Overview

The Audience Builder is used to create dynamic segments of contacts for sending messages, searching contacts, and filtering analytics reports. You can use Audience Trend reports to visualize the population of an audience over time.

Create an audience

1. To create an audience, log into Cordial and navigate to Contacts > Audiences and select New.

2. The Audience Builder will appear.

3. Once you've configured your audience, select Save from the Actions dropdown in the upper right.

Add rules and rule sets

Using include and exclude rules and rule sets in the Audience Builder, you can create dynamic segments of contacts that are updated in real time when performing a search or when a message sends. You can see real-time results in the contact counter at the top of the Audience Builder when creating or editing audiences.

1. To add a rule or rule set to your audience, find and select the desired rule from the Rules dropdown on the right side of the Audience Builder.

2. Click the rule or drag it into your audience canvas.

AND/OR operators

Multiple data sources can be combined to create complex rules and rule sets using include/exclude with AND/OR operators:

• Contact attributes
• Channel addresses
• Channel subscribe status
• Dates
• Cart items
• Orders/purchases
• List membership
• Supplements
• Message system events
• Custom events

Audience counts

Audiences are dynamic in nature, and audience counts can vary over time due to changes in contact attribute values such as purchases, custom events, and subscribe/unsubscribe events. If you want a static audience of contacts that doesn't change, you can add the contacts to a list and build an audience based on list membership.

During message creation, audience counts automatically exclude invalid contacts and contacts with a subscribe status of "unsubscribed" and "none." As such, you might see different counts of the same audience during message creation compared to searching contacts.

• You can read our FAQ article about when a contact's email is flagged as invalid here.

Search contacts with audience rules

Using the Audience Builder, you can search the contacts in your account and display the results in real time. You can save a set of audience rules to use when creating messages, viewing audience trends, or filtering reports.

• You can find a complete list of Cordial's audience rules and their definitions here.

Audience rules can be as simple as "match an email address" or as complex as "All females with a Gmail address that purchased red shoes on a mobile device within the past 7 days."

All audience segments must contain at least one inclusion rule and cannot be saved if only the exclusion rules are defined.

To build an audience based primarily on exclusion rules, select the All Contacts checkbox followed by the desired exclusion rules.

In the following example, we'll search for contacts that:

• Belong to the "newsletter" list
• Have opened a message in the last 30 days
• Have not clicked a link in the last 30 days

1. Navigate to Contacts > Search Contacts to view the Audience Builder. Select the Lists rule from the Rules dropdown on the right.

2. Select the option for Matches any and type the name of the list in the list field.

3. Add a new rule for System Events > Open and select the options for Have event, Any message, and Within the past 30 days.

4. Add a new rule for System Events > Click and select the options for Do not have event, Any message type, and Within the past 30 days.

5. If you have contacts that match this audience, you will see the contact count update in real time.

Save an audience

Once you've created an audience using audience rules, you can save the audience.

When you save an audience, any changes made will not effect automations, drafts, or scheduled messages where this rule was previously applied.

1. In the upper right corner of the Audience Builder, click the Actions dropdown and select Save.

2. Give the audience a name, an optional description, and choose whether to enable Audience Trend Analytics.

You can save a maximum of 100 audience rules with Audience Trend analytics enabled.

Save

You can also edit an audience rule and Save or Save As another audience rule.

1. Access a previously saved audience rule by navigating to Contacts > Audience Rules.

2. Click on the desired audience, make any edits, and choose Save or Save As from the Actions dropdown.

Use saved audience rules

You can use saved audience rules in several areas of the platform:

• During message creation
• Event data reports
• Event Dashboard charts
• Audience Trend reports

During message creation

To use a saved audience during message creation:

1. From the Cordial Dashboard, navigate to Messages and select Create New Message or Drafts.

2. From within your message, select Edit in the Audience pane.

3. At the top of the Audience Builder, select the Load An Audience button and choose a saved audience rule.

Event data reports

You can filter event data reports using audience rules.

1. Navigate to Analytics > Event Data Reports.

2. Choose to filter By audience and select the desired audience in the dropdown.

Event Dashboard charts

You can filter event dashboard charts using audience rules.

1. Navigate to Analytics > Event Dashboards and create or edit a chart.

2. In the Filter by audience dropdown, select the desired audience.

Audience Trend reports

You can use saved audience rules to generate an Audience Trend report.

Audience Trend analytics must be enabled for the audience before it can be used in an audience trend report.

1. Navigate to Contacts > Audience Rules.

2. Hover over the arrow and choose Enable Audience Trend Analytics.

3. Navigate to Analytics > Audience Trends. 

4. Click within the open text field and choose the desired audiences to be included in the report.

Remove an audience

You can remove saved audiences by following these steps.

1. Navigate to Contacts > Audiences.

2. Hover over the arrow next to the desired rule and select Remove Audience.

3. You can also select multiple audiences and remove all selected audiences.

When you remove an audience, only the rules will be deleted. The contacts within that audience will not be deleted. Also note that when an audience is removed, it will not effect automations, drafts, or scheduled messages where the rule was previously applied.