For a smooth (or formal) generic submanifold
M
M
of real codimension
d
d
in complex space
C
N
\mathbb {C}^N
with
0
∈
M
0\in M
, we introduce the notion of a formal Segre variety mapping
γ
:
(
C
N
×
C
N
−
d
,
0
)
→
(
C
N
,
0
)
\gamma : (\mathbb {C}^N\times \mathbb {C} ^{N-d},0)\to (\mathbb {C}^N,0)
and its iterated Segre mappings at
0
0
,
v
j
:
(
C
(
N
−
d
)
j
,
0
)
→
(
C
N
,
0
)
v^j:(\mathbb {C}^{(N-d)j},0) \to (\mathbb {C}^N,0)
,
j
≥
1
j\ge 1
. The Segre variety mapping
γ
\gamma
extends the notion of Segre varieties of a real-analytic generic submanifold to the setting of smooth (or formal) submanifolds. One of the main results in this paper is that
M
M
is of finite type (in the sense of Kohn and Bloom–Graham) at
0
0
if and only if there exists
k
0
≤
d
+
1
k_0\le d+1
such that the (generic) rank of
v
k
0
v^{k_0}
is
N
N
. More generally, we prove that
v
k
0
v^{k_0}
parameterizes the local CR orbit of
M
M
at
0
0
.