It’s rare that you’ll want to show a prompt to every reader who visits your site — more likely, you’ll want to target groups of readers based on their interactions with your site. Audience segments let you target readers by such things as number of stories read, whether they signed up for a newsletter, and whether they’ve donated or subscribed.
A good rule of thumb for segments is to set a couple of criteria at most; any more than that, and you risk over-segmenting your readers. You want to make sure you’re targeting a reasonable set of behaviors in the parameters you set.
Segments are in priority order, from top to bottom. It behaves like a series of if-else statements: if the reader matches segment 1, show these prompts, if not, try segment 2, etc.
Whether they match a segment or not, everyone will see the prompts in the “Everyone” segment.
Creating an audience segment
To create an audience segment, follow these steps:
- Navigate to Newspack > Dashboard > Campaigns and click on the Segments tab.
- Click Add New Segment to create a new audience segment. Give it a descriptive name, and fill out the criteria you’d like to apply (more on segmentation criteria at the bottom of this page).
Click on the two images below to expand the image.
A segment is a set of reader criteria. A reader must match all of a segment’s criteria to match that segment, so it’s best to use a small number of criteria for each segment. Here are all of the criteria you can use to build segments:
- Articles read: The number of article-type Posts that have your readers viewed in the past 30 days. Static pages, archives, and search results aren’t included in this view count. If using this field, any prompt in this segment will not appear on Pages.
- Articles read in session: The number of article-type Posts viewed in the current session. Static pages, archives, and search results aren’t included in this view count. If using this field, any prompt in this segment will not appear on Pages.
- A session ends when the reader is inactive for 30 minutes. This is useful for targeting readers who are actively interacting with your site.
- Favorite category: Targets readers who have been to this category more than any other. This can change as readers browse your site. Multiple entries are allowed here.
- Devices: Targets readers based on the device size on which they are viewing your site. Multiple device sizes can be selected for each segment.
- Registration: Whether someone has an account on your site.
- When a reader signs up for a newsletter or makes a payment, they register for an account on your site.
- Newsletters: The system designates users as a subscriber if they arrive at the site from a Newsletter link.
- Subscribed to newsletter lists: Target based on what newsletter someone is signed up for.
- Not subscribed to newsletter lists: Target based on what newsletter someone is not signed up for.
- Donation: Donor status is known if the donation occurs on-site for sites using the Newspack Reader Revenue features.
- If donors make donations off-site and are redirected to a specific page on-site after donating, select that page in the Campaigns settings. Once the system detects that a reader views this page, it will segment them as a donor.
- Has active subscription(s): Target based on what someone is paying for. You must type in the name of a recurring payment you have set up. You don’t need anything here if you want to rely just on the previous field of donor or non-donor.
- Does not have active subscription(s): Target based on what someone is not paying for. You must type in the name of a recurring payment you have set up. You don’t need anything here if you want to rely just on the field of donor or non-donor.
- Has active membership(s): Target based on what access to restricted content someone has. You must type in the name of a membership plan you have set up.
- Does not have active membership(s): Target based on what access someone does not have. You must type in the name of a membership plan you have set up.
- Sources to match: Readers arriving at the site from a particular domain will see a prompt, e.g.
twitter.com. Referrer can also be a comma-separated list, allowing multiple referrers (twitter.com,facebook.com) or multiple domains used by the same service. - Sources to exclude: – Readers coming from a particular domain won’t see a prompt, e.g.
twitter.com.
Be sure to hit Save at the bottom when you’re done.
Once you’ve created at least one audience segment, you will be able to see them all listed under the Segments tab, and will be able to edit them from there:
If you’d like to disable a segment, toggle the switch off in the list view, or toggle off the “Segment enabled” switch when editing the segment. The segment and its assigned prompts will not be used when targeting readers. If a disabled segment’s prompts are assigned to other enabled segments, they may still be displayed to readers who match those segments.
Segment priority
We display segments in descending order of priority, with the highest priority at the top. Reorder the list by clicking and dragging the 
icon or by clicking the up or down arrows in each segment.
Segment priority determines which prompts are seen by readers who match more than one segment, or in the event of a conflict.
- Multiple segments: The system will show readers prompts assigned to the first segment they match, even if they also match other segments with lower priority. This is to avoid showing potentially conflicting messaging to readers who match more than one segment. (They’ll also see prompts assigned to “Everyone”).
- Conflicts: The system can display only one overlay prompt and one above-header prompt at any one time. If multiple overlays or above-header prompts are eligible to be displayed to a single reader, only one of each type will be shown. Generally, more recently published prompts will be displayed first.
Assigning prompts to an audience segment
Once you’ve created one or more segments, you can assign prompts to them. The system will only show prompts to visitors who match the segment. There are two ways to assign a prompt to a segment:
The first and easiest way is from Newspack > Dashboards > Campaigns.
- Click on the Campaigns tab. Any segments you create will show up here, along with any prompts that belong to those segments.
- Filter by the campaign you want to work with.
- In the box for any segment, click the “Add New Prompt” button. Follow the instructions for creating a new prompt.
- To assign an existing prompt to a segment, click on the
button for that prompt. In the Segment field, begin typing a segment’s name. Click on the autocomplete result for the segment to assign it. Prompts that have multiple segments will appear under each segment’s heading.
You may also assign a prompt to a segment while editing a prompt:
- Create a new prompt, or edit an existing one.
- In the right-hand column, with the Prompt tab selected, scroll down to the Segments panel.
- Choose the segments you want to assign the prompt to.
- Click Update.
Previewing segments
Each segment has a preview button, which opens a popup window to let you browse the site as if you were a member of that segment.
While logged into WordPress as an admin or editor user, and using the public-facing site, you’ll have an option to show or hide prompts. This is toward the right side of the black tool bar at the top of a page or post when signed in.
Campaign Segmentation
Campaigns Table of Contents