Segment Manager

The Targeting Engine is a powerful tool that allows to to quickly and easily define audience Segments and target them with specific Actions, e.g. target specific ads, display a pop-up, send an email, redirect to another page or site.

You can target segments by IP Address and User Agent. This functionality can be used to define a set of IP addresses that may be, for example, non-human traffic that you don't want to display paid banner ads to. By defining the target IP addresses and setting the action to serve only house ads, those IP addresses won't be counted as impressions/views/clicks for paid banner advertising. Or you could redirect to a page or a pop-up with a message that the IP address is suspected of being non-human traffic and a number to call if not the case. That IP could then be removed from the target segment.

The following lesson will provide details on how to use the Segment Manager, Action Manager, and Target Engine.

Please Note:

Segments and targeting actions can be applied to both Known and Unknown users.

If the defined criteria for a target segment doesn't require a user be known, e.g. viewing a particular webpage or section 3 times, as soon as a user meets that criteria by viewing the defined webpage or section 3 times, he/she is included in that segment (whether a known user or not) and the targeting action will occur.

Also note that both users who fit the criteria for the defined segment as of the effective start date of an action and users who meet the criteria at any time during the effective date range will be targeted.

CREATING A NEW SEGMENTFrom the Segment Manager menu, select Segment Manager:

You will see a list of existing segments. Click "Create Segment" in the upper right-hand corner.

You'll be taken to a screen allowing you to define a new segment. Give your segment a descriptive name. You can enter a brief description of the segment as well.

A segment is a group of people. You can define that group based on any number of demographic criteria, ie., "who" the user is, or based on behavioral criteria, ie., "what" the user has done. You can also create an "Account-based Segment." This is typically a group of IP Addresses that define a target company.

If you click the "First Party" tab, you will have the opportunity to define a segment. Click on the "User" button to define the segment based on demographic characteristics or select Account to define your segment based on an IP address range.

CREATE A DEMOGRAPHIC SEGMENTof your segment based on the demographic questions you have built in your database. You can use any demographic question to define a segment. Or choose Account to define an account-based segment.

If you choose a demographic question that has a multiple choice response, simply click in the target box and start typing one of the responses. ONEcount should pre-populate the box with the response. Multiple responses can be defined for a single question.

To add multiple demographic questions to a segment, simply click the Add button on the right-hand side and ONEcount will allow you to add another demographic question.

In this way, you can create a demographic segment of users who are Pediatricians who live in Arizona, for example.

If you are creating purely a demographic segment, hit "Save" and ONEcount will save your segment. If you would like to add behavioral characteristics to your segment (ie., Peditricians who live in Arizona and have read three articles on diabetes), click on the Behavior tab.

To define behavioral characteristics of your segment, choose a behavior type from the Category pull-down. The sub-category pull-down will change depending on the Category that was chosen. For the target, you can enter keywords in the Target box if the value(s) are free text.

If the Target values are multiple choice, you can put your cursor in the box, hit back-space, and then start typing possible values. ONEcount will show matching values, just hit enter and ONEcount will add the value to the target.

You can add multiple values to a single behavioral target; they will be "OR" values, meaning the segment will be true if any of the values is present.

Define the frequency of the action in the Freq./Days box. This means how many times within the given date range this even has happened, and enter a date range for the given event.

If you add multiple behavioral criteria to your segment (hit Add) to add more behavioral criteria, be sure to define whether this criteria is AND/OR, meaning, whether this segment will match when both criteria are met (AND), or when either of the criteria is met (OR).

There is a wide range of behavioral criteria that can be used for behavioral segments:

Banner: Users are selected based on the banner ads they have viewed on your site. The sub-category for Banners is Viewed or Clicked. Target is the name of the banner(s).

Content: Users are selected based on the meta keywords contained on the pages a user visits. The sub-category for Content is Viewed or Clicked. Target is the content keyword.

Email: Users are selected based on the emails (from your ONEcount-integrated ESP or ONEmail) that the user has engaged with. The sub-category for Email is Opened or Clicked. Target is the name or subject of the e-mail campaign.

Form: Users are selected based on the ONEcount form they have engaged with. The sub-category for Form is Completed. Target is the name of the form.

Package Transaction: Users are selected based on the ONEcount package transaction they have executed. The sub-categories for Package Transaction are Subscribed/Purchased, Currently Subscribed, Not Subscribed, Expired, Will Expire, Unsubscribed. The Target is the name of the package. The selected date range will query on Request Date (Not Transaction Date). 

Package Status: Users are selected based on the status of a package they have purchased or subscribed to. Best when used with a Package Transaction criteria. The sub-categories for Package Status are any of the package Statuses that you've defined in the Package Status section under the Inventory menu in ONEcount. There are no targets for this option.

Source Code: Users are selected based on the source code for any transaction they have executed within ONEcount. The sub-category is Selected. The target is the specific source codes that are used. Possible options are the source codes defined in the Source Code manager under the Inventory section of ONEcount.

Web: Users are selected based on the web URLs that they have visited. The sub-category is Viewed. The target is a URL or URL fragment.

Product Transaction: Users are selected based on products that they have purchased. The sub-categories are Subscribed/Purchased, Currently Subscribed, Not Subscribed and Unsubscribed. The target is the product name. The selected date range will query on Request Date (Not Transaction Date). 

Product Attribute: Users are selected based on specific attributes of the products they have purchased. The sub-categories are the attributes (ie., category, type, state, etc.) The target is the value of that attribute (ie., blue, edible, New York, etc.) If the sub-category is a multiple-choice list, then your target must be the name of one of those elements of the list. If the sub-category is a free text field, you can enter any value in the target box.

Once you have defined your First Party (demographic) and Behavioral criteria for your segment, be sure to HIT SAVE.

Note: There can be only one rule for each criteria like web, banner. If you have multiple target values all of them can be added into 1 rule by adding multiple values into target box.

CREATE AN ACCOUNT-BASED SEGMENT

target segments by Account – which is IP Address and User Agent. A user agent is any software that retrieves and presents Web content for end users. User agents include Web browsers, media players, and plug-ins that help in retrieving, rendering and interacting with Web content.

This functionality can be used, among other things, to define a set of IP addresses of invalid/non-human traffic that you don't want to display paid banner ads to. By defining the target IP addresses and setting the action to serve only house ads, those IP addresses won't be counted as impressions/views/clicks for sponsored banner advertising because they won't be served sponsored ads. Or you could redirect to a page or a pop-up with a message that the IP address is suspected of being non-human traffic and a number to call if not the case. That IP could then be removed from the target segment.

So, in the example above, the segment will include all users coming from IP address xx.xxx.20.80 using Safari OR from IP address xx.xxx.145.194 or 24.xxx.xxx.10 using Mozilla 5.0 OR, etc...

Note that only OR logic is used in Account segmenting and that you can enter multiple IP addresses and user agents in each field.

To create a segment of ALL users, both known and unknown, enter the IP address 1.0.0.0/1. This will include all possible IP addresses and, by extension, all users who visit your site.

CREATE AN ACTIONFrom the Segment Manager menu, select Action Manager. This is where you define the action to be taken for a segment, e.g. a website pop-up or ad targeting. Types of available Actions include: Pop-Up, Redirect, Ad Target, Transactional Email

You'll see a list of Actions that have been previously been created. To create a new Action, click "Create Action" in the upper right.

You'll be asked to provide a name for your new segment. Make it descriptive. You can also provide a brief description for this action. Click Next.

On the next screen, from the Action pull-down, choose the type of action you would like. Again, you have four choices: Ad Target (through Google Ad Manager or DFP), Pop-UP, Transactional Email, or Redirect.

CREATE AN AD ACTION

Here, we are defining an Ad Target. This will allow ONEcount to tell Google Ad Manager (DFP) what ad to target when a specific user is on your web site. The specific users will be defined in the Segment that you link to this target.

In the screen below, you'll see the options for an Ad Target. The first two options are Target Domain and Section. These are used to limit the scope of this action, not to define it. It's important to understand the difference.

In content-based targeting, you define a specific page or web site section (or a whole site) to be targeted with a banner or banner campaign. In effect you are saying, whenever someone comes to this section or this web site, show them this banner.

ONEcount targets ads based on identity. ONEcount is saying in effect, for this specific person (as defined by the Segment linked to this Action), show this ad. Period.

The Target Domain and Section options are used to limit this behavior. So what we are saying then is that for this specific person (as defined by the Segment linked to this Action) show this ad, but ONLY on these domains and in these specific sections of the site.

Why would we do that? Generally, this is limitation is used because we want to target a user with one ad campaign on one site, and a different campaign on another site.

For example, say we have a pediatrician who we want to target with an ad for a skin medicine on our dermatology site, but an ad for a different drug when he visits a site on diabetes.

The Target Domain and Section parameters are only required if you want to limit the banner. If you leave them blank, the user will be targeted across all your web sites.

The last property is the Key/Value pair that you will use to tell Google Ad Manager which banners or Line Items to target at this user. Consult for Google Ad Manager documentation on Key/value pair targeting. You may specify more than one Key/Value pair for this target. This allows Google Ad Manager or DFP to decide which banners to show.

• In Revive/OpenX, these variables are created under Inventory > Banner > Delivery Options > Add Delivery Limitation > Site-Variable > Add > enter Key and Value variables. These variables are of your choosing and can be text or num

For example, say you wanted to target users who read stories about high school basketball. You could create a segment of users who viewed content tagged "high school boys basketball." You could then create three Key/Value pairs for the action you link to that segment: one for high school boys basketball, one for high school sports, and one for high school boys sports. You could then use Google Ad Manager or DFP to determine how the user is targeted and the prioritization of each banner.

NOTE: Prioritization of banners is done in Google Ad Manager (or DFP) based on rules you configure in GAM.

CREATE A POP-UP ACTION

You can also create a pop-up target for your segments. There are two different types of pop-ups that can be defined in the ONEcount Action Manager: A ONEcount pop-up, and a Custom HTML pop-up.

Choose Pop-Up from the Action pull-down at the top.

The next two options are Target Domain and Section. These are used to limit the scope of this action, not to define it. It's important to understand the difference.

In content-based targeting, you define a specific page or web site section (or a whole site) to be targeted with a pop-up. In effect you are saying, whenever someone comes to this section or this web site, show them this pop-up.

ONEcount targets pop-ups based on identity. ONEcount is saying in effect, for this specific person (as defined by the Segment linked to this Action), show this pop-up. Period.

The Target Domain and Section options are used to limit this behavior. So what we are saying then is that for this specific person (as defined by the Segment linked to this Action) show this pop-up, but ONLY on these domains and in these specific sections of the site.

Why would we do that? Generally, this is limitation is used because we want to target a user with pop-up campaign on one site, and a different campaign on another site.

For example, say we have a pediatrician who we want to target with a pop-up for a skin medicine on our dermatology site, but a pop-up for a conference when he visits our site on diabetes.

The Target Domain and Section parameters are only required if you want to limit the banner. If you leave them blank, the user will be targeted across all your web sites.

Next we determine the priority of this pop-up relative to other pop-ups that may be targeted at this segment. It's possible that a user is in multiple segments and may be subject to multiple pop-ups. This setting will help ONEcount determine how important this pop-up is relative to other marketing efforts.

Frequency allows you determine how frequently this pop-up will appear to this user. Options include once, always (on every page load), daily (once per day), weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or annually.

Last, define the pop-up.

ONEcount includes a simple pop-up builder that allows you to build a pop-up with buttons that link out to other actions like forms, web pages, etc.

Simply add the header or title for your pop-up, and then the text you want to appear in the box. Check the Display Opt out box if you want the pop-up to include an option to prevent future pop-ups. Choose how many action buttons you would like on the pop-up, and define the button text and the link that the user is sent to when they click on the button.

If you have pop-up code that your web team has built, you can click on the Custom HTML tab and paste your code in the box.

Click Next to review your Action definition, and finally Save to save it.

This is an example of ONEcount's built-in pop-ups:

Note that the display opt-out will appear only if checked when creating the pop-up action.

CREATE A REDIRECT ACTION

Choose redirect from the list of Actions. The redirect action is very similar to the Pop-Up action, except that instead of displaying a pop-up message, ONEcount will redirect the user to a URL of your choosing.

One use case for this might be users who have a subscription that is running out; you could create a segment of users whose subscription expires in the next 10 days, and target that segment with an Action that redirects them to your subscription form when they first come to your site.

As with pop-up and ad targeting, the Target Domain and Section parameters are optional.

Upon clicking "Next", you'll have an opportunity to review the action and "Save" or go "Back" to make changes.

Upon clicking "Save", you'll be returned to the "Define action to take" window where you'll see the name of the saved action in the action field. (See below.)

Click "Next" to continue to Step 4 – Review and Save.

When a redirect is in effect, the redirect will occur for the specified target segment in the designated domains and sections at the set frequency and priority level. There is user no opt-out option for this action.

Click "Next" to continue to Step 4 – Review and Save.

When an ad target is in effect, only those ads specified by Key and Value will display for the specified target segment on the designated domains and sections at the set frequency and priority level. There is user no opt-out option for this action.

CREATE EMAIL ACTION

To send a transactional e-mail to a user, choose Email from the Action pull-down.

Upon clicking "Next", you'll have an opportunity to review the action and "Save" or go "Back" to make changes.

Upon clicking "Save", you'll be returned to the "Define action to take" window where you'll see the name of the saved action in the action field. (See below.)

Click "Next" to continue to Step 4 – Review and Save.

When an email action is in effect, the email will be sent to the specified target segment on the designated domains and sections at the set frequency and priority level. There is user no opt-out option for this action.

Review and Save

Review all of the information for your persona, and click "Save Persona" to save.

If you wish to make changes, click the "Back" button to move backward through the steps.

CREATE A TARGET: CONNECTING SEGMENTS TO ACTIONS

So now you have created audience segments based on demographics, actions, or a host of other deterministic criteria. And you've created a handful of actions, including pop-ups, banner targets, transactional e-mails and redirects. How do you put it all together?

The Target Engine has a very simple task: It connects Segments to Actions. It is pretty easy to use. Simply select Target Engine from the Segment Manager menu:

You'll see a list of existing targets and have an opportunity to create a new one. To edit an existing target, click on the pencil icon next to the target.

Once a segment has been defined and executed by the system, you can see up to the minute the statistics on your target by clicking on the small arrow next to the target. The screen will expand to show the details of your target, as well as usage statistics. In this case, the target waas seen 296,852 times by 35,166 unique users. The numbers in blue next to Known represent the number of known or identified views or users who have interacted with this target.

To create a new target, click "Create Target" in the upper-right corner. You'll be presented with a screen allowing you to give the target a title and a brief description. You'll also be given the opportunity to define an effective date range. This is the time period during which the Target will be active.

Please note that if you have defined a time-frame in your segment for behavior, it will not effect the date range for the target. The reason is because the segment time-frame determines who is in the segment, the target time-frame determines when the target will be "live."

For example, you might create a segment of web site visitors who looked at Halloween merchandise on your site from 10/1 to 10/31, and then a target that runs 11/1 through 11/25 offering them a discount on Thanksgiving merchandise.

Once you have defined the name and date range of your target, simply select the appropriate Segment to the Action(s) you want to execute. Note than mor than one Action can be selected for a given segment.

Click Next to reviewyour settings, and then save.