Segmentation was once considered to be an advanced feature used only by a few power users. Today, everyone understands that targeted communication is the key to success and leads to better open and click rates.

Our goal for building the New Segments was to make segmentation easy, fast and powerful at the same time.

We digged deep into our subscriber management, user behaviour and feedback. Finally, we came up with a solution that solves many of the issues we used to have, and that takes MailerLite subscriber management to the next level.

Here are the main changes:

• Access all subscribers in one place, not only by Groups as before.
• Segments are no longer inside Groups.
• Segment conditions can include more than one Group.
• The segment filter has new rules based on campaigns, automations and more.
• Groups work like Tags.

Let’s get into the details and explore what’s new.

How to update?

After you log into your account and go to Subscribers, you’ll see an “Update now” button.

After you click the button, the process of converting to the New Subscriber Management will begin. It might take a few minutes, but I guarantee that it’s worth waiting :)

If for any reason you want to switch back to the old subscriber management, you can always do that in your Account Settings.

All free accounts will get the update no later than 2 months from now.

All Subscribers in one place

In MailerLite, you’ve always had one list per account. This means each subscriber has been counted only once in your account. So you never had to pay double for the same subscriber. This stays the same.

However, you were not able to access the whole list in one place, because of the groups – you could only check one group at a time.

Now when you go to Subscribers you will see all your subscribers in one place. Sorted by the date of subscription or any other field you choose.

We used to get many questions about how many unique subscribers there are in an account or how many subscribers overlap in different groups. Now you will be able to easily check it yourself.

The Filter

The new real-time subscriber filter gives you the power to quickly find, group and segment your subscribers.

Build filter conditions based on: groups, fields, segments, signup date, timezone, campaigns, automation workflows, time inactive.

Save the filter conditions as a Segment with one click. Later use Segments for sending campaigns.

Segments

The most important change is that segments are not under groups as before. Now you can create segments based on conditions that include more than one group. It gives you much more power and flexibility.

Keep in mind that segments in MailerLite are dynamic, it means that subscribers are automatically added or removed if they meet filter conditions.

If you want to access your old segments, just switch SHOW in Legacy Segments.

If you didn’t use segments before, you won’t see the switch.

Your old segments will continue to work. However, we would highly recommend to re-create the legacy segments that you use with the new tools.

Groups

List of groups stays the same as before and you’ll find all your subscriber groups there.

We received a lot of requests to add Tags. However, our Groups already work the same as Tags do in some other services. So we decided that it’s not worth changing the name from Groups to Tags (and complicate things for our current users). Instead we made creating and working with Groups easier.

Here’s an example of how you can add a subscriber to groups or create a new group directly in the subscriber view:

It works the same way in the subscriber import section. Now you can assign more than one group or add a new group for your new subscribers.

Deleting subscribers v.s. Removing subscribers from a group

Before, there was no easy way to delete subscribers. You could only remove them from a group, but they would stay on other groups.

Now you can choose if you want to delete the subscribers from your account or just remove them from some of the groups:

If you choose to delete a subscriber but later import him or her again, the subscriber will become active and you will also get all his previous history. However, you won’t be able to find deleted subscribers in your account and re-activate them manually.

If you just remove the subscriber from a group or even all groups, you will still see him/her in “All Subscribers”.

Subscribers import

We have slightly changed the way you import your subscribers. Now you can simply click the “Add Subscribers” button without entering a particular group first. After selecting one of the available methods to add subscribers, you can use the drop down button to select a group(s) to which you want to add subscribers.

If you don’t select any group, subscribers will be added to your main list without assigning them to any group. You can still use segments later to identify them.

Fields

Here you can manage and add subscriber fields. The number of fields is unlimited. The fields apply to all subscribers in your account. It worked the same way before, even though you had fields under each group.

Stats

This is a great improvement as well. Now you can see stats for all your subscribers, not only each group separately as before.

You can easily switch to stats for each group if you want.

Selecting recipients

While selecting recipients for your campaign you will have a few options.

The Basic option is similar to what you had before – select the Groups and Segments you want to include or just check All Subscribers to send to everyone. You can also select Groups and Segments to exclude. Subscribers who are in the excluded group or segment won’t receive your campaign.

The Advanced option is our powerful subscriber filter that you have already seen in the All subscribers section. It means that you can add conditions and build a segment on the fly. No need to create segments and save them before hand.

There’s also the Legacy option for those who still want to use the old segments they had under groups.

Changes in Automation

The good news is that there’s a new trigger called “Updated field”. It triggers when the data in a selected field is changed.

For example, let’s say you have a field “Plan” where you have different data depending on whether the user is free or paid. When a user signs up for your service his value for field “Plan” is “Free”. After he buys your service, you update the field to “Paid”. This is where you can trigger an event based on “Updated field”.

However, we had to remove triggers “Joined a segment” and “Exited a segment”. This is due to the fact that the new segments can be very complex and include a lot of data.

Don’t worry, all your current automations with those triggers will continue to work. We just removed them from building new automations. We have explored the use cases and found out that those triggers can be easily changed to the new “Updated field” trigger.

That’s all for now. As always, we’ll be listening closely to your feedback in the comments.