Target Audiences: how to target and personalize Tasks, Messages and Automations

Contents

• How to use Target Audiences to target and personalize Tasks, Messages and Automations
  • 1. Create a Target Audience
  • 2. Specify which blocks should show for this Target Audience
  • 3. Adjust Completion Criteria for each Target Audience
  • 4. Preview what each Target Audience will see
• Limitations in defining Target Audiences
• Using Custom Fields to create Target Audiences

Target Audiences enable you to customize the content of Tasks, Messages and Automations, and send different customized content to different groups of employees. Here's how to do it:

1. Create a Target Audience

To use Target Audiences, start by clicking Edit next to "Target Audiences" on the left side of the screen.

The list of Audiences is now displayed. Note that there is always one default target audience called "Everyone else". 

To add a new audience, click "Create New Audience". The left section will now show the settings for that audience:

• Color: click the square to pick the preview color for this Audience. This is just for you and useful for seeing which blocks belong to which Audience.
• Audience Name: an internal name for the Audience. Not shown to employees. 
• Audience Rules: use these rules to determine who will be part of this Audience. The rule builder works the same as the one used when selecting Participants for the Experience.
• Completion Criteria: Define how many of the assigned Sub-tasks the participant must complete for the task to be considered done. (We'll discuss this option later in this article)
• Show blocks hidden for this audience: allows you to preview or hide the blocks that are used by other Audiences in this task. Useful to make sure you're not missing anything. (We'll discuss this option later in this article)

For example, using these rules we can create a new Audience that targets anyone whose roles include the words Engineer or Designer. 

To check whether your rules are capturing the employees you intended, you can click the "Preview matching employees" link below the rules.

Note: Target Audiences are mutually exclusive

The recipient of a Task/Message or the person affected by an Automation can only ever belong to one Target Audience. Recipients belong to the first Target Audience whose criteria they fit.

For instance, an Engineer based in New York would only fall into the first of the audiences shown below. They wouldn't see any blocks which are targeted only at the New Yorkers audience.

Consequently, we don't recommend defining multiple Target Audiences based on different user properties (eg location and department), within the same Task/Message/Automation. 

2. Specify which blocks should show for this Target Audience

Once you have more than one Target Audience set up, you can specify which blocks should and should not show for the people in that Audience.

For instance, let's offer Engineers and Designers a different choice of hardware, by hiding the existing Option block, and creating a new block that shows only for this Audience.

Hiding blocks

First, hide the existing Option block. Click on the block, and then click "Hide block". This will hide this block only for the Audience you're currently editing.

Un-hiding blocks

You can see which blocks are hidden for an Audience at any time using the "Show blocks hidden for this audience" in the left section of the Task Editor. Remember that you need to have clicked on the 'Edit' button for that Audience first.

If you hover over a hidden Block you'll have the option to un-hide it for that Audience, by clicking 'Show block'.

Creating blocks only visible to one Audience

To create a block that only our 'Engineers and Designers' audience can see, make sure you're still in the 'Edit Target Audience' view for this audience.

Next, drag a new Option block to the center area and add the options we want to show for the Engineers and Designers Audience. This block will automatically only be visible to the current audience of Engineers and Designers.

3. Adjust Completion Criteria for each Target Audience

For each Target Audience, you can decide how many of the Sub-tasks must be completed, for the entire Task to be considered done.

If you haven't set up any extra Target Audiences, you only need to do this for the default 'Everyone else' Audience.

Adjusting Completion Criteria is useful for Tasks that have multiple different Sub-tasks, where you only need Participants to complete some but not all of these Sub-tasks.

For instance, we could offer Participants in this Task the option to use their own hardware, instead of company-supplied hardware. We could do this by adding a separate Sub-task, below our exiting Option block.

We only need Participants to either request their preferred hardware, or state that they'll use their own hardware. So we'll need to configure the Completion Criteria for this Task to reflect this.

Completion Criteria can be found in the Edit Target Audience section, under the rules defining the Audience. For now, you can only specify the number of Sub-tasks that must be completed for the entire Task to be considered Done. Other ways to control completion are coming soon.

4. Preview what each Target Audience will see

It's possible at any time to preview what each of your Audiences will see. We recommend doing this for each Audience, to make sure your Task/Message is set up as you intended.

From the list of Target Audiences, click on an Audience to preview what they will see.

Click "Stop previewing" to return to seeing all Blocks that make up this Task or Message.

When you click 'Stop previewing', you still get a hint of which blocks are visible for which Audience. On the right side of each block, a small square with the Audience color and the first letter of the Audience name helps you see which blocks apply to each Audience.

Limitations on defining Target Audiences

There are a few restrictions on how you can define the rules to make a Target Audience.

• Restricted fields: some fields cannot be used in rules
  • Name
  • Personal email
  • Work email
  • Address
  • any field that is used to identify another user, eg "Manager's email"

• Variables: these cannot be used when defining rules

  

Using Custom Fields to create Target Audiences

By default, you can define Target Audiences based on a few standard properties: Role, Team, Department, Location and Start Date.

You can use other data points to specify Target Audiences by creating Custom Fields. To do so, follow the steps specified in  How to add a Custom Field. Once you've done these steps, the Custom Field will appear as an option in the Rule Builder of Target Audiences.

In the example below, we've added a Job Level Custom Field, which can then be used for creating Target Audiences.