Creating a segmentation job

A segmentation job contains the job definition, security settings, and segment definitions used to generate contact or prospect lists.

There are two types of segmentation jobs:

■    Contact jobs – All queries for a Contact segmentation job must contain the Contact business object as a source.

■    Prospect jobs – All queries for a Prospect segmentation job must contain the Prospect business object as a source.

Each segment is assigned an execution order to make sure duplicates are not generated. What is often different from appeal to appeal is the exclusion criteria you apply.

Universe queries

A "universe" query defines the entire population of contacts for a segmentation job. When a universe query is present, a contact must be a member of the universe query for the contact to be included in any of the segments within the segmentation job.

If a universe query is defined for the segmentation job, it must be included as a source for any segment-level queries. The system automatically populates this. Universe queries are required only when defining n-Select segments.

n-Select segments

n-Select segments list contact/prospect records returned by a selection filter in a number (n) of segments, with an equal number of contacts or prospects in each segment.

To create n-Select segments, you must include a universe query in the segmentation job. The universe query can include the results of a previous segmentation job as a source.

To ensure that your n-Select segments are successfully populated, make sure you do not exceed the total number of records returned by the universe query when you define the n-Select segments. For example, if the query returns 500 records, you can define n number of segments, each consisting of x number of contacts or prospects per segment, as long as n times x is less than or equal to 500.

Exclusion segments

Exclusion segments are any segments in the segmentation job that are not linked to a source code. Since each record can only be retrieved once, creating an exclusion segment in the segmentation job results in any records retrieved by an exclusion segment not being retrieved by later segments. For example, if two appeals are being dropped in a short period of time, you may want to include one or more segments in one appeal but not in the other.

Exclusions are applied at the segment level, and they can appear anywhere within a list of included segments, with these exceptions:

■    Universal exclusions (No Mail Flag or Bad Address) should be the first segments entered in the segmentation job.

■    Include segments have a link to a defined source code and should be defined after any universal exclusion segments.

If you specify a number of random records to return for a segment, the resulting list may contain fewer than the specified number of records. The segments are first populated and then checked for duplicate contacts or prospects. If duplicates are found, they are removed, and the segments from which they were removed will contain fewer than the specified number of records.

To create a segmentation job

1.  From Marketing, select Segmentation.

2.  Select Add a Job and enter the job definition.

3.  From the drop-down menu, select the Type.

4.  (optional) Apply a filter (universe) query to the job. You can create a new query or use an existing query. These queries can be added later.

5.  (optional) To define and create n-Select segments, click the n-Select tab. Enter the number of segments and the number of contacts per segment.

6.  (optional) To modify the security settings for the job, click the Security tab.

7.     (optional) To define explicit segments, click Segments:

□    Enter segment definitions.

□    Select an existing query or create a new query.

□    (optional) Select the number of random records to use to populate the segments.

□    (optional) Modify the Priority.

8.  Select Save.