Segment

Step-by-step guide to send event data from RudderStack to Segment.

Segment is a leading Customer Data Platform (CDP). It lets you track and collect your customer events from a variety of digital touchpoints and send them to the marketing and analytics platforms of your choice.

With RudderStack, you can send your customer events to Segment in real-time.

Getting Started

To enable sending data to Segment, you will first need to add it as a destination in the RudderStack dashboard. Once the destination is configured and enabled, events from RudderStack will start flowing to Segment.

Before configuring Segment in RudderStack, verify if the source platform supports sending events to RudderStack by referring to the table below:

Connection Mode	Web	Mobile	Server
Device Mode	-	-	-
Cloud Mode	Supported	Supported	Supported

To know more about the difference between Cloud mode and Device mode in RudderStack, read the RudderStack connection modes guide.

Then, perform the steps below:

• Configure the data source in RudderStack.

• From the list of destinations, select Segment.

• Then, assign a name to the destination and click on Next.

• Select the data source and click on Next.

• Enter the Segment write key to configure the destination, as shown:

• To transform your event data before sending it to this destination, click on Create New Transformation. Otherwise, click on Next.

• Your Segment destination is now configured and enabled.

Identify

The identify call lets you associate a visiting user to their actions as well as record their traits.

As a best practice, please make sure that the identifycall is made at the start of every session or page load for logged-in users, if possible. This will ensure all the latest traits are captured.

A sample identify call is as shown:

rudderanalytics.identify("userid", {
  name: "Name Surname",
  email: "[e-mail]",
  phone: "phone",
  birthday: "birthday",
  gender: "M",
  avatar: "link to image",
  title: "Owner",
})

For more information on the identify call, refer to the RudderStack HTTP API Specification guide.

Track

The track call allows you to record the customer events, i.e. the actions that they perform, along with their associated properties.

A sample track call is as shown:

rudderanalytics.track("Event Name", {
  Plan: "plan value",
})

For more information on the track call, refer to the RudderStack HTTP API Specification guide.

Page

The page call lets you record your website's page views, with any additional relevant information about the viewed page.

A sample page call is as shown:

rudderanalytics.page("Cart", "Cart Viewed", {
  path: "/cart",
  referrer: "test.com",
  search: "term",
  title: "test_item",
  url: "http://test.in",
})

For more information on the page call, refer to the RudderStack HTTP API Specification guide.

Group

The group call lets you associate a particular identified user with a group, such as a company, organization, or an account. It also lets you record the custom traits associated with that group, such as the name of the group, number of employees, etc.

A sample group call is as shown:

rudderanalytics.group("sample-group-id", {
  name: "Example Company",
  employees: 1000,
  industry: "Software",
});

For more information on the group call, refer to the RudderStack HTTP API Specification guide.

Alias

The alias call allows you to associate one user identity with another. This is quite useful in case of some destinations such as Mixpanel (associating anonymousId with an identified user on signup) or Kissmetrics (when the user switches IDs).

A sample alias call is as shown:

rudderanalytics.alias("to", "from", options, callback)

The above alias call has the following parameters:

Parameter	Presence	Description
to	Required	Denotes the new identifier
from	Optional	Denotes the old identifier which will be an alias for the to parameter. If not provided, the SDK will populate this as the currently identified userId, or anonymousId in case of anonymous users.
options	Optional	This dictionary provides additional context to the event payload.
callback	Optional	This function gets executed after successful execution of the alias() method.

For more information on the alias call, refer to the RudderStack HTTP API Specification guide.

FAQs

How do I get the Segment Write Key?

To get the Segment Write Key, you can create a HTTP source in your Segment dashboard.

Once you create the source, you can copy the Write Key for that source and use it in RudderStack for sending the data.

Contact Us

If you come across any issues while configuring or using Segment with RudderStack, feel free to contact us. You can also start a conversation in our Slack community; we will be happy to talk to you!