Segments

Last updated: November 16, 2024 02:50

Segments let you group visitors and accounts based on metadata and product usage so that you can filter your analytics data and target guides to specific users.

A segment consists of rules that define a group of visitors and accounts based on selected metadata or usage-based criteria. Only visitors and accounts that meet the segment's criteria are included.

You can view and update your segments by navigating to People > Segments in the left-side menu. To learn more, see Manage segments.

Use cases

In analytics, you can use a segment to get a count of users who meet certain criteria. You can also use segments in Data Explorer to compare data between groups.

In guides, you can use segments to target messaging at a specific group of accounts or to activate a guide when a user has performed a certain behavior, like visiting a page multiple times without using a feature.

You can use nested segments to pull existing segments into a new segment for more consistency and less duplication. This allows you to reuse core segments that identify certain user groups in other segments. For example, you can create a "New users at commercial accounts" segment with its own unique rules, then add that segment as a rule in a new segment with additional targeting rules, such as Admins who haven't viewed onboarding guides within that segment.

You can also pull additional metadata into Pendo from your other business tools to use in segments with our integrations, such as the Salesforce integration. This is useful for improving the quality and utility of your Pendo analytics and allows for more refined guide targeting with business data.

Tip: You can analyze the behavior of newly identified users using the First Identified Visit segment in any of our behavior reports.

Requirements

All Pendo users can create segments. If you want to share a segment you've created with all Pendo users in your subscriptions, use the Everyone permission under Visibility in the segment builder. This also allows your segment to be used in nested segments.

If your user account is only assigned the Viewer role, you must use the Only Me visibility option and don't have the option to choose Everyone.

Only Admins can manage segment verification requests, including verifying and unverifying segments.

Create a segment

To create a segment, navigate to People > Segments in the left-side menu and select Create Segment in the top-right of the page.

Enter a Name and optional Description to identify your segment. Use a descriptive name that follows your organization's naming convention.
Set your segment's Visibility. Use Everyone to make the segment visible to everyone in your subscription (Note: only users with eligible permissions can select this option). Use Only Me to restrict visibility to you, which prevents the segment from being used for guide targeting.
Visitor type. Choose between Identified Visitors Only, Anonymous Visitors Only, or All Visitors. If you want to create segments that include anonymous visitors, your subscription must have Show anonymous visitor data enabled in your subscription settings. For more information, see Anonymous visitors.

Select Add Rules, and add any combination of product usage and metadata rules. Be mindful when adding rules, as combinations of rules can unintentionally target all users or be overly restrictive and not target any users. Some rules can't be used for guide targeting. For more information, see Segment rules in this article.

To save your new segment, select Create Segment.

The right pane shows whether the segment is eligible for guides, which visitors are eligible if so, and the all-time total number of visitors that are included in this segment.

The new segment verification status is set to unverified by default. To submit a request for this segment to be verified after it’s created, select the verification dropdown, then select Request verification. For more information about segment verification status, see Submit a segment for verification.

Visit the Pendo Academy for a video on Segment Logic (And, Or, Not).

Preview a segment

You can preview a segment within any segment dropdown in Pendo. To do so, open the dropdown and hover over a segment. A segment hover card appears with the following info about the segment:

Verification status
Name
Description
Rules
How many eligible visitors there are for the segment
How many reports use the segment
How many guides use the segment
Favorite segment

Select the icons in the top right to make changes to this segment:

Star icon: Favorite the segment
Double-box icon: Create a new duplicate of the segment
Pencil icon: Edit segment details

Segment rules

Segment rules use product usage data, visitor metadata, and account metadata to target users. This includes metadata passed through your install script (such as Visitor ID, email, isTrial, title, and so on), metadata from integrations, and default rules provided by Pendo.

Product usage

Segment rules based on product usage include the following:

Application Usage. Usage of a specific app.
Feature. Tagged Feature clicks.
Feedback Requests. Visitors who have voted on a request, only visible with an active Feedback subscription.
Guide. Pendo guide views.
Guide Element. Clicks on elements in Pendo guides.
Page. Tagged Page views.
Poll Response. Responses to guide polls.
Resource Center. Resource Center module views.
Segment. Use existing segments as nested segments.
Track Events. Pendo Track Events received.

All of these rules are eligible for guide targeting.

Tip: When adding a Page, Feature, or Track Event as a segment rule, hover over the event name to view the full name, description, and related metrics; or select View details to open the corresponding event details page.

Visitor data

Segment rules based on visitor metadata include any custom fields specified in Settings > Data Mappings and the following default fields:

Account IDs. Account IDs associated with a visitor. A visitor can be associated with multiple Account IDs.
Device Type*. Device used by a visitor in the last recorded event.
First Visit*. Date of the first recorded event.
Language*. Browser language metadata.
Last Visit. Date of the last recorded event in the last recorded event.
Most recent browser name*. Name of browser in the last recorded event.
Most recent browser version*. Version of browser in the last recorded event.
Most recent operating system*. Last mobile operating system (OS) used.
Most recent server name*. Domain of the last event.
Number of Days Active. Number of days the visitor has generated an event.
Number of Events. Total number of raw events that the visitor has generated.
Sample Group*. Random value between 0 and 99 used for targeting random groups.
Time on Site. Time in minutes that the visitor is generating events.
Visitor ID*. Unique Visitor ID from your install script.

*Rule is eligible for guide targeting.

Account data

Segment rules based on account metadata include any custom fields specified in Settings > Data Mappings and the following default fields:

Account ID*. Unique Account ID from your install script.
First Visit*. Date of the first recorded event for any visitor with this Account ID.
Last Visit. Date of the last recorded event for any visitor with this Account ID.
Number of Days Active. Total number of days any visitor with this Account ID that has generated events.
Number of Events. Total number of raw events with this Account ID.
Number of Visitors. Total number of visitors with this Account ID.
Time on Site. Total number of minutes that visitors have generated events with this Account ID.

*Rule is eligible for guide targeting.

Mobile data

Segment rules based on mobile-specific data include the following:

App Version. Your mobile app version.
SDK Version. Pendo SDK version.
OS version. Mobile operating system (OS) version.
Device Type. Mobile device type.
Device model. Mobile device model.

Visitor and account metadata values in segmentation

Metadata fields configured as text types are searchable in segment rules. When using text-based metadata in a segment rule, Pendo offers a dropdown list containing known values for that metadata field. For metadata fields with more than 400 values, the dropdown list displays the first 400 values in alphanumerical order, and you can search for additional values and add new ones as needed. These metadata values are case-sensitive, and the dropdown list is only available for metadata fields configured as text.

When using a "contains" rule with a text-type metadata field, Pendo searches for partial matches. For example, a rule like contains employee includes any metadata value containing "employee", such as "Pendo employee" or "Mind the Product employee". In contrast, using a "contains" rule with a list-type metadata field requires an exact string match. For instance, contains employee would only match values that exactly match "employee" and variations like "Pendo employee" or "Mind the Product employee" wouldn't be eligible for the segment.

Admins can review the types configured for each metadata field in Settings > Data Mappings. For more information about the different metadata types, see Data mapping and data types in Pendo.

Create a nested segment

Nested segments allow you to add an existing segment as a rule in another segment. This simplifies creating new segments and makes it possible to create core segments that update other segments if their rules are changed.

You can add up to five nested segments to a segment. A segment must be visible to Everyone to be used as a nested segment. You can use nested segments in any type of segment, analytics, guide targeting, and draft segments in Data Explorer. The same restrictions that apply to each use case apply when using nested segments.

To add a nested segment rule, open the segment builder, then use these instructions to add a new segment rule:

In the first dropdown menu, select Segment from the Product Usage section.
Select is equal to or is not equal not to include or exclude the nested segment.
Choose an existing segment from the Select a saved segment dropdown, which lists all segments shared with Everyone in your subscription. When editing a guide-targeting segment, ineligible segments are unavailable. Select the dropdown arrow to view all the rules associated with the segment.
Add additional nested segments or segment rules as needed, then save your segment. If a nested segment is changed, it updates this segment automatically.

Note: You can't create compound nested segments. This means that you can't use a nested segment when creating a new segment if the nested segment contains a nested segment in its segment rules. If a segment is used as a nested segment, a message appears in the segment details on the Segments page indicating everywhere that segment is used in analytics, guides, and segments.

Bulk-add Visitor or Account IDs with a CSV file

To target a large number of known Visitor or Account IDs, upload a CSV file with the first column containing the Visitor or Account IDs that you want to include or exclude from the segment.

To upload a CSV file to a new segment, open the segment builder, then use these instructions to add a new segment rule:

In the first dropdown menu, select Account ID or Visitor ID. You can either scroll through the list or enter this value in the dropdown field.
In the second dropdown menu, select either csv contains or csv does not contain. You're then presented with an Upload CSV button that prompts you to upload a CSV file.

The CSV file must be formatted in a way that Pendo can read. Visitor or Account IDs must be in a single, line-delimited column in the file. A column header is supported in cell A1 if you choose Exclude row 1 (column header) in the upload modal. No other columns, punctuation, or special characters are supported.

Tip: If you need to add new users to a segment created with a CSV upload, you can upload a new CSV file with the new users or add an "OR" rule for each new user.

Segment based on Feedback request votes

If you're a Pendo Feedback user, you can build dynamic segments based on request voters. Select Add Rules in the segment builder, then follow these instructions:

In the first dropdown menu, select Feedback Requests from the Product Usage section.
In the second dropdown menu, select a specific app that you want to focus on or a collection of apps.
In the third dropdown menu, select a specific feedback request.

The segment contains any visitors who voted on the request. It's dynamically updated every 15 minutes with the current request voters. Only visitors identified by the Pendo agent are included. Team members and visitor records created manually with the UI, API, or Salesforce integration don't appear in the segment.

Note: Segments using Feedback request rules are only usable in analytics. Guide targeting isn't supported.

Segment sample groups

Use the Sample Group option to create a segment that targets a random sample of visitors. Sample group values are assigned when a visitor is created and remain static for that visitor. Values range from 0 to 99, with an even distribution across all of your visitors over time.

Open the segment builder, then use these instructions to add a new segment rule:

In the first dropdown menu, select Sample Group from the Visitor Data section. You can either scroll through the list or enter this value in the dropdown field.
Choose your quantity rules for the sample group. Use sample groups to perform A/B tests on different guide designs, target rotating random groups for user research, or limit the number of visitors eligible for a guide experiment.

Here's an example using two rules to target sample groups 50 to 74, which represents 25% of your user base: Sample Group greater or equal to 50, AND Sample Group less or equal to 74.

You can see the sample group value for any visitor by looking at their details page through People > Visitors, selecting their Visitor ID from the Visitors table, and viewing the Details section.

Ineligible segments for guide targeting

Some segment rules aren't available for guide targeting due to calculations or time-bound usage values that might not process fast enough for responsive guide activation. Segments with Only Me visibility also aren't available for guide targeting.

In the segment builder, you can see whether the segment is Guide Eligible. If it isn't eligible, you can hover over the tooltip icon to understand what rule makes the segment ineligible for guide targeting. Each ineligible rule is reviewed below.

Ineligible rules

Time on Site
Number of Days Active
Last Visit
Number of Events
Account IDs (All accounts a visitor is associated with, found under Visitor Data)
Number of Page views, Feature clicks, or Track Events (within a time period; see below for examples)
Number of Visitors
Click Event or Track Event properties
Feedback requests

When you're adding a segment to a guide, you aren't able to select segments that are ineligible for guide targeting. Hover over the segment to see what makes the segment incompatible with guides.

Guide targeting rules using Page views are limited to Seen or Not Seen with the following conditions:

Seen options include ever, since, within last, at least, and at most.

Not Seen options include ever, since, and within last.

Guide targeting rules using Feature clicks are limited to Used or Not Used with the following conditions:

Used options include ever, since, within last, at least, and at most.
Not Used options include ever, since, and within last.

Visit the Pendo Academy to see a video about segments for guide targeting.

Copy a segment

If you have a segment you want to reuse, you can copy or duplicate it. Go to the existing segment in a dropdown menu or the Segments page, hover over the segment, and select the copy icon to the top right of the hover card. This creates a new segment named Copy of with the same rules and visibility set to Only Me.

Frequently asked questions

I deleted a metadata field. What happens to the segment that's applied to a guide?

If a metadata field is deleted on the Data Mappings page and that field is used in a segment, it's removed from the segment. This makes the existing segment invalid, and any guide using that segment no longer displays.

Can I segment excluded visitors and accounts?

If you want to exclude users from appearing in your usage data, such as for automation testing, you can add specific users or environments to your Exclude List.

You can segment excluded visitors and accounts for guide targeting, but you can only view product data for excluded visitors and accounts by filtering with the Excluded Accounts & Visitors segment.

Why does my eligible visitor count on the Guide Settings page differ from the eligible visitor count in the segment builder and on the Segments page?

The eligible visitor count on the Guide Settings page may differ from what you see in the segment builder or on the Segments page due to several factors:

Visitors and accounts in your Exclude List remain eligible for guide targeting but are excluded from the Pendo UI, including guide analytics, impacting the count on the Guide Settings page.
Anonymous visitors aren't included in the eligible visitor total on the Guide Settings page.
Only visitors with prior activity in the app featuring the guide are included in the eligible visitor count on the Guide Settings page. However, any visitor with subsequent activity in the app immediately becomes eligible and is added to the count.

Why does the eligible visitor count differ from what's listed in the Resource Center?

The total eligible visitors on the Segments page and in the segment builder reflect the overall count of visitors across all apps in your subscription who meet the segment rule criteria. Conversely, when you apply the same segment to a Resource Center module, the eligible visitor count reflects the total number of visitors from the app that the Resource Center is configured for.