Questions on Segments: Default content block and empty content blocks

[Dan_Stevens_]

We have an email campaign that is targeted to three specific executive personas: IT, Finance and Marketing.  We have a segmentation called "Personas", which include about 10 different segments (including these three).  Each email will include dynamic content specific to each of the three segments.  Two questions:

• Will Marketo allow us to just add content to those three segments (and the default segment); or does every segment need to have content defined?  Basically, is it an all-or-nothing approach?

• According to the Help Article, "Changes to Default segment content block gets applied to all segments."  So does this mean after we have customized each content block for the three segements and then create the content block for the default segment (just in case a specific user isn't part of any segment), editing of the default content block will overwrite the content for the other segments?

[Anonymous]

@Jeff, beauty. Thanks. 

[Anonymous]

Yes, when building your report you can filter by segment. So for example you could use this on the "Email Performance Report". In the example below I am showing our "Language Setting" segment filter.

[Anonymous]

Slightly tangential, but do you guys have any way to report on performance by segment in your dynamic emails? That's been one of the blockers for me to be inspired to use them more regularly because I couldn't really dig into the performance of different segments. 

[Anonymous]

No once you click in and make modifications to a block for a segment it acts independently from the default and would not be overwritten. 

[Dan_Stevens_]

But what if we have everything setup in the email and then need to make a change to the content for the Default segment - will it overwrite all of the content blocks we've added for the other segments?  So in your example, if you made a change to the English content block, will it overwrite your translated blocks?

[Anonymous]

Dan, yes default gets applied to all other segments automatically. We use language segments for localization and if we haven't translated something yet it defaults to English.