What is engagement-based segmentation?

Engagement-based segmentation divides your list according to how subscribers interact with your emails—who opens, clicks, converts, ignores, or complains. Rather than treating all subscribers equally, you create tiers based on demonstrated interest: highly engaged, moderately engaged, declining engagement, inactive, and dormant.

Typical engagement tiers include: VIP/Champions (open and click consistently, recent purchases), Active (regular engagement), At-risk (engagement declining), Dormant (no engagement in 60-90 days), and Inactive (no engagement in 90+ days). Each tier receives different treatment: higher frequency for engaged, re-engagement attempts for at-risk, reduced frequency for dormant, and sunset campaigns before removal for inactive.

Engagement segmentation is dynamic by nature. Subscribers move between tiers as their behavior changes. Someone who clicked yesterday is engaged today; if they don't click again for three months, they become dormant. Build segments that update automatically based on recency of engagement. Static engagement segments become stale immediately—the whole point is tracking changing behavior over time.