Segment your customers
Sending to everyone is the most expensive habit in WhatsApp marketing — it costs you per message and it costs you account health. A segment is how you spend both on the people likely to buy.
Build a segment in Audience → Segments by stacking conditions on order count, spend, tags, consent and recency. The matching count updates live as you edit. Save it, then use Launch campaign to open the broadcast builder with that audience already selected.
Before you start
- Shopify connected, so order history and spend are populated.
- Contacts in Audience — from opt-in tools, checkout consent or orders.
- Marketing consent recorded, if the segment will receive promotional messages.
Segments worth building first
| Segment | Conditions | What to send it |
|---|---|---|
| Recent buyers | Ordered in the last 30 days | Cross-sell the obvious companion product, or ask for a review. |
| Repeat customers | Two or more orders, consent recorded | Early access and restocks. This is your most valuable list. |
| Lapsed | Last order 90–180 days ago | A genuine reason to come back. This is where a discount earns its keep. |
| High value | Lifetime spend above your threshold | Treat differently — human outreach often beats a broadcast here. |
| Prepaid-only buyers | No COD orders | Safe to push harder. These customers never cost you RTO. |
| High RTO risk | Multiple returns to origin | Nothing promotional. Consider requiring prepayment instead. |
Build a segment
- Open the segment builder Audience → Segments → New. Name it for what it is, like "Repeat buyers, consented".
- Stack your conditions Order count, total spend, tags, consent, days since last purchase, return-to-origin count. Conditions combine with AND. Because it is AND, three conditions can easily match nobody. Add one at a time and watch the count.
- Watch the matching count It updates as you edit. Zero means your conditions are too strict — remove the last one you added.
- Include consent if you will market to it A segment without a consent condition will be trimmed at campaign preflight anyway. Putting it in the segment means the count you see is the count that sends.
- Save it Saved segments are dynamic — contacts move in and out as their behaviour changes. You do not rebuild them.
- Launch a campaign from it Press Launch campaign to open the broadcast builder with this audience selected — see Send a broadcast.
Lead scores, when order history is not enough
Lead scores rank contacts by engagement rather than purchases, using waterfall rules you define. They are useful for contacts who have opted in and browsed but never ordered — a group that order-history segments cannot see at all.
How to check it worked
- The segment’s matching count is a plausible number, not zero.
- Spot-check three contacts — they genuinely meet the conditions.
- A consent condition is present if the segment will be marketed to.
- Launch campaign opens the builder with the segment selected.
- The campaign audience count matches the segment count.
If a segment looks wrong
- Matching count is zero
- Conditions combine with AND — remove the most recently added one.
- Check a date condition is not set to a window with no orders in it.
- Confirm orders have actually synced from Shopify.
- The campaign audience is smaller than the segment
- Contacts without marketing consent are excluded at send time.
- Contacts who replied STOP are permanently excluded from marketing.
- Add a consent condition to the segment so the two counts agree.
- A contact you expected is missing
- Search by their number both with and without the country code.
- Check they are not excluded by a consent or tag condition.
- If they just opted in, allow a minute or two and refresh.
- Audience reference — Customers, segments and scores.
- Send a broadcast — Sending to a segment.
- Audience CRM feature page — What it looks like in the product.
Frequently asked questions
Are TopEdge segments dynamic or a fixed list?
Dynamic. A saved segment re-evaluates its conditions, so contacts move in and out as they order, lapse or change consent. You build a segment like "lapsed 90 days" once and it stays correct without any maintenance.
Why does my segment match zero customers?
Conditions combine with AND, so every rule has to be true at once. Two reasonable-looking rules — say, more than three orders and ordered in the last seven days — can easily describe nobody. Add conditions one at a time and watch the live count.
Updated 2026-10-04