Dietary preference segmentation

Segmentation is one of the most powerful features in dough. It automatically groups your Kit subscribers by dietary preference — Gluten-Free, Vegan, Keto, and others — so you can send more relevant content and build products your audience actually wants.

How segments are built

dough builds dietary preference segments from two data sources, in priority order:

1. Explicit preferences (strongest signal)

When a subscriber fills out a preference capture form (generated by dough as part of a lead magnet or standalone form), they select the dietary preferences they care about. These selections are stored in a Kit custom field called preferred_dietary_tags.

This is the most reliable signal because the subscriber told you directly what they want.

2. Behavioral inference (ongoing signal)

Every time a subscriber clicks Save This Recipe on a recipe with confirmed dietary tags, dough tags the subscriber in Kit with those dietary tags. Over time, this builds a behavioral profile.

For example, if a subscriber saves three gluten-free recipes, they accumulate the dietary:gluten-free tag in Kit. This does not mean they are gluten-free — it means they engage with gluten-free content, which is a strong signal for what to send them next.

Note

Only recipes with confirmed dietary tags contribute to segmentation. Unconfirmed AI-suggested tags are never synced to Kit subscribers. This protects you from accidentally mislabeling your audience.

What you see in segmentation

Your segmentation dashboard shows a profile for each dietary tag:

Metric	What it means
Subscriber count	How many of your Kit subscribers have this dietary tag.
Engagement rate	The percentage of tagged subscribers who clicked Save This Recipe at least once in the last 30 days.
30-day growth rate	How quickly this segment is growing. A positive percentage means more people are engaging with this type of content.
Top recipes	The 3 recipes with the most save clicks from subscribers in this segment.

Segment profiles are recalculated every 24 hours and on demand.

Using segments

Segments help you in three key ways:

Send targeted broadcasts

Use Kit’s subscriber filter to send a broadcast only to subscribers with a specific dietary tag. For example, send your new vegan recipe only to subscribers tagged dietary:vegan.

Decide what product to build next

If you see a large, engaged segment (for example, 200 subscribers with the dairy-free tag and a 25% engagement rate), that is a strong signal to build a dairy-free ebook or meal plan. dough will surface this as a recommendation automatically.

Optimize your content mix

If one segment is growing fast while another is flat, that tells you what content resonates with your audience. Lean into what works.

Tip

You do not need hundreds of subscribers to start benefiting from segmentation. Even with 50 subscribers, seeing which dietary tags they engage with helps you plan better content.

Preference capture forms

dough can generate a standalone Kit form for dietary preference collection. This form includes a multi-select field for dietary preferences and can be embedded on your website, Substack, or anywhere you collect email signups.

Subscribers who fill out this form get tagged immediately with their selected dietary preferences, giving you clean, reliable segment data from day one.

See Kit forms for setup details.