What’s the right refresh frequency for segments?

The right refresh frequency depends on how quickly your underlying data changes and how time sensitive your campaigns are. For most email programs, daily refreshes balance accuracy with system performance.

Use real time updates for segments that trigger automated workflows. If someone abandons a cart, you want them in that segment immediately, not 24 hours later. Event driven segmentation platforms handle this by recalculating on each behavioral trigger.

Weekly or monthly refreshes suffice for segments based on stable attributes like lifecycle stage, customer tier, or demographic data. These characteristics don't change hourly, so frequent recalculation wastes resources.

Match refresh frequency to campaign cadence. If you send daily emails, segments need daily or faster updates. If you send monthly newsletters, weekly refreshes work fine. The goal is ensuring segment membership is accurate at send time.

Monitor for segment drift where membership shifts unexpectedly between refreshes. If important campaigns fire between updates and catch subscribers in the wrong state, increase refresh frequency for those segments.

Refresh your charts before each voyage. Stale maps lead to wrong destinations.