Where to find Segments 🔍
Log into your Airship account and click on Segments and then 'Create & Manage'
From there you will see the Segments page with a list of your Segments, like in the example picture below.
We'll call this page "the segment library". More on this a bit further below. 🙂
A note on older features
If you've used Airship for a while, you might be familiar with PoP segments, Audiences, or Groups. Segments replaces all of these with a single, simpler concept.
The key difference: the old tools gave you a fixed set of categories to pick from. Segments let you describe any group of guests you can think of, in your own words, and Airship builds it for you.
What is a segment? 🤔
Before we get into the details, let's quickly explain what a Segment is. 😃
A segment is a saved group of your guests who all meet a specific set of criteria.
For example, you might create a segment for:
Guests who've visited your venue 7–10 times in total
Customers who haven't been in for 90 days
People who joined your database this month but haven't visited yet
What makes segments powerful is that they're live. ✨
Airship automatically updates the membership overnight, so the people in each segment are always up to date. You don't need to rebuild them. If a guest hits the criteria, they're in. When they no longer meet them, they drop out.
Example 🧑🏫
A guest who visits you for the first time will automatically land in a segment called '1 visit' (if you have a segment for that set up). When they visit a second time they will automatically move from '1 visit' to '2-3 visits'.
The Segments library 👥
The Segments library shows all your saved segments in a list.
For each segment you can see:
The Segment name - what you called this group of guests
Guest count - how many people are currently in the segment
Day trend - whether the number went up or down since yesterday (e.g. +281 or -114)
Sparkline - a small chart showing how the count has moved over recent days
This gives you a quick sense of whether a segment is growing, shrinking, or staying steady - without having to click into it.
Creating a new segment 🥳
Click the Create new button in the top right of the Segments page.
A panel will then slide out on the right.
Now type in the group of guests you're looking for (you can just describe what you want using simple English).
A few examples to get you started:
"Top spenders who haven't visited in 90 days"
"Guests who've visited exactly once in the last 30 days"
"Customers who signed up via Wi-Fi but never made a booking"
Airship AI will read your description and will gather the right data to use. Give it a bit of time to get its wisdom. 😂
Airship AI will ask follow up questions to help get your segment right. Just type your responses or copy/paste its suggestions.
Once you're happy with the segment details, Ask Airship will prompt you to create the segment, like in the example picture below.
You can either click out of the panel window you're on where you'll see the new segment listed in the Segment library. Or you can click the purple View segment to be directed straight to it.
When viewing the Segment you can ask follow up questions about the segment and add the Segment as to the Performance Dashboard.
(Read on for some more info about this below!)
⏱ Worth knowing: Segments don't update instantly. The membership list is calculated overnight, so a brand new segment will show its first results the following morning. After that, it updates automatically every day.
What you can do with a segment 💡
Once a segment exists, it opens up several useful things.
1. Track it as a metric on your dashboard
Any segment can become a tile on your Performance Dashboard, so you can watch how that group of guests grows or shrinks over time.
From the Segments library, click on a segment to "explore" it, and then choose Add to Performance Dashboard - or add it from within the Metrics library.
2. Explore it in Ask Airship
Click on any segment and it will open in Ask Airship, where you can dig deeper into that group of guests by asking questions in plain English.
For example:
"How many of these guests are contactable by email?"
"What's the average number of visits for people in this segment?"
"Which locations do these customers visit most?"
It's a quick way to go from "here's a group of people" to "here's what I actually know about them."
3. Trigger a Journey when someone enters or leaves (coming soon)
Soon you'll be able to set up an automated journey that fires when a guest joins a segment or leaves it.
For example: send a win-back email automatically when someone drops into your "haven't visited in 90 days" segment.
This feature is on its way - we'll update this article when it's live. 👀
Renaming a Segment ✏️
Click the three vertical dots ⋮ menu next to the segment and choose Rename.
Type the new name and confirm.
Questions?
If a segment isn't showing what you expected, it's worth checking:
Has it had time to process? New segments show their first results the morning after you create them.
Is the description specific enough? Try adding more detail - for example, instead of "regular visitors", try "guests who've visited more than 5 times in the last 6 months".
You can also click into a segment to see more detail about its membership, or ask Airship AI to explain what it found.