Optimize your segments

By building optimized segments, you can reduce the time required to build the segment, target the right audience, and decrease the time required to calculate segment membership.

Reference segments

Reference segments are segments that you use in other segments. You can define a basic criteria in a segment and then reuse that criteria in other segments. 

• With reference segments, you can share logic between segments and avoid repetition when creating queries.
• By reusing segments you can reduce any errors that might occur while recreating the same logic in multiple segments.
• They also provide a way to manage complexity by providing a way to break down query logic into smaller, more digestible and semantic units. 

For more information, see Reference segments.

General guidelines for building optimized segments

Sometimes, the way that a segment is built can affect the speed with which segment membership is calculated. This can result in a delay in the launching of a campaign and might also result in the campaign not running at all. As such, it is important to build optimized segments. 

• We recommend that you use the following filters:
• User Attributes
• Lifetime Activities
• Predictive Scores
• Demographics
• User Affinity
• Traffic Source
• Custom Lists
• Use exact matches in conditions. Using operators like contains, does not contain, begins with, or ends with results in slower segment count calculation.
• For the User Attribute Filter, use match types is equal to, is empty, and is not empty.
• Use specific time windows for Recent Activity, Catalog Activity, Messaging activities, and Transactions. The shorter the time window, the faster the segment count calculation. Avoid using Anytime if possible.
• Using a frequency filter for Recent Activity, Catalog Activity, Messaging activities and Transactions results in slower segment count calculation.
• Using nested segments results in slower segment count calculation. The deeper the nesting, the slower the segment count calculation.
• For the User affinity filter, use the Affinity type Hour filter instead of the Item Category and Messaging Channel filters for faster calculations. If you have to use the Item Category or the Messaging Channel filters, use is equal to instead of contains, begins with or ends with.