Engage Audiences Overview

Audiences let you group users or accounts based on event behavior and traits that Segment tracks.

You can build Audiences from core tracking events, traits, and computed traits. You can then sync Audiences to hundreds of Destinations or access them with the Profile API.

Building an Audience

You can build an Audience from existing events, traits, computed traits, or other Audiences.

Events

You can build an Audience from any events that are connected to Engage, including Track, Page, and Screen calls. You can use the property button to refine the audience on specific event properties, as well.

Select and not who to indicate users that have not performed an event. For example, you might want to look at all users that have viewed a product above a certain price point but not completed the order.

You can also specify two different types of time-windows, within and in between. The within property lets you specify an event that occurred in the last x number of days, while in between lets you specify events that occurred over a rolling time window in the past. A common use case is to look at all customers that were active 30 to 90 days ago, but have not completed an action in the last 30 days.

Building audiences with traits

You can also build audiences using Custom Traits, Computed Traits, SQL Traits, and audience memberships.

Custom Traits

Custom traits are user or account-specific attributes. You can collect these traits from your apps when a user completes a form or signs up using an Identify call. You can view these traits in the Profile explorer. Custom Traits are mutable and update to the latest value seen by the user’s Identify events.

Computed Traits

You can also use computed traits in an audience definition. For example, you can create a total_revenue computed trait and use it to generate an audience of big_spender customers that exceed a certain threshold.

SQL Traits

With SQL Traits, you can use data in your warehouse to build an audience. By running SQL queries on this warehouse data, you can import specific traits back into Segment to enhance both Segment audiences and the data you send to downstream destinations.

Audience memberships

When you build an audience based on audience membership, you use existing audiences as criteria for creating new audiences. You can include or exclude profiles based on their membership in other audiences, allowing you to generate more specific audience segments.

Time comparison

You can use the following time comparison operators in your audience definition:

• before date
• after date
• within last
• within next
• before last
• after next

Only ISO timestamps can be used with these operators. Additionally, these time comparison operators exclusively apply to custom traits. If the timestamp is not a valid ISO timestamp (for example, a trailing Z is missing), Segment won’t process the audience in real-time. Learn more about real-time compute compared to batch.

Note: Timezones seen in the UI are based on your local timezone, but are converted to UTC on the backend.

Funnel Audiences

Funnel audiences allow you to specify strict ordering between two events. This might be the case if you want an event to happen or not happen within a specific time window, as in the following example:

Dynamic property references

Dynamic Property references give you more flexibility over funnel audiences. Instead of specifying a constant value in both events, like product_id = 123 for both Product Viewed and Order Completed events, you can specify that a child event references an event property of a parent event. You can also compare an event property to a trait variable.

Account-level audiences

If you have a B2B business, you might want to build an Audience of accounts. You can use both account-level traits that you’ve sent through the Group call, or user-level traits and events. For example, you might want to re-engage a list of at-risk accounts defined as companies which are on a business tier plan and where none of the users in that account have logged in recently. When incorporating user-level events or traits, you can specify None of the users, Any users, or All users.

See Account-level Audiences for more information.

Send audiences to destinations

You can send audiences and computed traits to third-party services in Segment’s Destinations catalog.

For step-by-step instructions on how to connect an audience to a destination, see Send Audience Data to Destinations.

Understanding compute times

Because a number of factors (like system load, backfills, or user bases) determine the complexity of an Audience, some compute times take longer than others.

As a result, Segment recommends waiting at least 24 hours for an Audience to finish computing before you resume working with the Audience.

From the Overview page, you can view Audience details including the current compute status and a progress bar for real-time and batch Audiences. Engage updates the progress bar and status for real-time computations approximately every 10 minutes.

Refresh real-time Audiences and Traits

For real-time computations, you can click Refresh Audience or Refresh Trait to update user counts, status, and compute progress.

Compute statuses

Engage displays the following compute statuses for Audiences and Traits.

Real-time computations

Batch computations

Real-time compute compared to batch

Real-time Compute allows you to update traits and Audiences as Segment receives new events. Real-time Compute unlocks exciting use cases:

• Intra-Session App Personalization: change your app experience with personalized onboarding, product recommendations, and faster funnels based on a user entering and exiting an audience.
• Instant Messaging: Trigger messages in email, live chat, and push notifications instantly, to deliver immediate experiences across channels.
• Operational Workflows: Supercharge your sales and support teams by responding to customer needs faster, based on the latest understanding of a user.

To create a new Audience or Trait:

1. Go to your Computed Traits or Audiences tab in Engage and select Create.

2. Configure and preview your Audience or Trait.
   • A lightning bolt next to Realtime Enabled indicates that the computation updates in real-time.
   • By default, Segment queries all historical data to set the current value of the computed trait and Audience. Backfill computes historical data up to the point of audience creation. You can uncheck Include Historical Data to compute values for the Audience or trait without historical data. With backfill disabled, the trait or Audience only uses the data that arrives after you create it.
3. Select destinations to connect, then review and create your Audience or Trait.

While Engage is computing, use the Audience Explorer to see users or accounts that enter your Audience. Engage displays the Audience as computing in the Explorer until at least one user or account enters.

Editing Realtime Audiences and Traits

Engage supports the editing of realtime Audiences and Traits, which allows you to make nuanced changes to existing Traits and Audiences in situations where cloning or building from scratch may not suit your use case.

To edit a realtime Trait or Audience, follow these steps:

1. In your Engage Space, select the Computed Traits or Audiences tab.
2. Select the realtime Audience or Trait you want to edit.
3. Select the Builder tab and make your edits.
4. Preview the results, then select Create Audience to confirm your edits.

Engage then processes your realtime Audience or Trait edits. While the edit task runs, the audience remains locked and you can’t make further changes. Once Engage incorporates your changes, you’ll be able to access your updated Audience or Trait.

Access your Audiences using the Profiles API

You can access your Audiences using the Profile API by querying the /traits endpoint. For example, you can query for high_value_user property with the following GET request:

https://profiles.segment.com/v1/spaces/<workspace_id>/collections/users/profiles/email:alex@segment.com/traits?limit=100&include=high_value_user

The query would return the following payload:

    {
        "traits": {
            "high_value_user": true
        },
        "cursor": {
            "url": "",
            "has_more": false,
            "next": "",
            "limit": 100
        }
    }

You can read the full Profile API docs to learn more.

Download your Audience as a CSV file

You can download a copy of your Audience by visiting the Audiences overview page.

1. Navigate to Engage > Audiences.
2. Select the Audience you’d like to download as a CSV, then click Download CSV.
3. Select the data fields that you’d like to include in your CSV as columns.
   • Your CSV will contain all users in this audience with the selected fields. You can filter by External ID, SQL trait, Computed Trait, and Custom Trait.
4. Click Next.
5. Before you can download the CSV, you’ll need to generate it. There are two different options for formatting:
   • Formatted: Displays external IDs and traits as distinct columns.
   • Unformatted: Contains the following columns: a user/account key, a JSON object containing the external IDs (optional, if selected), and a JSON object containing the traits (optional, if selected).
6. Click Generate CSV.

Once Segment generates the CSV, you can download the file directly. You’ll receive an email notification of the CSV completion, with a URL to the Audience overview page.

Note the following limits for the CSV downloader:

• You can’t download more than one CSV for the same audience at the same time.
• You can only generate one CSV every five minutes.
• Each CSV represents a snapshot at a given point in time that references the data from the audience’s most recent computational run. This applies to both real time and batch audiences, as the CSV is not updated in real time. To locate the snapshot’s given point of time, click on the Download CSV button, and the popup modal will contain an information icon ℹ️, which when hovered over will reveal the snapshot’s details.
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Identifier Breakdown

The audience summary is a breakdown of the percentages of external_ids of users in the audience. These are the default IDs that Segment includes in the Identity resolution configuration. Segment displays the percentage of the audience with each identifier, which you can use to verify the audience size and profiles are correct. The update of identifier breakdowns on profiles doesn’t occur in real time.

FAQ

Why do I get a different user count when I use $ on a field?**

Segment recommends using the $ operator when you deal with array properties. However, the $ causes logical conditions to apply independently to each array entry independently. As a result, you’ll get more accurate results by using the equals one of condition:

How do I populate multiple items off a list for an equals one of condition? **

The audience builder accepts CSV and TSV lists.

Why am I receiving the error “The audience would create a cycle by referencing another audience”?

This error occurs when creating audiences that reference each other, meaning audience X refers to audience Y in its trigger condition, and later you attempt to modify audience Y’s trigger condition to refer back to audience X. To avoid this error, ensure that the audiences do not reference each other in their conditions.

How does the historical data flag work?

Including historical data lets you take past information into account. You can data only exclude historical data for real-time audiences. For batch audiences, Segment includes historical data by default.