Hi @ttnle2021, 

Welcome to the Community, we’re so glad you’re here! I know that all of our features might be overwhelming at first, but would will get the hang of it I promise! 

I would love to explain more about the difference between how segments and lists work. A List is a static pool of profiles that only grows when profiles complete an action that would feed them into a List, i.e. filled out a signup form or confirmed they wanted to be added to a company’s Newsletter at checkout. No one is taken off this list unless they manually unsubscribe themselves or you remove them. A Segment, however, is a grouping of people that are grabbed from your account and put into this specific group/segment based on the conditions you set. You cannot manually add someone to a segment, like a list either, the profile needs to qualify to be brought into a segment, meaning they ‘meet the conditions required’. The conditions you set might be ‘is in ____ List’, is from this are, or has _____ certain profile property, ordered ___ product twice . A profile will no longer be in a segment if they take an action that would no longer fit the criteria. For instance, if you have a segment set to pool users who have only placed an order twice over all time, a user will be automatically removed form the segment if they place a third order. 

For instance, if you set your ‘Boys’ and ‘Girls’ option in your signup form as a profile property, then you would create two different segments. One would be ‘Properties about Someone > Equals > Boy’. The other segment would then say ‘Properties about someone > Equals > Girl. The segment would then assess all profiles in your account and see who matches the criteria of the segment, meaning those who have this ‘gender property’ and what value the property is, meaning whether the answer is ‘boy’ or ‘girl. The image below shows you how to properly set this up in your signup form, but using colors as an exampl.e 

Profiles are added to a specific List if your Klaviyo account is linked to an integration that feeds profiles into the list who ‘opt in’ to your marketing from completing signup forms and checkout. This is an example of what a Shopify integration page would look like that fed subscribers into a list in Klaviyo, the box below is checked and the List selected ‘Newsletter’.  This page can be found if you navigate to your ‘Integrations’ tab and navigate to your website’s integration. If you want another List in your account to receive these profiles, you can change this setting at any time. 

To your third point, duplicate profiles will not be created if you have a profile in your List and Segment. They will be one profile that exists in two places. This is because they might’ve entered your Klaviyo account through subscribing to your Newsletter, however, meets a certain criteria or has specific data in their profile that would dynamically also add them to a Segment as well. 

To you final point, as I mentioned earlier, you cannot import profiles into a segment, as a Segment’s function isn’t to be a static pool to simply receive profiles (as a List would), but to always be pulling new and more profiles that fit the segment conditions into the grouping. However, when you  import your Mailchimp list into an existing Klaviyo list, the profiles could be automatically pulled into a segment as well if they meet the criteria. I recommend taking a look at our uploading a list documentation before you upload your Mailchimp list as Klaviyo receives data in a certain way and will not receive the list if any data isn’t formatted correctly. 

I would recommend taking a look at some of our Academy Courses as Klaviyo also has an awesome Academy site that has helpful resources to learn more about the Klaviyo product and level up your skills! I would recommend taking a look at the Getting Started with Klaviyo and our Product Certification Course courses to help you build a strong product knowledge foundation and get on your feet so to speak! And also checking out if other Community users have had similar questions as yourself to keep gaining insight into how the product works, like this post below. 

Thanks for participating in the Community! 

-Taylor 

@Taylor Tarpley Thanks so much for the detailed answers to all my questions.

I read many of the listed articles in your answers but still don’t quite understand the difference between lists vs segments.

If one profile can exists in two places, then I should not send out one email campaign to all the segments and lists because one person can receive two emails. Am I correct?

Hi @ttnle2021, 

Great question! While a profile can exist in two places, you can be assured that Klaviyo will identify the singular profile and only send one email if there is overlap. The profile will not receive multiple emails even if it’s in a segment and list in the intended recipient audience. You should see this reflected in the ‘estimated recipient count’ in the Campaign builder when you are in the final stages. 

-Taylor