Building an Audience

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An audience is a group of visitors identified by a shared set of attributes. The more attributes you select, the more specific your audience becomes. Audiences are used to trigger connectors that take real-time action on your visitors.

In this article:

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Create an Audience

An audience is a combination of one or more of attribute conditions. The more filters you add, the more specific your audience becomes.

To create an audience:

1. Navigate to AudienceStream > Audiences.
2. Click + Add Audience. The New Audience Filter dialog displays.
3. Enter a Name to uniquely identify the audience.
   Names must only contain ASCII characters (codes 0-127) and not exceed 250 characters.
4. Use the Conditions drop-downs to create a filter for the audience. Select an attribute, a comparison operator, and a comparison value.
   To add more conditions, click +AND Condition or +OR Condition.
5. When complete, click Save.
6. Save/publish your account. 

Take Action on an Audience

Once you have set up an audience, you are ready to start taking action. When a visitor joins or leaves an audience, you have the opportunity to take an action in response to that activity. Select the AudienceStream connector you want to use and configure the available actions for the connector.

AudienceStream connector actions are fueled by audiences.  To configure an action you select an audience from a drop-down menu.

Learn more about setting up connectors.

Visitor Retention Time

Visitor retention time refers to the length of time that AudienceStream will retain visitor records since their last activity. If a visitor has been inactive for the length of the retention period, the record will be purged from the system.  However, each incoming event associated to a visitor record will restart the retention start time.

There is a global visitor retention time set for your account/profile, but each audience can have its own retention time that overrides the global setting.

Visitor retention times are determined by your contract terms and can only be adjusted by your account manager.

Visitor Retention Time Example

If you have a global visitor retention time of 90 days, all visitor records whose last event activity timestamp is older than 90 days will get purged from AudienceStream. This means the entire visitor record is deleted. If that same visitor were to return and trigger event activity, a new visitor record would be created in AudienceStream. 

To store visitor records longer than your account/profile retention period, the visitor must be added to an audience that has a longer retention time.

Here's an example timeline to illustrate how visitor retention time works with audiences that have times that are longer and shorter than the global setting.

Global Visitor Retention Time: 60 days
"Window Shopper" audience retention time: 30 days
"VIP Purchaser (> $500)" audience retention time: 90 days

Action	Day	Days Inactive	"Window Shopper"	"VIP Purchaser"	AudienceStream
Visits Website, browses products	May 1st	0	✓ Added		✓ New Record
n/a	May 31st	30	✗ Removed		✓ Retained
n/a	June 30th	60			✗ Purged
Visits Website, Purchases $550	Aug 1st	0		✓ Added	✓ New Record
n/a	Sep 30th	60		✓ Retained	✓ Retained
n/a	Oct 30th	90		✗ Removed	✗ Purged