User smart searches

Smart searches for users can be viewed as dynamic user groups, containing all registered users who meet a certain set of criteria.

Basically, you can search users dynamically based on:

• User information, such as name, country or email permission
• User audit information, such as creation date, created by, and email permission updates
• User behavior, on your website, e.g. pages visited or time spent on site, and for email marketing, e.g. has received and opened a particular email, has clicked these links in a specific email, etc.

Stringing these criteria together, you can do a lot of interesting stuff automatically – email marketing, email personalization, and so forth.

With user smart searches, you could:

• Find all users who live in a certain geographical location, e.g. Denmark or the city of Copenhagen, and send them an email with a special offer in their local store
• Find all users who opened a specific email, and clicked a specific link in the email
• Find all users who bought a specific product
• Find all users created within a specific timeframe (e.g. new users)
• Etc.

The possibilities are endless, because you can combine smart search criteria to fit almost any criteria, and use them in other places in the Dynamicweb system.

Here's how.

In this section you will learn about:

• Creating a smart search
• Which smart search criteria are available for you
• How to group and preview smart search criteria
• How to delete or edit a smart search – and how to export users from a smart search

To create a new smart search:

• Click Users on your accordion
•  Right-click on Smart Searches in your user tree structure and click New smart search (Figure 3.1)

Figure 3.1 Click New smart search to create a new smart search

This takes you to the smart search configuration area (Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2 The smart search configuration window

From here, you must:

• Name the smart search
• Add the smart search criteria – the rules defining which users should be included and which should be excluded in the smart search
• Specify the maximum number of users you want to include in the smart search with rows to fetch. By default, the smart search will fetch all users meeting the smart search criteria.
  • If you have limited the number of users a smart search can contain, you can detail how they are selected with the Select by (primary/secondary) options. If ID is selected, and ascending order is specified, the smart search will select the users with the lowest ID’s, until the specified maximum number of users is reached.

The heart of a smart search is the smart search criteria – or smart search rules.

Smart search criteria are divided into four different areas:

• User information
• Audit information
• Behavior on website
• Behavior for Email marketing

The basic principle is this.

• You select a field for the rule to look at
• You select an operator like is, is not, contains, is in the range – the operators available to you depend on the field data type (string, int, Boolean)
• You specify a value to test for

For instance, in (Figure 4.1), the rule looks at the user field Country, using the operator is and the value Denmark.

Figure 4.1 A smart search rule finding users who reside in Denmark

This will result in a smart search containing all users who have Denmark as the value in their Country field.

Here’s a rundown of the smart search criteria available to you.

While smart searches based on a single rule may be useful, it’s in combination that smart searches become really useful. A smart search finding users in Denmark could have been a user group – but a smart search matching active users in Denmark, who’ve visited your bike shop, but not made a purchase could not – and sending that group an offer might be very effective.

User information checks the values of user fields and settings set on the user.

Your options correspond to the database fields for users, minus the ones that don’t make sense to search on (like user pictures), and should be self-explanatory.

The user audit information criteria allow you to create rules based on audit information.

Your options are:

For the criteria where time is a factor, you will usually select the operators is before or is after and select a particular date.

The behavior on website criteria allows you to create smart search rules based on how your users interact with your website.

Your options are:

The behavior for Email Marketing criteria allow you to create smart search rules based on how your users have reacted to, and interacted with, you email marketing efforts.

Your options are:

Smart searches are most powerful, when the rules are combined to suit a particular purpose.

For that purpose, you can combine rules using the rules buttons (Figure 9.1).

Figure 9.1 You can create complex smart searches using the smart search grouping rules

By default, all rules added to the rules area are inclusive, and all must be true for the user to be part of the smart search.

By selecting two rules, and clicking the Any must apply button, you can create flexible conditions for your smart search (Figure 9.2).

Figure 9.2 By selecting 'Any must apply', you can create flexible conditions for your smart searches

In this manner, you can create complex smart searches to suit your scenarios.

Because stringing together smart search criteria can be relatively complicated, it may be useful to preview your smart search results.

To do so, simply click the preview button (Figure 10.1).

Figure 10.1 Click the preview button to see a preview of all the users matching a smart search

This will open a section below you smart search, with the current users matching your criteria.

To delete or edit a smart search:

• Right click the smart search from  your user tree (Figure 11.1)
• Click Edit smart search or Delete smart search

You can export users from a smart search – the procedure is similar to exporting users from a user group. Read more here.

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