Segments, questions, and responses
You'll learn how answers and visitor behavior become segments you can use to show people more relevant questions, pages, and offers.
Segments let you show people different things based on what you know about them. You can ask a visitor a question or use information you already have, such as pages they've visited or data in your CRM.
Our example business, WorkForge (opens in a new tab), might show a product comparison to someone who's viewed its pricing page. Someone who answers "Managing client projects" might see an agency example instead. One tells you what they did. The other tells you what they chose.
A group holds related segments
A segment group holds categories for one part of your audience, such as Customer, Lead, and Anonymous in a customer lifecycle group. A visitor's membership in one of those categories is a segment.
Standalone groups live under Segments in the sidebar. They use automatic rules rather than asking a question. Rules can check recorded page visits, campaign parameters, other segments, or available contact data.
Groups work independently. Someone can be a Customer in one group and a Pricing reader in another. Creating a group doesn't change your site by itself. Use its segments in a flow, widget, campaign, or personalized phrase to change what people see.
Choice questions create segments
Multiple choice and Yes / No questions have a linked segment group, with one segment for each choice. When someone answers "Managing client projects", they join that answer's segment.
You can also set Auto-Segment rules for a choice question. An existing contact field could supply the answer before you ask. Whether you skip the question depends on the flow and widget's question-handling settings.
You'll edit these questions and answers in Questions. They don't appear among the standalone groups in Segments.
Input questions save values instead
A Number, NPS, Rating, or text question saves the value someone enters. It doesn't create a segment for every possible answer. A rating of 4 is a numeric answer, not a segment named "4" or an automatic lead score.
You can use that value in a previous-answer condition. WorkForge could ask for team size with a Number question, then create a segment for answers of 20 or more. The saved number and the segment are separate.
Responses holds input answers and Other write-ins, rather than every multiple-choice click. Opening Responses requires Scale or Pro. Look in a question's reporting tabs for choice distributions and question activity. See response reporting questions for more detail.
Segment order decides between overlapping matches
New standalone groups allow one winning segment. RightMessage checks automatic rules in the order you've put the segments in. The first match wins.
Put a specific segment before a broader one that includes the same people. For example, put "Subscriber with team size set" before "Subscriber". Otherwise, the broader subscriber rule wins first.
The first segment requires both subscriber status and a populated Team Size field. The second needs only subscriber status.
A remembered choice answer takes priority over ordinary automatic rules. A debugger override can take priority while you're testing, so remove overrides when you want to check a visitor's natural match.
If a higher-priority segment needs contact data that's still loading, RightMessage can wait before choosing a winner. A lower segment doesn't win just because its data arrived first.
Multiple-answer choice questions can have several memberships. So can groups already configured to allow multiple winners. If nothing matches, the visitor stays unsegmented in that group. An empty automatic rule isn't a catch-all, so give your flow or personalized content a path for unmatched visitors.
Current membership can change
A "Currently viewing pricing" rule stops matching when someone leaves that page. A rule based on recorded pricing visits can keep matching within its history window. The condition reference explains where each kind of data comes from and how long it applies.
RightMessage remembers answers in browser storage. Clearing that storage, or using a browser where storage isn't available, changes what it can remember. Another device doesn't automatically inherit those answers.
Contact data needs identification. Connecting your email platform doesn't identify every visitor, and each device needs its own identification event. Mapped contact data can supply segments, while a new submitted answer can update its mapped destination. See answer and contact mapping.
Membership counts are not response counts
Visitors segmented counts unique visitors across the listed groups. Segments applied adds up their memberships. One person can have several memberships, so those totals can differ.
Segment reports describe your audience in the selected date range, not a historical count of survey submissions. Engagement lift also doesn't tell you that segmentation caused a conversion improvement.
Ready to use what you already know about visitors? Create a segment group. If you'd rather ask them, see question wording and behavior.