A segment is a saved group of donors or students. Segments let you choose an audience when sending a campaign or newsletter, so building good ones makes bulk email useful rather than blunt.
Open Segments from the left navigation.
The list
Groups are listed with the tabs All, Students, and Donors, each carrying a count. Search by name, description, or owner, and use Filters to narrow further.
Column | What it shows |
Name | What the group is called. |
Type | Whether it is a segment or a list. |
Entity | Whether it contains donors or students. |
Visibility | Shared with the team, or private to you. |
Members | How many people are currently in it. |
Created by / Modified by | Who made it and who last changed it, with dates. |
Actions | Duplicate, download, and delete. |
Duplicate is the quickest way to build a variation. Copy a segment close to what you want, then adjust the rules instead of starting over. Download exports the membership.
Creating a group
Click + Add New.
Choose the membership model
Dynamic segment is defined by filter rules. Membership is calculated automatically and stays in sync as your data changes, so a segment of lapsed donors adds and removes people as they lapse or give again.
Static list is a fixed set of people you add manually or upload as a CSV. Membership stays exactly as you set it.
You cannot convert one to the other later. If you are unsure, ask whether the group is defined by a rule or by a specific set of names. Anything you could describe as a sentence ("donors who have given $25,000 or more") should be dynamic. Anything you would otherwise keep in a spreadsheet, such as a board roster or a table seating list, should be static.
Choose who is in it
Pick Students or Donors. This sets what the group can contain and decides where the group appears when you choose an audience.
Name it
The name is what everyone picks from in the campaign and newsletter audience dropdowns, so it needs to say who is in the group without anyone opening it.
"Lapsed donors (>12 months)" and "High-value donors ($25k+ lifetime)" both work. "My Special List" does not.
Use the Description for anything the name cannot carry, such as why the group exists or when it should be used. Other admins see both.
Set visibility
Shared makes the group available to other admins. Private keeps it to you.
Share anything the team might reasonably want to email. A private segment nobody else can see is a segment somebody else will rebuild slightly differently, and then you have two.
Click Continue to define the group's rules or members.
Naming and housekeeping
A few habits that keep this list usable as it grows:
Put the defining rule in the name, including thresholds and time windows.
Share by default, and keep private segments to genuine works in progress.
Duplicate rather than rebuild when you need a variation.
Check the member count before using a segment. A dynamic segment showing zero members usually means its rules no longer match anything.