Using advanced search

DailyStory's search capabilities include some advanced options to help you narrow down your results to build advanced segments.

Wildcards for matching multiple results

Wildcard search is an advanced search technique that can be used to maximize your search results in DailyStory’s contact database. To do a wildcard search, apply any of the following methods:

• Add an asterisk (*) at the end of a partial keyword or a group of characters if you want to pull up results that match the word or characters you entered prior to the asterisk. For example, if you search for Rob*, the search will return a list of contacts that may have Roberts, Robertson, or Robinson as part of their data in DailyStory. The asterisk will allow for an infinite number of characters in the search as long as the first few characters you specified remain the same. 

• Add a question mark (?) at any position of your keyword to indicate that you are missing a character and want to pull up results that may match the missing character. Note that a single question mark symbol represents one missing character. For example, if you search for J??n, the search will return a list of contacts that may have John, Joan, or Jann as part of their data in DailyStory.

It's also to important to remember that when using direct search, versus searching within a field, the search will match across all fields. For example a search for rob* will match on first name, last name, etc.

Search for an exact phrase

To search using a phrase, enclose your keywords with double quotation marks. For example, use “Gold Weekly Members”. This will only match records that have that exact phrase. Whereas the same search without quotes will match any occurrence.

Exclude results from search

Add a minus sign (-) before the text or information you don’t want to be used as a search criteria. For example, use John -Smith as your search text if you want to find contacts whose first name is John but don’t have Smith as a last name.

Exclusion matching gets complex quickly, especially if there are multiple constraints. It's easiest to create a new segment with all the criteria used for the exclusion and then simply use that segment as an excluded segment.

Find multiple matches in the same field

When you’re filtering your search using contact fields that accept text array value, you can use more than one piece of data as the search criteria.

For example, if you want to search using multiple postal codes, enter the postal codes and separate each code with a comma.

Search using date periods or ranges

Contact fields that are configured to accept date periods or ranges  enable you to narrow down your results to a specific time window.

For customers using integrations such as Shopify, or other ecommerce integrations, it's common to want to build segments such as: customers that have not ordered in past 45 days.

These types of ranged based segments are automatically included when these integrations are enabled. However, you may want to build your own ranges or customize and existing range based search. Therefor, it's import to understand how they work.

When using a date field there are several options you can toggle between range and period input as preferred to specify your search criteria:

Range-based search

Range-based search is the default search option presented. It allows searching for results between two specific dates, such as August 1, 2025 and August 31, 2025.

Period-based search

Clicking the Period option changes the search to a simple sliding period of time, e.g. previous 30 days or next 1 month. This date is always relative to the current date.

When the period uses previous the date to will be today. When the period uses next the date from will be today.

Preset search

The preset search option includes some pre-configured and common searches, such as between 30 and 60 days ago.

While complex, this enables very robust search options. For example, between 30 and 60 days ago only includes dates calculated as "today's date minus 30 days and today's date minus 60 days". 

If today's date is August 30, 20205 this would return results that were between July 1 and July 31.

Sliding versus fixed dates

When a period search is performed instead of passing exact dates in the URL special tokens are set to allow search to calculate the date each time search is run. This enables date ranges that are variable based on the current day.

For example, if today is August 7, 2025 a search with the value "yesterday" will return results for August 6, 2025. However, on August 8, 2025 the results will be for August 7, 2025. While dates can get complicated, sliding date windows enable some powerful segments.

Sliding date values and syntax

Below are the values 

Dynamic dates

DailyStory support dynamic range searches (as described above in Birthdays today, tomorrow and other ranges). Below are the supported range criteria.

For example, to find contacts with birthdays in the next week using the following search:

$dateBirthFrom=today&dateBirthTo=next-1-week

Advanced date range configuration

While the search tools provide options for manipulating dates, some customers have more advanced requirements. For example, when using the Shopify integration, you may want to build a segment that targets customers that purchased in thee last 2 days.

To accomplish this you will need to directly edit the search critiera:

shopify_lastorder_dateFrom=yesterday&shopify_lastorder_dateTo=today

This would return all customers that ordered from yesterday until today.

This gets a little more complicated when you want to find customers that have not ordered within a specific range of time, such as haven't ordered in the past 45 days:

shopify_lastorder_dateFrom=past-1-year&shopify_lastorder_dateTo=past-45-days

The logic above is: find customers that have ordered at least 1 year ago up to 45 days ago. This would exclude anyone who has ordered in the past 45 days. Returns the desired results of anyone who has not ordered in the past 45 days.

This could also be written as:

shopify_lastorder_dateTo=past-45-days

However, if you want to build different segments, you'll need to be more specific to ensure a segment doesn't include a contact more than once:

Haven't ordered in past 45 days:

shopify_lastorder_dateFrom=past-90-days&shopify_lastorder_dateTo=past-45-days

Haven't ordered in past 90 days:

shopify_lastorder_dateFrom=past-180-days&shopify_lastorder_dateTo=past-90-days

Haven't ordered in the past year:

shopify_lastorder_dateFrom=past-1-year&shopify_lastorder_dateTo=past-180-days

While DailyStory provides some built in options for working with sliding dates, you may find the need to edit them yourself for more advanced options. To do this you will need to edit the search criteria that is automatically created.

Working with Birthdays

DailyStory maintains and updates the annual birthday for your members (if you have provided their date of birth).

A common request may be to build a segment for everyone whose birthday is in June (or any other month). However, this can be problematic since the birth year can vary. For example, if today is May 3rd, 2020 and two member's birthdays are June 29, 1983 and June 7, 1974.

Special anniversary date

DailyStory solves this by constantly updating a contact's birthday to their next anniversary date. In this case, June 29, 2020 and June 7, 2020.

While specifying the exact dates for your birthday search may work in some cases, a more powerful option is to use a period search, e.g. birthdays within the next 3 days. When used in a dynamic segment it will constantly update each day as the criteria changes. 

For a shortcut for common searches, type the following searches into the DailyStory search:

• Birthdays today - &dateBirthFrom=today&dateBirthTo=today
• Birthdays tomorrow - &dateBirthFrom=tomorrow&dateBirthTo=tomorrow
• Birthday in next 3 days - &dateBirthFrom=today&dateBirthTo=next-3-days

Search by area code

Navigate to the Mobile Phone field and enter +1 and then the three digit area code, followed by a * (an asterik) Be sure there are no spaces. Example: To search for all contacts with an 816 area code, you would type +1816* in the mobile phone field.

Using AND and OR syntax

DailyStory supports searching using logical operators, such as AND and OR. 

• Use OR if you want to retrieve results which contain any of your specified search criteria. For example, use Dallas OR Austin to search for contacts that may be located in either one of the specified cities. 
• Use AND if you want to retrieve results which contain all of your specified search criteria. The AND command ensures a more accurate list of results for your search. For example, use Company A AND Company B AND Company C to search for contacts that are associated with all of the specified organizations.