Audience segmentation allows you to target your subscribers based on their location. This is useful for a number of reasons: you might have an offer running in a specific branch or restaurant, or an event running in a certain city. You can also exclude a certain location, which can be handy if you're not able to run a promotion in a certain place.
You can store subscribers' location details in your account using the following data fields:
House Number/Name (house_number)
Street Name (street_name)
Town/Village (town)
County/State (county)
Postcode/Zip (postcode)
Country (country)
These fields can be added to a data capture form, so that subscribers can fill them in themselves, or you can use the import headers (above in brackets) to import this information from a CSV file if you already know the subscribers' locations.
The best way to make the most of geolocation is to gather as much accurate address data about your subscribers as possible. If you have a subscriber's full address from house number to postcode, it'll be able to target them to within a close range of where they are, such as a particular neighbourhood within a town or city. If you only know their town or county, they can still be included in geolocation searches, but they won't be quite as precise.
If you don't have any location information about your subscribers, you can still use geolocation to an extent. The system can look for the IP address of where the subscriber last opened an email campaign or clicked a link and use that as their location. This kind of lookup won't be as precise as having their actual information - it could give you anything from the town they're in to the country. However the system will always prioritise actual address information, so wherever possible it's best to collect their full address information. It's also worth bearing in mind that when using a radius, the system will use the IP address method to check for people who don't have full information stored about them in case they have recently opened an email in that area so that they can be included.