Create audience

Create and activate an audience in the SessionM platform. You can create a customer audience from the customer profiles stored in the SessionM Customer module. As you define segments for your audience, bear in mind that audience segments can be defined using two kinds of data:

• Standard customer data for basic demographic attributes such as gender or date o birth. Sometimes these attributes are calculated such as a customer's CLV, and sometimes they are RFM metrics such as the date of a customer's last purchase.
• Custom, or appended, customer data for attributes that your organization can define.

Before you start

Part of the work associated with creating an audience is creating and then combining segments to achieve a very focused targeting of customers. Two of the steps in the procedure below describe a way to create an attribute group that can hold multiple segments. However, there are a few ways to create groupings of cards for the segments you add. They include:

• Clicking the AND/OR toggle in between two cards.
• Clicking the Add Attribute Group button and then selecting two or more checkboxes on the existing cards. Then clicking the Done button.
• Clicking the Add Attribute Group button and then clicking the Done button. Doing so creates two empty cards that you can fill by then selecting a segment for each.

The procedure below includes steps described in the 2nd bullet above.

Steps

1. From the All Audiences view on the main dashboard, click Create Audience in the top right area of the page to launch the audience builder.
2. Name the audience in the Audience Name text box on the Setup tab. Use any naming convention that you want. This name displays on the Audiences dashboard.
3. Still on the Setup tab, select Customer from the Type drop down list and click Next.
4. On the Targeting tab, use the All Any toggle to specify which of the following conditions is required to generate the customer audience from the segments or the attribute groups that contain segments:
   • All - Applies an ADD relationship between all segments or attribute groups containing segments.
   • Any - Applies an OR relationship between all segments or attribute groups containing segments.
5. Select a segment from the Add Segment drop-down to add a card for the segment. Note that you can search for fields by entering letters into the Add Segment field.
• If you select a standard attribute - something populated or calculated from the standard customer profile such as gender or the date of the last purchase - proceed to step 6.
• If you select Appended Data, the Custom Attribute Selector opens. With it, you can navigate existing categories of appended data to locate the attribute you need and then add the attribute to your audience.
6. Once added, you can refine a segment by clicking the associated text boxes or sliders to select one or more values from the lists.

   The Include/Exclude toggle appears when a segment has multiple values. By default, Include is enabled, meaning that the values you select are included in the audience definition. If you toggle this button to Exclude, the selected values are excluded from the audience definition. This is useful, for example, if you want all states but Alaska and Hawaii. Toggle to Exclude, then select these two states from list. Alaska and Hawaii are not included in the audience definition.

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 to add as many segments as needed to define the customer audience.
8. Between the segments you create, indicate if the segments are combined in an AND or an OR relationship. As segments are defined, they appear in the Targeting Summary, along with the real-time, estimated audience size above.
9. Now, if you want any of the segments to reside together in a group, click + Add Attribute Group. Each segment card now displays a checkbox you can enable to assign the segment to an attribute group.
10. Once you've enabled the segments being added to the group, click Done. Doing so designates an OR relationship between the segments in the attribute group; a red line appears to the left of the group members.
11. If you are done adding segments and attribute groups containing segments, click Save to save a draft of the audience. This step allows you to adjust the audience definition if needed before you activate it. Once an audience is activated, you cannot edit it. Make sure that the audience definition is complete and accurate.

12. With the audience in Draft mode, click Activate.

When you activate an audience, its status changes to “Active”. The audience is available for use.