Segmentation is a powerful feature that can significantly improve the user experience. With segmentation, you play topics to the right users at the right time. You can welcome new users with onboarding guides, show feature announcements only to users with relevant subscription types, encourage trial users to subscribe, and much more. Understanding your users and delivering personalized, engaging content truly matters.

This article will discuss popular and recommended use cases to help you get the most out of Inline Manual. Note that you can create multiple rules with various conditions depending on your needs. Always choose conditions that suit you best.

Before you create a segment

To use segmentation to the maximum, you need to enable people tracking and allow your application to tell us who the user currently using your application is. You can enable people tracking in the Inline Manual portal. It is up to you what data you send to Inline Manual. There is only one mandatory field: a unique user id (number, email, string, etc.). However, the more data you send to us, the more specific segments you’ll be able to build. Thinking about who you target and what values or fields you use will help you. Then, discuss with your IT team if it’s available and what user data you are already tracking in your application so they can pass it on to Inline Manual through the tracking code.

This article will provide you with ideas for targeting specific user groups. We won’t discuss how to create a segment in detail. To learn how to create a segment, read our article How to: manage segments.

How to: target new users

You can use the default New users segment or create your own to target new users.

Create a segment using a rule created more than X hours/minutes ago, and provide a certain time period. The most common is 24 hours.

You can use the First seen option if you don’t want to send the created data to Inline Manual. For example, the "First seen is more than 24 hours ago."

This will target users seen by the Inline Manual player for the first time. It means that even users that are not new users but it’s the first time the player sees them will be included in this segment. It depended on when you installed the player.

When to target new users?

New users are a great segment to start with. Greet your new customers with a warm, personalized welcome message, and an onboarding tutorial just for them. In just a few minutes, you can grab users' attention and make them fall in love with your tool. With relevant content, they get to “the aha moment” faster, so they feel happy and excited about using your product.

How to target returning users

Another popular group of users that you may want to target is a returning users segment. These are users who haven’t logged in to your site/application for a certain time period.

To target returning users, create a rule using the last seen option and first seen. For example, the last seen is more than 30 days AND the first seen is less than 24 hours to omit New users.

When to target returning users

If your users haven’t logged in to your application for a longer period of time, you start to wonder why. Probably, you are sending them e-mails asking why they are gone and how you can help them. You can reinforce your message with the in-app popover. You can ask them for feedback or send them an announcement about new, exciting features. They don’t use the app to the maximum? Show them how to with guides, tooltips and help articles. Promote features that they haven’t been using.

How to: target trial users

There are several ways to target trial users depending on the data you send to us. You can create a segment by add parameter (A), a Role, a Group (B) or a Plan. Then, the use condition is Trial.

You can then add an additional rule, such as Created and use one of the relevant conditions to provide a time period to, for example, target trial users with accounts that are about to expire.

If you have more than one condition, you must define them separately. For example, if you want to target two users by their UID, you must specify each in the new parameter dropdown.

When to target trial users?

Right targeting trial users can increase trial conversion rates. For example, you can target your trial users when their accounts are about to expire and show them a message with a custom button linking to a subscription page. You can also target your users during the whole trial period encouraging them to take the desired action.

How to: target users with a specific plan

To target users with a specific plan, add a parameter with Plan is and provide a relevant value based on the data you pass to us.

When to target users with a specific plan?

If your product comes with different pricing options, you may want to target users based on their subscription type. This is especially useful when you want to show your users new feature announcements relevant to their plans. However, why not to use it for re-engaging and upselling? Show your users messages about features they’re missing in their current plans with an option to learn more. Add a custom button linking to a webinar, landing page, or even a subscription panel. Show popover messages with special offers, codes, and discounts.

How to: target users with a specific role

To target users with a specific role, add a parameter with Roles contains and provide a relevant value based on the data you send to us. Pay attention to small/capital letters. For example, if in the data you send us, the role is admin, and in the Inline Manual settings, you put Admin - it will not work.

When to target users with a specific role?

You can target users with specific roles, such as admin, user, editor, writer, manager etc., whenever you want to show content that is relevant just for that particular group of users. For example, you may want to show a popover message informing about the scheduled maintenance or special offers only to Administrators.

How to: target users who have or haven’t used a specific feature

If you want to target users that have or haven’t used a specific feature, you can use custom attributes and add them to the People tracking code. Talk to your developers about sending Inline Manual some set of defined namespaces, for example, feature_01_used and feature_02_not_used. You can then create a segment with a simple parameter containing feature_01_used or feature_02_not_used and target those users with desired guides.

When to target users who have or haven’t used a specific feature?

Target users based on their behaviour, the action they did or not to improve customer experience and increase engagement. For example, if users are not using a specific feature that you find crucial to get the value of your product, add them in your application to a group and send this info to us via metadata, then target this group with a rule. When they log in next time, launch a tutorial just for them to let them know about that feature they are not using. Show them how it works. Maybe they are just not aware of it?

What’s next?

In this article, we presented the most popular use cases when it comes to creating segments. Use it as an inspiration to create segments that you need, then target your users with engaging content. To learn how to do it automatically, read our article about Autolaunchers.