Project · Adobe Marketo Engage · Segmentation · Dynamic Content
Segmentations & Dynamic Content
A working reference for Marketo segmentations: how each person is placed in exactly one segment, why the order of the segments is part of the logic, and how dynamic content turns one email into a version for every audience without cloning it.
- Adobe Marketo Engage
- Segmentations
- Dynamic content
- Smart list rules
- Snippets
- Personalization
One person, one segment
A smart list answers "who matches this?", and one person can match any number of them. A segmentation answers "which one group does this person belong to?" Its segments are mutually exclusive. Marketo checks a person against each segment's rules from the top down and puts them in the first one they match. Anyone who matches none lands in Default, which is always last and can't be moved or deleted.
Membership updates on its own as person data changes, and every move is logged as a Change Segment activity. Because an email's content is picked from the segment at send time, the audience logic lives in one place instead of in a stack of cloned emails and smart campaigns.
The same person can match several segments' rules. Only the order decides which version of the email they get.
Approval switches it on. A segmentation has to be approved before assets can use it. While it isn't approved, every recipient sees the Default content. After a change, allow time for membership to recalculate across the database before a send.
Built to scale, within limits. An instance can have 20 segmentations with up to 100 segments each. Filters on custom fields, list membership, lead owner fields and revenue stages add complexity, and a heavy segmentation can fail to approve below those numbers.
Writing the segment rules
The segmentation on this page, Audience, drives the hero block and subject line of a newsletter. Each segment's rules are a smart list, written most specific to least specific, because a broad rule placed high catches people a narrower rule was meant for.
| Order | Segment | Rule | Why it sits here |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Customers | Lead Status is Customer | Paying customers should never see acquisition messaging, whatever else is true about them. |
| 2 | Healthcare | Industry is Healthcare | Regulated industry, so its compliance message outranks company size and region. |
| 3 | Enterprise | Number of Employees at least 1,000 | Broad by design. It sits below the segments it would otherwise swallow. |
| 4 | EMEA | Country is in the EMEA country list | Region-specific news for anyone not already claimed above. |
| — | Default | Everyone else | A real audience with real people in it, not a leftover. Write it as carefully as the rest. |
Segment rules can't read behavior. Activity filters like Visited Web Page aren't available in a segmentation, and neither are Member of Smart List or Random Sample. When an audience depends on behavior, a smart campaign writes it to a person field or static list, and the segment rule reads that instead.
Try it
The four segments below are the Audience segmentation. Pick a person to see which rules they match and which version of the email they get, then drag the segments into a different order, or use the arrows. The table underneath shows where everyone in the sample database lands, and flags anyone the new order moved.
Audience · checked top to bottom
| Person | Matches | Lands in |
|---|
Dynamic content in the email
In the email editor, any section, or the subject line, can be made dynamic by choosing a segmentation. Each segment then gets its own version of that section, and Default's version is the fallback. Everything that isn't dynamic stays shared, so a layout fix happens once rather than once per clone.
Each dynamic section is driven by a single segmentation. Crossing two dimensions, such as industry by region, means building a combined segmentation or putting tokens inside each version, which is the job My Tokens and snippets are for. A snippet is a reusable block that can be dynamic too, so a regional footer or signature is written once and used in every email.
Preview every version. Preview shows Default unless you switch View By from Default to the segmentation, then step through each segment before approving.
Keep it under twenty. Adobe recommends fewer than 20 dynamic elements per email. Past that, send performance suffers and review gets error-prone.
Variables in dynamic content are trigger-only. Email variables inside dynamic content are supported in trigger campaigns, not batch campaigns.
Which tool, when
| Goal | Use | Why not something else |
|---|---|---|
| A different version per audience | Segmentation + dynamic content | One email and one approval, and marketers edit each version in the editor. |
| An audience defined by behavior | Smart campaign sets a field, segment reads it | Segment rules can't use activity filters. |
| Two dimensions at once | Combined segmentation, or tokens in each version | A dynamic section follows one segmentation. |
| Lists of records (orders, events) | Email Script token | Dynamic content swaps whole blocks. It can't loop over records. |
| Results by audience | Email report grouped by segmentation | Segments don't overlap, so the rows add up to the whole send. |
