Audiences & Segmentation

Lesson 1

Turn the brief into a population

An audience is a reusable definition of who qualifies. Start with the record you want to select, then write each requirement as Field → Operator → Value. A location criterion and a customer-status criterion can both belong to Contacts. A purchase value may instead belong to a related Deal. Select the correct field instead of copying transaction data into a contact merely to make filtering easier.

All criteria means AND: every requirement must hold. Any criterion means OR: one match is enough. Review an example that should qualify and one that should not. In the retailer scenario, using OR would include contacts with any won deal even when their location or value is wrong. The current builder uses a single AND/OR mode across the criteria, so split complex nested business logic into separately reviewed audiences.

Lesson 2

Follow the business relationship

Use Add related object to follow a lookup already defined in the BU. Contacts can lead to their deals or company; custom objects can participate through their configured relationships. Only objects available to your role appear. If a relationship is missing, ask the BU owner to configure the lookup and permissions.

Conditions for the same related path must match the same related record. One lost deal worth ₹90,000 and another won deal worth ₹100 do not satisfy Won AND Amount > ₹50,000. If multiple related records qualify, the recipient is still enrolled once per email address. Personalization takes the first matching related record by record ID; it does not automatically choose the latest or largest deal. Check the preview if the message names a specific transaction.

Lesson 3

Separate matches from sendable people

Estimated records measures matching business records. Eligible recipients measures usable, distinct email addresses after exclusions. These counts can differ because two contacts share an address, an address is blank, a person unsubscribed, or the record contains a practice-only sample address. An audience with many records can therefore have no sendable recipients.

Choose the recipient object and its Email field explicitly. Preview the records and the related values before saving. Sample addresses supplied with Trial data cannot receive real marketing email. Use a small set of your own consenting test addresses to validate a flow. A count is a point-in-time estimate; review again before activation and retain the consent appropriate to your recipients.

Lesson 4

Reuse and refresh deliberately

A saved audience can be connected to several emails or campaigns. One-time flow activation captures its recipients and personalization values. Changing a contact afterward does not rewrite that in-progress snapshot. In Audiences, Schedule refresh updates the displayed estimated record count hourly, daily or weekly and records the next run and any error. It does not send email. Recurring Send Flows independently reevaluate the approved criteria against current records for each occurrence.

Changing a saved audience definition does not silently replace the definition in an already approved flow. Duplicate and review the flow when its targeting policy needs to change. In a recurring Send Flow, New recipients only is the default and prevents addresses already enrolled in that flow from entering again; All matching recipients allows a repeat send on later runs. Suppression is checked again immediately before each send, even when a recipient qualified earlier.

You can delete an unused audience from its card by typing its exact name to confirm. Deletion removes its criteria and any scheduled count refresh, and the action is audited. An audience linked to an email, Send Flow, campaign or offer cannot be deleted while the link exists, even if the flow has ended. Remove those links first or archive the audience to retain its history.