Please note that contacts are available only on Marketing plans.
This article contains instructions on navigating the new version of Elastic Email dashboard. If you would like to see the old dashboard version of this article, please use the following link
The difference
Lists are static sets of contacts while Segments are sets of contacts that dynamically change based on the segment's query.
An example is when a .csv file is uploaded, it is added to a new or existing list. That particular set of contacts does not change and remains static under that list.
A segment is completely dynamic and only ever contains the contacts that match the segment's Query.
A simple example is the Engaged Contacts segment which is available by default on most accounts. This segment only ever contains contacts with an Engaged status (the contact has clicked or opened your email within the last 6 months).
Contact lists in detail
Contact lists are static, which means that assigned contacts will never leave their lists without your action.
When uploading your contacts, you can add them only to contact lists (with the exception of the All contacts segment that is a default destination for all of your newly uploaded contacts.)
There are two ways to create a contact list:
Create it directly on your Contacts screen
Upload your .csv list, and when prompted, add them to a newly created list during the uploading process.
Contact segments in detail
Contact segments are dynamic, which means their contents will change in relation to the rules (queries) you set up for them.
Rules are divided into General, Statistics and Custom categories.
General - data that is contained within your contact
Statistics - filter your contacts by their performance
Custom - this is the category that contains your own custom fields
Example segment
A good example of a practical application of segments would be to create a segment containing all your non-engaging contacts - those that did not open your 10 last emails. You might want to either have a quick way of excluding such recipients from your future campaigns or prepare a special campaign just for such non-openers.
A segment like that would have to include two queries:
Rule: totalopened = 0
AND totalsent = 10
These two rules will condition this segment to contain all of your contacts that have both received at least 10 emails from you and at the same time did not open any of them.
Contents of this segment will change based on the state of your recipients.
A contact that did not open your last 10 messages will be included in this segment. However, if the same contact opens your email after a while, even after missing 20 of them, opening the email will cause it to leave this segment. This is because it will no longer fulfill the role of totalopened = 0. Only contacts that match the query will be included in the segment.
Clicking the "Evaluate" button will allow you to see how many contacts adhering to your chosen rules are present on your account.