The audience for a new campaign is set to “All Users” by default. You can narrow the audience by creating a user segment with one or more criteria based on user behavior, location, devices, or user attributes.

A segment is a group of users who share one or more attributes or qualities. For example, a segment could be users who have the same device, are in the same city, or both (for example: “iPhone users in NYC”).

Define your audience

In the Audience tab, click the + dropdown to see your segment options. Choose criteria to start narrowing your campaign audience. Only users who match the segment you choose will be eligible to receive the campaign and any of its actions.

For example, you could re-target users who entered one of your previous campaigns.

See Build a segment for more details about segmentation options.

Make your campaign sticky

By default, users who stop qualifying for the campaign won't receive any further actions. Your campaign audience is re-evaluated before every action is sent.

By making your campaign sticky, you can force users to keep receiving actions. Users in your selected audience (say, city = Los Angeles) will continue receiving actions until the campaign ends, even if they fall out of the audience mid-campaign (say, if they travel to New York).

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Sub-audiences don't count, though

Note that stickiness only applies to the campaign audience, so an action's Sub-Audience or delivery settings can still disqualify users from continuing in the campaign.

To make your campaign audience sticky:

1. Add a segment to your target audience.
2. Click the magnet icon above the segment selector.
3. The magnet turns blue and stickiness is enabled.

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Influence of the Sticky Campaign to your Holdback or A/B Test.

Have in mind that when adding a Holdback or A/B Test to your campaign, that Test is inheriting the Stickiness applied on your Campaign.
In case you do not make the Campaign Sticky and add a Test, then users that no longer meet the target of the Campaign/Test are removed from this Test and their activity is not recorded in the Analytics report for your A/B Test.
This may result in your A/B Test Analytics to be missing some data/activity for users that have left the A/B test.

See A/B test your actions for more details.

Set the holdback percentage

To set the holdback percentage, enter a number between 0 and 99. This represents the percentage of users in your audience who are held out of the campaign.

Holdbacks allow you to measure how effective your campaign is by comparing users who received the campaign to users who should have received it, but had the campaign held back instead. This allows for an apples-to-apples comparison as the users in the holdback group provide a baseline for your metrics. We recommend adding at least 5-10% holdback to most messaging campaigns for comparison.

This creates a "held back" event in Analytics so you can filter, compare, and target users who haven't received your campaign.

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Note that you can't change the holdback percentage after starting a campaign — doing so would affect the integrity of your results.

Save a segment

At any time, you can save your audience segment for later use in other campaigns and in analytics. Click the Save dropdown at the upper right corner of the Audience panel, then click Save segment to name your new Segment.

Preview your audience

As you choose an audience for your campaign, the right side of the Composer shows detailed charts with feedback about your selected audience.

Use the Audience Estimator for an estimate of how many users are in your selected audience. This chart was designed to help you visualize the portion of your total user base in your campaign's audience. (If no segment is selected, the chart shows All Users by default.)

For example, if your audience is the segment “City is Los Angeles,” and you add another segment for “OS Name is Android OS,” the main chart shows an estimate for the number of LA users with Android devices.

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How the Audience Estimator works

These Audience Estimator values are estimates based on a sample of 100,000 of your users. The sample is taken randomly, once a day, from all of your users from all time. For more on how the preview estimates are calculated, see Audience Estimator.

The segment panel on the right details the estimated number of users for each segmentation criteria you add, so you can better understand which criteria are limiting your audience.

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But remember, these are only estimates

Some of these users may not trigger the campaign’s delivery, depending on your Delivery Settings. There is no guarantee that all of the estimated users will actually trigger or receive the campaign.

Determine how to best reach your audience. Below the main Estimator, a few smaller charts show greater detail about how your selected audience can be reached. These visuals are designed to give you a better idea of who exactly will receive your campaign and what kind of messages or actions will reach the most people.

For example, if only 14% of your users have been active in the last 7 days, you might consider a Push or Email campaign to reach more users and get them to return to your app.

• Active 7 days: Percent of your audience that has used your app in the last 7 days. This is the best indication of whether in-app messages will reach your desired audience in a timely fashion.
• Push: Percent of your audience that has a push token. This can help determine whether a push notification will reach your desired audience.
• Email: Percent of your audience that has an email address. This can help determine whether an email will reach your desired audience.