In this article
Marketing magic happens when the right message reaches the right audience at the right time. But getting to that magic moment isn’t always easy. Building the right audience across a maze of tools, attributes, events, and logic can eat up hours, slow down campaigns, and introduce risk.
Customer.io gives you the tools to segment smarter and remove that complexity. Our platform is built for marketers who need to move faster, get more from their data, and reach the right people with less guesswork. Our AI-powered segmentation features help you do just that. With Customer.io, you can build, manage, and act on segments with precision and speed.
The evolution of segmentation
Marketers have long relied on rule-based segmentation: "users who clicked this email," "customers with lifetime value over $500," or "people who haven’t logged in for 30 days."
But over time, these rules become limiting. As marketing strategies get more nuanced and data sets grow, the process of building and maintaining segments turns into a manual, error-prone task that slows teams down.
Customer.io enables the next step in smarter segmentation. Our platform uses AI, nested logic, and real-time updates to help you build dynamic, precise segments in less time, without compromising flexibility or control.
Key capabilities of smarter segmentation
AI-powered, data-driven segment builder
With our AI segment builder, you can describe your goal and instantly generate relevant segment logic. Instead of guessing which attributes or events to use, our AI suggests the right conditions based on patterns in your data.
Whether you’re looking to target recently churned users, power users, or new customers at risk of drop-off, the AI segment builder analyzes profile attributes, events, and custom objects to surface the most relevant, high-impact criteria.
Segments in segments: Modular audience logic
Complex segmentation often leads to bloated logic and repeated work. With segments in segments, you can nest existing segments inside others.
This modular approach lets you:
- Reuse core logic like “high value customers” across multiple campaigns
- Create layered definitions without cluttering conditions
- Reduce maintenance by editing once and reflecting updates everywhere
Example: You already have a segment for “Engaged Users.” With Segments in Segments, you can now create a new group: “Engaged Users + Recently Purchased” without rebuilding from scratch.
The importance of a strong data index
Segmentation is only as powerful as the data it runs on. Customer.io’s Data Index gives you visibility into every attribute, event, and object in your workspace, and how they’re used.
When your index is in good shape, segments load faster, logic is easier to maintain, and AI-generated suggestions are far more relevant. You can describe your data to improve recommendations, tag fields to streamline collaboration, and quickly identify where any piece of data is being used across your workspace. If a campaign’s misfiring or a segment seems off, you can trace it back to the source instantly.
Want to audit your data or clean up clutter? Export attribute usage to see which fields are going unused. Segment performance starts with data clarity, and the Data Index puts that power in your hands.
A healthy index helps:
- Speed: Large segments with real-time conditions evaluate quickly, even at scale
- Consistency: Data freshness and reliability are guaranteed across workflows
- Scalability: As your customer base and campaigns grow, performance won’t degrade
Pro tip: Review unused attributes and prioritize indexing for fields used in core conditions. Indexing is what allows those fields to be evaluated in real time, without slowing down campaign performance.
If a field is essential to how you define key segments—like "active user" or "trial expired"—indexing it ensures your targeting logic remains responsive, even as your audience scales.
A real-world example: Launching smarter campaigns
Let’s say you’re a lifecycle marketer at a fintech company and you’re preparing to launch a new premium investment feature. You want to target a very specific audience:
- Engaged users
- With a high net worth
- Who haven’t viewed the new feature page in the last 14 days
With Customer.io, you don’t have to build this logic from scratch. The AI segment builder can surface likely candidates by analyzing behavior-based attributes you’ve defined — recent logins, high feature engagement, and transaction activity—to generate segments like "Engaged Users" and "Premium Investors."
You can then nest these within a segment that filters out anyone who’s already viewed the premium investment page in the last 14 days. You can even add a segment condition that only includes users with a human open of your highest value product emails to further identify customers most likely to convert.
And because your data index is current and well-maintained, the segment builds and updates in real time, even if you’re working with millions of users.
Need help getting started? Our docs and support team are here to walk you through the new capabilities.
Customer.io enables smarter segmentation
Customer.io gives you the tools you need to build more dynamic, data-driven segments in less time and with more confidence.
Within Customer.io, you’ll find:
- AI suggestions in the data-driven segment builder
- Segment nesting under the Segments condition builder
- Data Index insights to refine your logic and improve performance
Powered by first-party data and built for scale, our segmentation features give marketers the tools to segment smarter, move faster, and deliver better results.
Ready to see Customer.io in action? Try building your first AI-powered segment today.
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