Improve targeting with Audiences AI

Audiences AI complements and improves your targeting strategies by using real-time customer data to identify and suggest adding segments of subscribers likely to make a purchase and excluding segments of subscribers less likely to make a purchase.

Audiences AI is part of the suite of tools available with AI Pro.

If you’re interested in using Audiences AI and other AI Pro tools to maximize revenue and boost ROI, sign up and learn more about Attentive AI™️ or reach out to your Attentive CSM.

Prerequisites

You must meet the following criteria to be able to use Audiences AI:

• You must have already sent at least 5 campaign messages through Attentive
  • Each of those messages must have reached at least 10% of your current active subscriber list
  • Each of those messages must have been sent within the past 54 weeks (1 year + 2 weeks) and no later than two weeks ago.
  • Each of those messages must have resulted in at least one conversion

While there is no strict minimum list size, we recommend using Audiences AI with lists of 15,000 subscribers or more.

Audiences AI is generally available for text messages and in beta for email.

Generate optimized audiences with Audiences AI

1. Go to Campaigns.
2. Create or edit a campaign.
   • If editing a campaign, choose a campaign message.
3. Click Add or Edit in the Audience panel.
4. Choose segments to optimize by selecting them from the Select a segment dropdown.
5. Choose segments to exclude by clicking Exclude, then selecting them from the Excluded segments dropdown.
6. Audiences AI is turned on by default. You’ll see information about your optimized audience, including the number of recipients and whether you're adding or removing unlikely purchasers. You can click Enable audience optimization to turn it on and off.
7. Click Save.

Audiences AI then begins generating an AI-optimized audience. When your AI-optimized audience is ready, you’ll see a message in Attentive letting you know it’s been successfully created.

Adjust AI-optimized audience

After Audiences AI finishes generating your AI-optimized audience, you can optionally adjust audience optimization and choose a different suggested audience.

Audience optimization

Follow these steps to choose how Audiences AI handles subscribers based on likelihood to purchase:

1. Click Edit next to Audience optimization.
2. Optimize your audience:
   • Remove unlikely purchasers: Check to remove subscribers that Audiences AI considers unlikely to make a purchase.
   • Identify unlikely purchasers: Check to identify subscribers that Audiences AI considers unlikely to make a purchase. If this option is checked, the message is still sent to subscribers, but you can compare message performance for these subscribers to that of your base audience and likely purchasers. See Understand AI Pro performance with reports for more about how Audiences AI can boost performance.
     
     
     Note: You can choose Remove unlikely purchasers or Identify unlikely purchasers, but not both.
• Add likely purchasers: Check to add subscribers that Audiences AI considers likely to make a purchase.
• Manage unlikely purchasers
3. Click Apply.

Suggested audience

Follow these steps to choose from several different audience options:

1. Click Edit next to Suggested audience.
2. Choose a new audience. Depending on the size and specificity of the original segment, you may see multiple options or just one option. Each option includes an explanation of how audience expansion may affect revenue and ROI.
3. Click Apply.

Best practices for audience inclusions and exclusions

Use these best practices to improve campaign performance by including high-value subscribers and excluding low-intent ones, helping you increase engagement, reduce costs, and optimize ROI.

Use audience inclusions to expand your best segments

Audience inclusions let you reach subscribers similar to those in your most valuable segments without reducing overall engagement or conversion rates. You can use these strategies to expand your highest-performing audience segments.

Send to high-ROI segments

These base segments represent proven, revenue-driving audiences. Enabling audience inclusion with these segments will identify and include additional subscribers with high purchase intent:

Send to affinity segments

These base segments capture subscribers based on their shopping behaviors, preferences, and interests. Enabling audience inclusion with these segments will identify and include additional subscribers who share similar affinities:

When to avoid audience inclusions

Don't use audience inclusions for:

• Segments based purely on demographics (location, gender, etc.).
• Winback or unengaged segments (subscribers inactive over long periods).
• Retargeting segments (subscribers who've already taken specific campaign actions).

Use audience exclusions to optimize campaign effectiveness

Audience exclusions help improve campaign effectiveness by removing subscribers unlikely to engage, reducing costs, and prioritizing more responsive subscribers.

When to avoid audience exclusions

Don't use audience exclusions for:

• Small, targeted lists (exclusions can excessively narrow the audience).
• Highly specific campaigns aimed at niche audiences (exclusions may remove valuable subscribers).

Quick reference: audience inclusions vs. exclusions