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.

Use the following steps to create an audience:

1. In the sidebar, go to AudienceStream > Audiences.
2. Click + Add Audience.
   The Create Audience 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. Click + Attribute Condition.
5. Use the Conditions drop-down list to create a filter for the audience.
6. Select an attribute, a comparison operator, and a comparison value (if applicable).
   
7. (Optional) To add more conditions, click + AND conditions or + OR conditions, and add the condition.
8. Click Save.
9. 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, select an audience from a drop-down list.

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.

Retention time is set in two places: global accout settings and for each audience. The audience retention time,  if set, overrides the global setting.

The overall retention time applied to a visitor is determined by one of the following:

Longest Audience Retention Time
The longest retention time of the visitor's audiences that have a retention time specified is used (even if this is shorter than the global retention time).

or

Global Retention Time
If the visitor is not a member of any audiences with a retention time specified, then the UDH global visitor retention time is used.

The maximum allowed visitor and audience retention times are determined by your contract terms.

Visitor Retention Time Example

If you have a global visitor retention time of 60 days, all visitor records whose last event activity timestamp is older than 60 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.

The following example illustrates 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	✗ 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