Exporting customer segment information

You can export customer information for a customer segment to help you analyze your customer segments or to create and manage marketing campaigns outside of Management Center. For example, you can export email addresses for the customers in a customer segment and then use another application to send a marketing email to the customers.

By analyzing your customer segment information, you can identify common attributes among customers and regroup customers into new segments. You can then create CSV files for each new segment that includes the appropriate customer information for the customers in that segment. A site administrator can then use the Data Load utility to load the CSV file into the database to populate the customer segment with the customer information.

Before you begin

Ensure that a site administrator or IT developer sets up your environment for exporting customer segment data from the production environment.
When the export process runs in a staging or authoring environment, the process uses the segment information in that environment to create a query for retrieving customer information. The process then connects to the production environment database and runs the query to retrieve the segment information.
Optional. Request that a site administrator assigns you the Marketing Director role if you need to download and access the customer information. Users with the Marketing Director role can export and download the customer segment export file. Users that have the Marketing Manager or Seller role can run the customer segment export process to create the export file, but cannot download the file.
The Marketing Director role has the same responsibilities and can perform the same actions as Marketing Managers, but is also responsible for maintaining the security of customer segment information. The option to download a customer segment export file displays only for users with the Marketing Director role. Assign the Marketing Director role to users that have a valid business reason to access customer information.

About this task

HCL Commerce Enterprise If you are working in an extended site store, you are recommended to export customer information for only the customer segments that belong to your extended site store.

Note: If you are working in a workspace and run a customer segment export, the export process does not use the workspace segment information to create the query that retrieves customer information. The export process uses the approved content data in your environment database to create the query. For example, if you change a segment for male customers over age 40 in a workspace to be for female customers under age 35. When you run the customer segment export, the export process retrieves information for male customers over age 40.

Procedure

Export the customer segment information

Open the Marketing tool.
In the Explorer view, click Customer Segments. The list of all customer segments for your store displays.
Right-click a customer segment. Click Export Customer Segment.
In the Export Customer Segment tab, enter the name for the export CSV file.
Optional: Select the customer information that you want to include in the file.
By default, the file contains only the list of email addresses for all registered customers in a customer segment that opted in to receive email messages. The customer segment export file does not include information for guest or unregistered customers.
You can select to include information for more customer segment attributes in the export file. By default, you can configure the export to include the following information:
- Customer first and last names, and their preferred title
- Customer logon ID
- Registered customers that did not opt in to receive email.
If you want to include more information in the file, you can request that an IT developer customize the export feature.
Click Save to begin the export process.
Since customer segments can include many customers, the customer segment export process can take time. You can work on other tasks while the export process completes. The export process stores the export file in the staging(authoring) environment database.

Download the customer segment export file.

Optional: If you are not working in Management Center as a Marketing Director, log out of Management Center. Log on to Management Center as a user with the Marketing Director role and open the Marketing tool.
In the Explorer view, click Customer Segment Exports.
Right-click the customer segment export. Click Download Customer Segment. Save the file to your local file system.
Note: For security and auditing purposes, When you download a customer segment export file, your user ID and the date and time of the download are recorded. You can view the download history of an export file in the Download History tab in the properties view for the customer segment export. HCL Commerce also records the audit trail for downloads in the appropriate business audit database table.