Once the events of your website visitors have started populating, you can create a segment of users based on their activity on your website and other parameters like user traits, demographics, etc, that suit your marketing strategy and sync it with the ad platforms like Facebook, Google, TikTok, etc. After creating an audience segment, it starts accumulating the users who match the given criteria going forward.
To create an audience segmentation, navigate to the Audience page from the Main Menu and click on “+Create Audience”
You have two options to create an audience:
Create a new custom audience
Use Suggested audiences
Create a new custom audience
Now, create a custom audience segment by clicking on “Create a custom audience”
Here, you can filter a segment of users by adding conditions manually.
Watch this video on how to create a custom Audience.
Use Suggested audiences
We have pre-configured a few audiences that are frequently used by marketers, which helps you easily segment the audience without adding any conditions. For example, if you want to create an audience who has viewed a product but not purchased it in the last 90 days, you simply click on the suggested audience and run the query.
Ways to filter the data and create a segment
You can create a segment of an audience either “By User” or “By Group” and
1. Filtering the data based on user (or) account traits, UTM parameters, demographics, Device or browser type , other parameters.
2. Filtering the databy events tracked on your website
Filtering based on user/group traits
You can filter the users based on demographics, technology, UTM parameters or other parameters.
For example, in the “By Technology” filter, if you want the users who use Windows 10 platform and Firefox browser you can filter them from both “Platform” and “Browser” filters.
Or if you want the users who use Chrome browser on either Mac OS or Windows 10 platforms, you can create the filter as shown in the image below
Filtering based on events
You can filter the users based on the events tracked on your website like add_to_cart, pageview, product_viewed, added_to_wishlist, etc.
This can be further segmented using a combination of event properties explained below:
Occurrence → Filters the data based on the occurrence of the event like First occurred, Last occurred, Not occurred.
Count → Number of times the event has occurred
Date Range – Dynamic* – Date From → Filters the data from the date mentioned till now
– Dynamic* – in the last → Filters the data in the last specified number of
days which is dynamic.
– Dynamic* – Yesterday → Filters data from only yesterday.
– Dynamic* – Days Between → Filter collects from and to days relative to the current day, enabling to select the varied audience.
– Static date range → Filters the data between the specified date range
*For the dynamic date range, data gets refreshed based on the refresh interval (check refresh interval explained below) set for the audience.
Based on the date range chosen, the audience becomes a static or dynamic audience.
1. Static audience is fixed for the date range given and no new users are added or removed from the segment.
2. Dynamic audience is changing and new users are added or removed based on the given date range and refresh interval. Every time an audience gets refreshed, an inclusion event called “added_to_segment” is assigned to the user who enters the audience segment and an exclusion event called “removed_from_segment” is assigned to the user who is excluded from the audience segment based on the audience filter criteria
Note: Based on the refresh interval, the audiences are refreshed with the ad platforms which helps in improving the match rates of the audiences. It is highly recommended to create a dynamic audience for this refresh to happen.
Attributes filter → You can further filter the data using attributes (if available) for the event. For example,
URL can be specified for pageview event
Product_name, currency, product_id, category_name, etc can be specified for product_viewed event
Product_name, currency, value, product_id, category_name, etc can be specified for Added to cart event
Category name for category_viewed event, etc.
You can add multiple attributes for the same event. For example, you can filter the users who added either leather bag or shirt by filtering as shown in the image below.
Multiple actions can be combined for advanced segmentation by clicking on the “Add another action” button and using the conditional filter “AND” or “OR”.
And – Filters the data that match the criteria of both actions.
Or – Filters the data that match the criteria of one of the actions.
For example, here’s how you can use “And” function to combine actions:
If you would want to filter the users who added a product to the cart but have not purchased, you can combine the “Added to cart” event criteria with the “Purchased” “Not occurred” event criteria using the “And” condition as shown below.
View, Download and Save the audience
After specifying the criteria for segmenting, click on “Run Query” to view the list of users.
You can also export the data in CSV format by clicking on the “Download CSV” icon.
Saving the audience
There are two ways to save an audience.
Save & Active
Save as draft
Save & Active
By clicking on Save & Active, you will be asked to give a name and refresh interval as required to activate the audience which will be included in the billing.
Note: Audience name should be in lowercase with a maximum of 20 characters in length. Eg. my_segment_1
Refresh interval
An audience is refreshed based on the interval set while creating the audience with a dynamic date range. Let’s take an instance where you have given the dynamic date range as last 30 days and refresh interval as 2 days for a particular audience. In the period between the refresh triggers, the audience is not refreshed and remains the same, meaning, the data that was previously updated is not refreshed until the next 2 days, in this case.
Every time an audience is refreshed the users are either included or excluded from the audience based on the criteria of the audience. Depending on the exclusion or inclusion, users are assigned an event called “added_to_segment” when included and “removed_from_segment” when excluded.
Note: Refresh interval has nothing to do with Retention days in Facebook or Membership duration in Google.
This refresh interval is set to refresh and sync the users from CustomerLabs with the ad platforms. When you first create a audience the best practice is to keep the refresh interval as 1 day for the first 2-3 days for the audience to be synced with the ad platforms to give you a better match rate. After 2-3 days you can reset the refresh interval based on your audience size and dynamic date range you have given for the audience.
Note: Make sure to keep the refresh interval relevant to the dynamic date range given in the audience to avoid triggering more events that might incur unnecessary charges. For example, if you have chosen the “Dynamic – in the last” as 30 days in a particular audience, it is suggested to keep the refresh interval every 2 days.
Save as draft
By Clicking on “Save as draft”, the audience query will be saved as a draft and you can activate this audience anytime from the Drafts tab.
Audience Dashboard
You can have an overall view of all your saved audiences in the Audience Dashboard on the “Audience” page. The audience dashboard displays the list of active, draft, & archived audiences along with their active destinations and other action buttons.
Explore the audience dashboard:
In this dashboard, you have 3 tabs – Active, Draft & Archived
Active
1. You can see all the Active audiences under the Active tab.
In case you want to deactivate any audience, you can turn off the toggle under the Status column and the audience will be deactivated and moved to the Archived tab.
Note: Once the audience is deactivated, it will not be refreshed and will stop syncing with the destinations.
2. In the Active Destinations column, you can see the status of the audience sync with the destinations you have connected.
3. You can see the green indicator next to the destination to which you’ve synced the audience. If the audience is not synced, it would show in grey.
4. Under “Audience Size,” you can see the size of the particular audience i.e. number of users in the audience segment. This audience size is updated when it is last refreshed.
5. Under “Actions” you can able to view, edit and delete the audience.
Draft
1. In the Draft tab, you can see all the audiences that you saved as drafts.
Drafts are just to save the queries and activate them later.
2. You can re-activate the audience at any time by clicking on the audience/edit icon → Update the query as you want → Click Run Query → Click Save & Active.
3. You can also update the draft by clicking on the audience/edit icon → Update the query as you want → Click Run Query → Click Update draft.
Archived
1. Under “Archived”, you can see all the inactive audiences.
2. You can re-activate the Archived audience by clicking on the audience/edit icon → Update the query as required → Click Run Query → Click Save & Active.
Step-by-step guide to create a basic audience
Create a basic segment of users, for instance, filter users who have added a product to cart in the last 30 days by following the steps below:
1. Navigate to the “Audience” page from the Menu.
2. Click on “+Create Audience”
3. Under Segment, choose “By user”.
(Specify other parameters like traits, technology, etc if required)
4. Click “By Events” and select “Added to cart” from the list of events drop-down
5. Select “Occurred” from the occurrence drop-down.
6. Set “Count” → “Greater than or equal to” → Enter “1”.
7. Choose “Dynamic – in the last” from the date range drop-down → Enter “30” days.
8. Add any attributes if needed by clicking on the “Add Attribute” button.
9. Once you have given the criteria, Click “Run Query”.
10. Save the audience by clicking on “Save & Active”.
11. A tab appears that prompts to enter a name for the audience → Enter “atc_last30d”
12. Set the refresh interval for 2 days. Since the range is for 30 days, refreshing every 2 days would be ideal.
13. Check “Agree & Continue” box and click on “Save & Active”
Create a niche segment of users, for instance, filter users who have added specific products to cart but not purchased in the last 60 days by following the steps below:
1. Navigate to the “Audience” page from the Menu.
2. Click on “+Create Audience”
3. Under Segment, choose “By user”
(Specify other parameters like traits, technology, etc if required)
4. Click “By Events” and select “Added to cart” from the list of events drop-down
5. Select “Occurred” from the occurrence drop-down.
6. Set “Count” → “Greater than or equal to” → Enter “1”
7. Choose “Dynamic – Number of days” from the date range drop-down → Enter “60”
8. Click on “Add Attribute” button
9. Select product_name from the attributes drop-down
10. Choose “contains” → Type in the required product name → Click “+”
11. Now add another product name by following the steps 9 & 10.
12. Click on “Add another action” button and select “And” from the drop-down to combine both actions.
13. Select “Purchased” in the second set of events.
14. Select “Not occurred” from the occurrence drop-down.
15. Choose “Dynamic – Number of days” from the date range drop-down → Enter “60”
16. Click “Run Query”.
17. Save the audience by clicking on “Save & Active”.
18. A tab appears that prompts to enter a name for the audience → Enter “atc_nt_pur_60d”
19. Set the refresh interval for 5 days. Since the range is for 60 days, refreshing every 5 days would be ideal.
20. Check “Agree & Continue” box and click on “Save & Active”
Some of the commonly used niche audiences are:
Added to cart but not purchased in last 30 days
Product viewed but not added to cart in 45 days
Product viewed more than 3 times and added to wishlist
Read the blog and visited the pricing page more than 3 times
Sync the audience with destinations as a customer list (List Sync)
You can create an audience in CustomerLabs and sync it with the destinations as a customer list by mapping the identifiers with the destination schema. This makes it easier for you to run ads without having to manually update the list of users.
Here’s how you can sync the audience with the destination:
1. Create an audience as required and after creating, “view” the audience to set up the sync with the destination.
2. Go to “Schema” tab and add the necessary schema based on the list sync requirement for the destination like email, first name, last name, customerlabs_user_id, etc (some of them will be already added under “Default schema”)which you want to send to the destinations one by one by clicking on “+” icon (Check the relevant destination document for list sync requirements). Learn more about schema here
3. After adding the schema, click “Update Schema”.
4. Now go to “List Sync” tab and click on “Map Schema” for the destination that you want to sync the list.
5. In the “List to sync” tab, choose the audience list from the lists that are already created in the destination or choose “Create New List” and enter the name for the new audience list.
6. Once the audience list is selected or created, “Custom audience Info” will be displayed.
Note: If it shows “Error Fetching data”, make sure to re-authenticate the activation key for the destination from Menu → Destinations page.
7. Go to the “Schema Mapping” tab and map the audience schema with the destination schema for the identifiers that you have given in Step 2 by adding each schema using “+” button.
8. Once this is done, click “Save List and Schema”
9. Now enable the toggle under “Status” for the destination you want to sync.
10. Click “Instant Sync” to sync the list now.
11. Go to “Configuration” tab and set the “Refresh interval” as required.
12. You can check the log for the audience from the “Logs” tab and also the log for each destination by going to “List sync” tab → “Show Logs” for the destination that you want.
13. You can check whether the list has been synced with the destination in the destination platform after 10 minutes if you have enabled “Instant Sync” or after the refresh interval days set for the audience.
For detailed documentation on syncing the audience as a customer list in Facebook Ads, Google Adwords and LinkedIn, click on the relevant link.
Sync the audience with destinations as an event (Event Sync)
You can sync the audience created in CustomerLabs with the destinations as an event that sends the data of your anonymous users who had performed high-intent activities on your website such as viewing a product multiple times but have not converted and haven’t given any personally identifiable information (PII). You can retarget these anonymous users by segmenting them and syncing them with ad platforms as an event.
The audience created in CustomerLabs is sent to the destination as two events. One is “added_to_segment” which is used to include a set of users created as a audience. The other one is “removed_from_segment” which is used to exclude a set of users created as a audience.
This event sync option is only available for Facebook and Google Analytics (GA4).
Here’s what you should do to sync the audience with the destination:
1. Go to “Event Sync” tab of the audience you want to sync.
2. After 30-40 minutes from connecting the destinations (Facebook & Google Analytics gtag) in the Destinations page, you can see them here.
3. Click “Settings” for the destination you want.
4. Modify the audience details as you want and click on “Create audience”
This will create a custom audience in the destination using the event “added_to_segment”
5. Go to “Configuration” tab and set the “Refresh interval” as required.
6. You can check the log for the audience from the “Logs” tab and also the log for each destination by going to “Event Sync” tab → “Logs” for the destination that you want.
7. You can check whether the audience has been synced with the destination in the destination platform after 5-10 minutes.
