send time.
Feature | Smart Lists | Segments |
|---|---|---|
Location | Contacts | Campaign builder |
Auto-updating | Yes | Yes |
Manual inclusion | Yes (via tag) | No (logic only) |
Reusable | Yes | Yes |
Can I reuse the same Segment in different campaigns? Yes. Once you save a Segment it becomes available across multiple campaigns.
Are Segments live-updating or static? Segments update in real time. As contact data changes, the audience reflects those changes.
Can I use OR logic in a Segment? Yes. Use the Add OR Filter button to include OR conditions alongside AND logic.
Can I manually add or remove contacts from a Segment? No. A Segment includes only the contacts that match your filter criteria. For manual grouping, use tags or a Smart List.
Can I exclude an entire Smart List with an "is not" condition? No. There is no "Smart List is not" condition, so a Smart List cannot be excluded as a whole. Exclude contacts using tags, contacts, or pre-built Segments instead.
Can I freeze the list of contacts at the time I build the Segment? No. The final recipient list is created at send time, so it always reflects current data. Freezing a list is only available through methods other than Build Segment.