Have you ever found yourself staring down the Marketing Effort screen, intimidated by the sheer number of segments that you need to build for an upcoming mailing? The ability to build out and track these segments is one of the highlights of the marketing effort tool in Blackbaud CRM™, but it can still be a daunting task.

Have no fear - there is a helpful tool in Blackbaud CRM™ that allows you to quickly generate multiple segments from selections - the Segment Builder.

Here’s a great example of how the Segment Builder can save you time by turning just a few generic selections into numerous segments that you can build into a marketing effort.

Let’s say you work in higher education. For your big fall mailing, you want to build out segments based on the college of graduation, donation history, and degree type - for example, “Constituents with a Bachelor’s Degree from the College of Education who are LYBUNTS”. You have six colleges, three donor types, and two degree types to break out - this means that you ultimately want to end up with 36 different segments in your marketing effort.

Rather than having to build out each of the 36 segments individually with queries, you can save time by simply building the main eleven selections and having the Segment Builder generate 36 segments based on every possible combination of those selections.

The Segment Builder can be found on the Segments page, which is found on the Marketing and Communications tab in Blackbaud CRM™. From the Segments page, click the task to Create multiple segments.

You will need to select a source view - this determines the types of selections that will be available for building your segments.

Once you select a source view, the main Create Multiple Segments window appears. See below for a tour of this window.

In our example, we would need to build out three different sets with the corresponding selections in order to create the 36 segments needed. As you can see below, we have sets for “College of Graduation”, “Donor Type”, and “Degree Type”. In the “College of Graduation” set you can see the six selections that we have chosen that filter constituents into their colleges.

The bottom of the screen displays the number of segments that will be generated by your selections. In this case, 36 segments - one segment each for Bachelor’s degrees and Master’s degrees, in each donor type and each college of graduation. To view the list of segments that will be generated, select the Preview segments tab.

A few final tips for using the segment builder tool:

• Arrange the selection set tabs in the order you want the generated segment names and codes combined from left to right. For example, our College of Graduation, Donor Types, and Degree Types sets will generate segment names in that order. You can use the left/right arrows to change the order of tabs.

• If you add generated segments to a segment group, it is also important to consider the top to bottom order of selections. Generated segments are added to the segment group in the same order as the selections on each tab. Keep in mind, when you add segments to a marketing effort, constituents are included in the first segment they meet the criteria for. Rather than reordering segments after the segment group is added to the marketing effort, it is better to define the preferred order in the Segment Builder before you generate the group. You can use the up/down arrows to change the order of selections.

Generating a long list of segments doesn’t have to be scary! By using the Segment Builder tool, you will have your marketing effort built in no time. If you need more help with efficiently utilizing Blackbaud CRM™ to support your marketing and communications strategy, reach out to the experts at BrightVine.