About the Segment Designer

Using the Segment Designer, you can determine how many prospects or customers qualify for certain criteria. Each Segment is created by adding a sequence of successive criteria blocks to refine the segment membership. With each additional criteria block that you add, the membership can either increase or decrease depending on whether the criteria excluded or added members. To create a new segment, you can click the new icon or open a saved segment, modify it, and save it with a new name.

Each segment is based on a target level that indicates the type of customer you plan to count and target for your campaigns. For example, target levels may include companies, individuals, or households.

For each target level there is a set of relevant subject areas that contain the information about that target level. These subject areas organize available facts and attributes into common topics such as Campaign History, Orders, Products Owned, or Service History.

Frequently Used Terms for Marketing Segmentation

Table 14. Frequently Used Terms for Marketing Segmentation
Term	Description
Criteria Block	Building block of a segment. With each additional criteria block that you add, the segment membership can either increase or decrease.
Cumulative Count	A type of count calculated by the Segment Designer. The cumulative count represents the total number of segment members that qualify for the indicated criteria block as well as the criteria blocks above it. As you add an additional criteria block at the bottom of the stack, the cumulative count either increases or decreases depending on whether you add, keep, or remove segment members from the previous result.
Deduplication	Calculation that removes overlapping members of a segment tree branch. Overlapping members are members of one branch that also qualify for any higher priority branch.
Eligible Audience	A set of criteria that constrain the members of a segment tree. The eligible audience appears in the top section of the segment tree. The Eligible Audience criteria are defined by selecting a segment with the criteria and then adding the segment to the Eligible Audience section of the Segment Tree. For example, you may have an eligible audience that excludes inactive customers or only selects customers in your geographic region.
Global Audience	A default eligible audience set by an administrator to apply to every segment and segment tree.
Gross Count	In a segment, gross count represents the total number of members that qualify for a specific criteria block, independent of any other criteria block in the segment design. This value tells you how many segment members would be selected if the specific criteria block was the only criterion in your segment. In a segment tree, the gross count represents the total number of members that qualify for a tree branch, taking into account the full set of criteria in the parent branches.
Groups	A group is a combined set of criteria blocks that evaluate together. A group is like a pair of parentheses in an equation, so that the qualifying members for the group are determined before adding or removing the group members from the cumulative segment membership.
List format	Define the layout of files that you can export for a variety of purposes such as importing targeted customers into a campaign, building a customer email list, or generating a list for execution by a third-party vendor.
Nested Segment	A segment that is embedded within another segment definition. When a nested segment is used, its corresponding counts apply the criteria for the nested segment and then add, keep, or remove the qualifying customers to the cumulative count for the main segment.
Net Count	A type of count computed by the Segment Tree Designer. The net count represents the number of members that qualify for a target cell in the segment tree. The net count displays how many members qualify based on the splitting and sampling criteria. Net count displays the members after deduplication.
Not Included Count	A type of count computed by the Segment Tree Designer. The Not Included Count represents the number of members that were removed from a tree branch because they also qualified for any higher priority cell.
Priority	Each target cell has an assigned priority number, which is used to apply deduplication when some members qualify for more than one target cell. Priority must be an integer value of 1 or higher and no two cells can share the same priority. The smallest value in the tree (usually 1) is the top priority. You can click the auto-prioritization icon to update the priority of all tree nodes sequentially in ascending order, for example 1 to 10 for 10 priority nodes.
Saved Result Set	A fixed set of segment members that are recorded at a particular point in time. They are saved in the database so that they can be reused in the future without reevaluating the criteria again.
Segment	A target set of customers or prospects that qualify for a set of criteria. In most cases, the exact members of a segment changes over time because the criteria are reevaluated against the most current data in your database. However, using saved result sets, you can also save a segment as a static set of customers that were recorded at a particular point in time.
Segment Tree	Use to select one or more segments and split the segment members into smaller groups (or target cells). As you split a segment into smaller groups, the groups are displayed in a tree diagram. As in segments, segment trees can save a static set of customers derived from any target cell.
Splitting and Sampling	The action you take to break a segment or segment tree branch into smaller groups.
Subject Area	A set of facts and dimensions that are organized by a common topic, such as Orders, Products Owned, Service History, or Campaign History. Within each subject area, you can choose any fact or dimensional attribute to create a criteria for your segment.
Target Cells	An end point branch of a segment tree, meaning that the branch does not have any child branches. Target Cells are the only branches that can be associated with a marketing campaign. Target Cells have an assigned priority number, and you can use deduplication to deduplicate members that qualify for more than one target cell.
Target Level	Indicates what type of customer are counted in the segment membership and included in associated campaigns. For example, target levels may include target levels, companies, individuals, or households. The gross and cumulative counts for a segment are counted based at the selected target level. In most situations, target levels represent some type of customer, such as an individual or company. However, target levels can also be created by your administrator to create more advanced segment definitions. For example, advanced target levels can include Assets or Products that a customer owns.
Web Catalog	The Oracle BI Presentation Catalog stores content created with the Segment Designer, Segment Tree Designer, and List Format designer. Content can be organized into folders, which are either shared or private. Types of content that can be stored in the Web Catalog include segments, segment trees, list formats, as well as reports, filters, and dashboards created with Oracle BI Answers.

Managing the Catalog

Use the Manage Catalog feature to edit, rename, set permissions for, and delete folders and items in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog. To manage the catalog, from the Segment Catalog header, click the Manage Catalog icon in the Segments or Segment Trees column.

For more information on managing the catalog, see Oracle Fusion Middleware System Administrator's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition or access the online help from the Manage Catalog window.

Refreshing the Display

The Segments column and Segment Trees column is populated when you first access the Segments or Segment Tree Designers. New folders, segments, and segment trees added by other users during your session do not automatically appear in your session. To keep your display current so you can access any new items, click the Refresh Display icon from the Subject Areas header drop-down list.

Reloading Server Metadata

When creating a segment you use columns that are created in Oracle BI. The list of columns available to you is populated when you start the Segment Designer, and is not automatically updated during your session. To update the list of columns, click Reload Server Metadata from the Subject Areas header drop-down list.

NOTE: If changes are made to the underlying RPD metadata your administrator must navigate to Administration - Reload Files and Metadata to reload and refresh server metadata and to clear caches.