Segmenting your audience

Buttondown has four ways of segmenting subscribers who might want to receive different content:

• Using one newsletter, but having subscribers tagged into different groups
• Using one newsletter, but searching metadata for a particular property
• Targeting free versus paid subscribers
• Creating a whole separate newsletter, and building a different audience there

flowchart-elk TD
    hosted_archives[Are you using Buttondown's hosted archives?]
    hosted_archives --> |Yes| separate_archives[Should the content for each segment be separate?]
    hosted_archives --> |No| mass_unsubscribe
    separate_archives --> |Yes| multiple_newsletters[Create multiple newsletters]
    separate_archives --> |No| mass_unsubscribe[Should subscribers be able to unsubscribe from all segments at once?]
    mass_unsubscribe --> |No| multiple_newsletters
    mass_unsubscribe --> |Yes| branding[Should each segment have a different branding?]
    branding --> |Yes| multiple_newsletters[Create multiple newsletters]
    branding --> |No| tags[Create one newsletter with tags]

In this guide, we teach you how to use each possible option to get the most out of your newsletter's personalization.

Tags are an easy way to segment users into different groups. Once your subscribers are tagged, you can send a newsletter to only the people with a particular tag — when sending your email, click the "Custom…" link in the audience section, choose "Tag", and pick the tag you want to target.

For everything you can do with tags — adding them via subscribe forms, the API, or automations; letting subscribers manage their own — see the tags reference.

You can also target specific metadata properties that your subscribers happen to have. For more on how to add metadata, see Building your subscriber base.

When sending your email, you'll see a "Custom…" link to support metadata. Select "Metadata" and the property you wish your subscribers to have.

If you find yourself rebuilding the same tag or metadata filters every time you send, save them as a segment: a named, reusable audience you can apply with one click on future emails.

To create one, build a Custom audience while composing an email — pick your tags or metadata as above — and click "Save as segment", giving it a name and (optionally) a description that appears under the name in the picker. From then on, that segment appears as its own option in the audience picker, so you don't have to reconstruct the filters. Rename or delete a segment right from the audience picker, via the menu next to its name.

An email's audience is a snapshot: applying a segment copies its filters onto the email at that moment, so editing or deleting a segment later never changes emails you've already sent or scheduled.

You can also manage segments programmatically — see the segments API.

You can also segment emails so they only send to paid subscribers. To learn how, go to Paid subscriptions.

If you don't want to target a subset of subscribers, but instead build a whole new audience, you may wish to create a second newsletter for the purpose.