Create standard audiences
Note
The terms audiences and segments are interchangeable. Optimizely has updated all segments to audiences on the Audiences page and is updating the UI on other pages. See Understand audiences to get information on audiences.
An audience is a subset of your customers described by who they are or what they have done. The following principles help you build a standard audience.
- Who is a customer? – A customer can have specific attributes, insights, and observations denoting who they are, such as email, likelihood of ordering, and acquisition source.
- What has the customer done in the past? – A customer can have different engagements with your business (known as behaviors), such as ordering, opening emails, and visiting your website.
- Does the customer belong to another audience or list? – You can re-use any audience or lists you have built.
- Does the customer match an existing filter? – You can reference an existing filter.
Standard audiences can access customer data greater than 28 days old and are also accessible in ODP reports, data sync activations, and one-time and behavioral campaigns.
Note
If you want to access fresher data and use your audiences in web campaigns or other Optimizely products, use the real-time audience builder on the Customers > Audiences page (see Build real-time audiences in ODP).
Create a standard audience
- Go to Customers > Audiences.
- Select Standard Audience from the New Audience drop-down list.
- Enter the Audience Name.
- Click Select and select who you want in the audience.
- Click Select and select what you want the customers to have done.
- Click At least 1 time and select how many times a customer should perform the action.
- Click In the last 7 days and select when you want the customer actions to have occurred.
- Click Done.
- Click Save to save the audience.
Recreate an example audience
When you create an audience, you can use the And operator and the Or operator to make your audience more complex and targeted. The following example reviews how these options can build on each other to create a more robust audience.
Note
Following an edit, select Preview to update the audience's current size and information. Edits to the audience do not update this information automatically.
The initial audience expression lets you establish the foundation of your subset of customers. In this example, a small boutique retailer decided to celebrate the holidays with a special event in Boston. At the highest level, the retailer would like to target their Boston customers.
The And operator lets you use multiple rules. In this example, the retailer wants to contact their most engaged Boston customers–the ones who have opened an email within the last 3 months. The retailer also removes any campaigns concerning sales, applying a Where filter to the Customers who have done rule.
The Or operator provides a separate rule. In this example, the retailer's audience is too small to make the event financially feasible, so the target audience is expanded to all engaged customers from Massachusetts.
Audience metrics update after you preview or save an audience. The following example shows metrics for At least 1 Order.
- Total reachable audience size, including anonymous and known customers – Anyone who meets your audience criteria. This number can include customers without contact information, anonymous website shoppers, or unreachable/opted-out customers who cannot receive marketing communications.
- Reachable customers by channel – The number of customers in the audience who would receive a message through each channel if sent now. The customer has to be both reachable (physically able to get a message) and consented/opted-in (either implicitly or explicitly). A customer can be represented in more than one channel or not represented at all if they are not reachable in these ways.
Apply a standard audience
After a standard audience is saved, you can apply it to campaigns, profiles, lifecycles, and reports.
Campaigns
- Go to Activations > Create New Campaign, and create a new One-Time or Behavioral campaign or edit an existing campaign.
- Select a campaign (which you can modify to create a unique campaign) or click Create From Scratch.
- Open Enrollment.
- Click Edit if you want to customize the audience and click Save when done.
- Expand Enrollment Rules if you want to modify those.
- Expand Touchpoints and edit the existing touchpoint or add new ones to customize your message. Use the breadcrumbs to get back to editing the audience.
Profiles
- Go to Customers > Profiles > + Segment.
- Select the audience you want.
- Click Apply. The profiles of customers included in the audience displays.
Lifecycles
- Go to Reports > Lifecycle Report.
- Click any Segment and select an audience.
Information updates display.
Reports
- Go to Reports > Custom Reports.
- Click New Report (or edit an existing report).
- Click + Segment and select the audience you want.
- Click Apply to view the report. (A new date range was selected for this example.) The report's information updates.
- Click Save if you want to keep this version of the report for future review.
Edit a standard audience
- Go to Customers > Audiences.
- Either click the name of the audience or select the options menu (...) > Edit. If you click the name of the audience, you must click Edit to begin editing the audience. If you click (...) > Edit, the edit view displays automatically.
- Make your changes and click Save.
Delete a standard audience
- Go to Customers > Audiences.
- Click the name of the audience that you want to delete. The edit view displays.
- Select the options menu (...) > Delete.
- Click Delete to confirm.