Smart lists
The six built-in smart lists, building your own from lists and rules, sending to one, making one a ladder's group, and the rung that fires when someone joins.
Smart lists sort your customers by what they do. You never add anyone to one: people join and leave on their own as they visit, spend, redeem and sign up. Six are built in, and you can build your own from your lists and rules. Find them under Coupons > Audience > Smart lists, the built-in six under Built in and yours under Yours.
The six smart lists
| Smart list | Who is in it | What suits them |
|---|---|---|
| New | One visit, and it was in the last 45 days. | A reason to come a second time. |
| Developing | Two to four visits, the most recent in the last 45 days. | A small nudge, not a big discount. |
| Regular | Five visits or more, the most recent in the last 45 days. | Recognition. A discount here costs you money you would have had anyway. |
| At risk | They used to come in, and their last visit was more than 45 days ago and less than 90. | Your best return per text. |
| Lapsed | Nothing for 90 days or more. | Three texts across a month, not one send to everybody. |
| Top spenders | The top quarter of your customers by what they spent in the last 12 months. It moves as everyone's spending does. | Thanks, and a first look at something new. They already pay full price, so a big discount gives money away. |
Each card shows how many people are in the list and how many of them you can text, and which of your ladders text that list.
Where the numbers come from
Smart lists are worked out from your Square orders. A visit is one paid Square order we can match to a person through their Square customer profile. Square only makes a profile when a card is tapped, so people who paid cash, or tapped a card without a profile, are in none of these lists, and every count is a floor rather than a total.
Top spenders ranks customers by what their orders came to over the last 12 months, tax and tip included, among everyone with at least one matched order in that time. When you first connect Square we read the last 90 days of orders, so until you have a year of history the Top spenders card says the date its spending is counted from instead of "the last 12 months".
Lists can overlap
Today's rules put everyone with a visit we can match in exactly one of the first five lists. Top spenders sits across them: a Regular can also be a Top spender, and so can someone who is At risk.
Build your own smart list
Press New smart list on the Smart lists tab. First pick a starting point: Start from scratch to pick the lists and rules yourself, or one of these templates, which fill in the form for you to change:
- Regulars who've gone quiet. Came in at least 3 times in the last year, but not in the last 60 days.
- First-timers this month. Made their first visit in the last 30 days.
- Big spenders. The top 10% of your customers by what they spent in the last 12 months.
- Signed up, never came in. Signed up for your texts in the last 90 days and has not visited in that time.
- Sent an offer, didn't come back. Was texted an offer in the last 30 days and has not redeemed it.
- Square group, not redeemed lately. People in one of your Square groups who have not redeemed an offer in the last 90 days.
The Square group template shows only when you have a Square group, and templates that count visits or spend need Square connected. Then give the list a name, up to 60 characters and different from your other smart lists' names. You can have up to 25 smart lists of your own.
A list is three parts, each written as a sentence.
Start with people in any of
Who can be in the list at all: anyone in any of up to 5 lists. Those can be lists you made, your Square groups, the built-in smart lists, or your other smart lists.
Or pick Everyone in your audience, and the heading reads Start with. An empty start never means everyone. Start from scratch begins with nobody, and Save says Pick who to start from. until you add a list or Everyone in your audience. Everyone is always something you choose on purpose.
Who also
Rules everyone in the list must match, all of them, up to 10. With no rules, everyone you start with is in the list. Everyone in your audience with no rules and nobody left out is just your whole audience, so Save refuses it with That is everyone in your audience already.
Leave out anyone who
Takes out anyone who is on any of these lists or matches any of these rules, up to 10 in all. Someone added to one of these lists leaves your smart list, and someone taken off one comes back in, but coming back that way never counts as joining.
The rules
Press Add a rule (or Add a rule or list under Leave out) and pick from four menus:
- Visits: How many times they visited, Visited recently, Has not visited lately, When they first visited, Which shop they visited
- Spend: How much they spent, What they spend a visit, Where they rank by spend
- Coupons: Redeemed an offer, Texted an offer and did not redeem it
- Contact: Signed up for your texts, Added to your audience recently, How they were added
Each rule then reads as a sentence with the figures you can change, such as how many visits and over how many days, and the row says exactly what it counts. A few things the sentences spell out:
- At most a number of visits, and Has not visited lately, include people who have never visited.
- Visit and spend rules, and the built-in smart lists, are worked out from your Square orders, so they need Square connected. Without it they are switched off in the menus.
- Which shop they visited is offered only when you have more than one location.
- Sign-ups at your register are counted only from when you connected Square.
A smart list can use another of your smart lists, one level deep: a list that uses one of your smart lists cannot itself be used by another.
The count, and saving
Beside the form, the count shows how many people are in the list and how many of them you can text, and it updates a moment after each change. Save smart list saves it, and it appears under Yours with its rules spelled out on its card.
To change a list, press Edit on its card. A change applies at the next hourly check, and people who match only because of the change get no texts from ladders already using the list. While a one-time send to the list is scheduled, its rules cannot be changed. See How smart lists work below for what joining, leaving and deleting mean.
Send to a smart list
Press the send button on a list's card. It names how many people in the list you can text, and it opens a one-time send already aimed at that list, with a new offer or one you already have. See One-time sends.
Cards under Yours have the same send button.
See who opens the People tab filtered to that list. It is on the first five lists; Top spenders has no filter there.
A smart list as a ladder's group
In a ladder's Who it texts card, choose One of your smart lists and pick the list. The lists you built are offered under Your smart lists, below the six. People join and leave by themselves, from what they buy at your register.
Membership is current: someone who leaves the list leaves the ladder at the next hourly check. When you turn the ladder on, everyone already in the list enters that day and the ladder's rungs text whoever is due, and the confirmation counts them for you. An empty list can still be turned on; people enter the ladder as they join the list, and it texts them from then. See Ladders and rungs.
When someone joins a smart list
This rung trigger fires when someone moves into the list you pick under Which list, after you turn the rung on. The rung editor puts it this way: Fires once when someone moves into this list after you turn the rung on. People already in it are not texted.
- We check every hour for people who have moved into a list. With the send window As soon as it happens, the text goes out within about fifteen minutes of the moment we see them join.
- A join can be texted for up to seven days. If something holds the text back for longer, such as the person being at their monthly limit, that join is let go.
- Someone who leaves a list and comes back within 30 days has not joined again, so they are not texted again. Gone for longer, they can be texted once when they come back.
- On Top spenders: Top spenders is worked out from the last 12 months of spending, so people move in and out. Someone who drops out and comes back within 30 days is not texted again.
So that a list filling up all at once never turns into a text to everyone in it, some joins count as joining without ever being texted: everyone already in a list the first time we check it, everyone who moves in while our hourly checks were behind, joins that rest on old orders (including the order history Square sends when you first connect), and, in any one hourly check, a jump larger than 50 people or a quarter of the list, whichever is bigger.
A ladder on one smart list can have a rung for joining another. Under today's rules nobody is in two of the first five lists at once, though, so on a ladder built on one of those five, a rung for joining a different one of them never fires. A rung that never fires shows it on its Results tab.
How smart lists work
This is the summary the How smart lists work link opens in the app, word for word.
A smart list keeps itself up to date: people join and leave on their own as they start or stop matching its rules.
Start with, Who also and Leave out
Start with is who can be in the list: anyone in any of up to five lists (lists you made, Square groups or other smart lists), or Everyone in your audience.
An empty Start with never means everyone, so you pick Everyone in your audience on purpose when that is who you mean.
Who also keeps only the people who match every rule in it, and Leave out takes out anyone on any of its lists or matching any of its rules.
When someone joins
Someone only counts as joining when something about them changes so that they now match: their own visit, a coupon they redeem, an offer text reaching them, signing up for texts, being added to your audience or to a list you start with, or enough time going by since their visits.
Every hour we check the lists that a ladder you have turned on is using.
When someone leaves
When someone stops matching, they leave the list by the next hourly check, and ladders using it stop sending them new texts.
Coming back within 30 days does not count as joining again, and after 30 days away it can.
What never counts as joining
Editing the rules, taking someone off a list in Leave out, other customers' activity, a ladder's first check of a list and a big batch arriving in one check (over 50 people and over a quarter of the list) never count as joining, so none of them fires a When someone joins a smart list rung.
That first check treats everyone already in the list as already there.
Someone let in by a Leave out removal or a big batch while a ladder on that list is running can still get the ladder's other rungs, but never its Days after they enter this ladder text.
Smart lists and ladders
When a smart list is a ladder's group, everyone in it when you turn the ladder on starts in the ladder, and people who join later enter on the day they join.
A When someone joins a smart list rung fires once each time someone joins after you turn the rung on, and never for the people already in the list.
If you change the rules of a list a ladder is already using, people who match only because of the change won't get texts from that ladder through the list while they stay in it.
One-time sends
A one-time send to a smart list works out who is in it once, when the send starts going out, so people who join or leave after that do not change who it is for.
While a send to a list is scheduled or waiting to start, that list's rules and the rules of any list it uses cannot be changed until you cancel or stop the send, or it starts going out.
Renaming the list still works, and a draft send holds nothing.
Deleting a list
A smart list cannot be deleted while another smart list, a ladder or a rung (archived ones included) or a send that has not finished uses it, and a list you made cannot be deleted while a smart list uses it.
Press Delete and we name what uses it, each with a link, so you can change those first.
A shop or an offer that a rule names can still be deleted, and the list then holds nobody until you edit it.
When Square changes
If a Square group a smart list uses is deleted in Square, it empties: a list that starts with it gets nobody from it, and a list that leaves it out holds nobody until you edit it, rather than letting back in the people it kept out.
If you disconnect Square, its groups stop updating but keep the people they had, and your smart lists go on using them as they were.
A smart list that counts visits, spending or a built-in smart list holds nobody while Square is not connected, has stopped syncing, or is still reading your order history.
Ladders and rungs
How a ladder texts people on its own: the group it texts, its rungs and their triggers, when each text goes, turning it on, pausing it, and its message budget.
Texting rules for coupon texts
A plain-English summary of the opt-out line, sender name, consent and link rules for coupon texts, with the official sources.