Segmentation of your contact list is very important as it allows you to engage in a more personal and relevant way with each and every customer.  Targeted marketing campaigns lead to higher open rates, engagement, higher return on investment, and lower unsubscribe rates.  

In this article we look at how Enudge helps you to segment your customer database, and how your contacts can get involved in the segmentation process as well.

Enudge allows you to perform segmentation in both pre and post campaign stages:
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1. Categories:

Your contacts can be associated with any number of categories, and you can attach contacts from multiple categories to the one email or SMS campaign, so use of categories is awesome for segmentation purposes.

2.  Custom fields

Enudge provides 9 custom fields that you can use for storing additional data per contact, and segmenting via those fields. For this, you have to import the relevant data and you can also label these fields to make it easier for you to remember what you are storing in those fields.  

3. Advanced Multiple-Criteria Search:
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This feature allows you to filter your contacts based on multiple attributes such as Gender, City, Organisation etc and attach the matching contacts to your campaign. Refer to this article for a details on how to use the Advanced Multiple Criteria Search function.
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From the Analysis section of your Enudge campaign, you can use the statistics such as Number of opened emails, Number of URL click throughs etc to do build upon your customer segmentation as follows:
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a. Create follow up campaigns e.g contacts who opened an email on a particular topic can be assumed to have shown interest and therefore sent a follow up email perhaps including a discount code, or further valuable information on the topic, to nudge them to make a purchase or continue to build trust.
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b. Assign contacts to a Category based on the action undertaken by the contacts e.g contacts who opened an email can be added to a Category named "Potential Leads" and this list can be continuously grown. 

To perform the above actions, follow these steps: 

   3. In the statistic detail screen page you have the option to Add contacts to a draft campaign and Add contacts to a category.
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Enudge also allows your contacts to get involved in their own segmentation in the following ways:

1. Update My Preferences 

You can encourage your contacts to get involved in their own segmentation, by recommending that they update their preferences and choose their interests.  All categories you mark as 'public' will appear in the 'Update My Preferences' screen, and allows your contact to opt in and out of particular interest groups.  Make sure you add an informative, encouraging, description to all public categories - read this article for details about managing public categories.  

2. Message Series Action Responder

Giving your reader the option to, say, 'Keep sending me information about product XYZ', or 'I am no longer interested in XYZ' via the Action Responder Message Series functionality is a very powerful way to allow your contacts to self-select.  This is particularly useful where your prospects usually have a long lead time prior to purchase, and a message series is used to nurture them along the path.  This article describes the Action Responder.

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