Prerequisites:
Before getting started, ensure you have:
Required Permissions:
Audiences are available to staff members with the following permissions:
Analyst
Marketing
Marketing Analyst
Operator
Owner
Audience limits by plan
All plans include 10 pre-made audiences. In addition, each plan supports the following number of custom audiences:
Plan | Custom audiences |
Starter | Up to 10 |
Pro | Up to 500 |
Enterprise | Up to 1,500 |
ℹ️ Note: Pre-made and custom audience caps are tracked separately. Archiving a pre-made audience does not free up a custom audience slot. If you’ve hit your custom audience limit, consider repurposing a pre-made audience instead — you can rename and edit it to fit a different use case without consuming a custom slot.
How to Create an Audience
Navigate to Customers > Audiences
Click Create Audience
Fill the information
Choose an Audience Name that is easily searchable. This is for internal purposes only.
See Audience Traits for information about what data you can use to create the audience you want. Also see Audience Examples for some common options.
The Audience Status will be set to ON by default, this will allow it to start pulling personas into this audience.
See other optional audience settings below for more information.
Review the forecasted audience size by clicking the Forecast button.
If you add additional traits, you'll need to refresh the forecaster.
Click on Spot Check for the following:
Random Sampling: This will show you a randomized list of personas that are in the audience. Clicking the refresh button will generate a new, randomized list.
Spot Checker: This tab will allow you to check whether specific personas are within the audience. You will only be able to use their email or phone number. When using either, they must be an exact match.
For phone numbers: Do not include parentheses, dashes, or spaces.
Save
⏱️ New audiences take 10–30 minutes to populate after saving, depending on the traits used. The audience is ready to use in campaigns or Flows once a number appears in the Audience Size column. It is not recommended to send campaigns to an audience before this count appears.
Manual Audience Creation
You can manually create a new audience in AIQ. This allows greater flexibility when bypassing predefined attributes. To do so:
Specify unique identifiers, such as email addresses.
Add these identifiers directly into your new audience, skipping the need for attribute-based audience building.
This method is useful when specific shopper data is readily available for creating targeted audiences.
Advanced Settings (optional)
Include anonymous users
Anonymous users do not have a name, email, phone or other personally identifiable trait. Destinations that do not allow anonymous users will not be sent them.
Modify points for contacts in this audience
Give the audience you create additional points for meeting the criteria you set after building the audience.
Points modifiers | Description | Example |
Multiplier | Whatever number you input in this field will multiply the number of points a shopper in this audience will accrue. | Set up a Double Points Day by adding a "2" here |
Boost points | Give shoppers that fall into this audience a specific number of points | Give shoppers an additional 500 points for spending X amount in a given month |
If you want to save this audience as a draft, set the Audience status to OFF until you're ready to turn it on. This will help avoid accidentally giving shoppers points before you're ready.
Points Modifier Advanced Settings
Be sure to set a Start Time and End Time to restrict the points modifier to a specific time frame
If you want this to only be available at certain times on certain days, use the Restrict to happy hours section
Optional Restrictions: You can limit multipliers that occur with purchases that use these particular attributes, keep in mind that only 1 value can be used per field except for Store IDs and Payment Methods.
Brand: Brand name of the actual Product
SKU: The unique identifier that is used for your inventory
Category: Flower, Topical, etc.
Payment Method: Cash, Debit, Credit Card, etc.
You can boost or reward shoppers who pay with any of the specified payment methods, regardless of which payment method they used at the POS.
Store IDs: Limited to the location(s) that the purchase was made at
You will have to verify values that are coming through the POS to use these restrictions to work with your particular setup. It is recommended to analyze an audience and check the Order Insights tab to see what is available.
Filter data sources this audience should ingest records from
Select a specific Data Source if your goal is to create an audience from only a particular integration.
Automatically send audience members to a data destination integration
Select a specific Data Destination if your goal is to push an audience to one of your connected systems (like pushing an audience as a list to a third-party email provider).
Advanced Settings & Members who can use this audience
Restrict usage of the audience by team member. Select a staff member from the dropdown under "whitelisted users" to allow them access to the audience.
Audience Badge
If a shopper is in a badged audience, we will show this badge within the staff view, native apps, web wallets, and in AIQ ecommerce. The shopper will lose this badge when they leave this audience.
Open the Audiences page and either edit an existing audience or create a new one.
Under Awarded Badge, click Select badge and upload the image you want to use as the badge
Save
How to Duplicate an Audience
Duplicating an audience to useful if you're building off an existing audience and don't want to start from scratch.
Navigate to Customers > Audiences
Click the More menu [...] in the table row of the specified audience.
Click the documents icon to duplicate an audience
This will open the audience builder with "Copy of {{audience name}}". You can rename it to whatever you'd like and continue with other settings from there.
How to Create an Audience Group
Navigate to Customers > Audiences
Click Create Group
Name the Group
Select the audiences you want in the group using the plus (+) button
Click Save
How to Export and Analyze an Audience
Navigate to Customers > Audiences
Click the More menu [...] in the table row of the specified audience. There are several options for getting data about an audience:
Beaker: Gives you all the insight our Data Analytics provides for this specific audience
Download: Export a full detailed CSV list including contact information and points balances. Note: this option is not available on all accounts. If you don't see it, open the chat widget in the bottom right of your AIQ dashboard and ask Astro to request a report export — Astro will confirm your request and route you to a short form to capture the details.
Star: Export a points report, per persona or per store.
Barcode: Export a transactional report of sales made by contacts in this audience, by date range
Network: Provides a way to export a referral report by personas in this audience.
Note: Any Signup Form custom answers will be available as attached Customer Attributes to Personas, with column detail available in .CSV download of Audiences.
⚠️ The Download option is not available on all accounts. If you don't see it — or if you need a custom export with specific fields (e.g. first name, last name, email, opt-in status, last purchase date) — open the chat widget in the bottom right of your AIQ dashboard and ask Astro to request a report export — Astro will confirm your request and route you to a short form to capture the details.
AIQ Audience Glossary
Modifiers: If you have a points modifier like 2x points enabled, an icon will appear in this column
Rocket = Points Multiplier
Line up graph = Positive Points Boost
Line down graph = Negative Points Boost
Audience Size: total number of contacts in AIQ that meet the audience's criteria
Loyalty Members: the total number of loyalty members currently in the audience, since it was last sized
Opt Ins (per channel): total number of contacts in AIQ that meet the audience's criteria and are opted in to that channel
CLTV: Customer Lifetime Value of the audience
Calculation is AOV * purchase frequency * 3
IF you want a per-year value, divide this number by 3
Last Sized: Date and time the audience was most recently sized and updated to add new personas and remove personas who no longer meet the audience criteria
Audiences Troubleshooting
Why Are Categories Missing from “Most Commonly Bought Category” in Audiences?
This is likely due to incomplete or incorrect category mapping from your POS system. If these categories aren’t mapped correctly, they won’t appear as options within AIQ.
To verify what category data AIQ is receiving:
Navigate to the Analytics tab (available for accounts with an Analytics package).
Review Orders by Category to see a full list of categories synced from your POS.
Use this report to confirm which categories are available for use in the Audience Builder.
Why does my audience show a count of 0 (I expect it to have data), and how can I fix this?
The reason depends on where you’re seeing the zero value:
1. Audience Preview Shows “0”
If your audience list preview shows “0,” this simply means the audience is still segmenting.
Audience segmentation typically takes about 10-30 minutes, depending on the traits and filters used. Once segmentation completes, the audience count will update automatically.
2. Audience Forecast Shows “0”
If you see “0” in the Forecast section while editing your audience:
Double-check your traits and logic (AND/OR statements) to ensure they’re correctly defined.
Verify that your data sources (e.g., loyalty, contact traits, purchase history) include matching personas.
Audiences FAQs
Can you set points multipliers with decimals like 2.5x?
Yes! The points multiplier feature supports decimal amounts.
If someone enters an audience with a points multiplier that's already on, does the multiplier apply to all their previous transactions?
No. They'll only receive the points multiplier for purchases made after they enter that audience.
If a persona is in two separate audiences which have point multipliers, will they fall into both of them?
No. If a shopper is in two audiences with points multipliers, they'll only receive the higher of the two multipliers.
Do audiences automatically archive after a certain amount of time?
No, we do not auto-archive any audiences.
Do archived audiences count towards my plan limit?
No.
How do I create a custom attribute / trait?
See Custom Traits.
How do I create a test audience?
Navigate to Customers > Audiences and Create new
For an email test audience, use the Contact Trait / Email List trait
For an SMS test audience, use the Contact Trait / Phone List trait
Create the test campaign, select one of the audiences from above, and publish to send a test campaign to specific contacts
Sending test SMS campaigns may result in carrier blocking/filtration due to multiple receipts of "test campaigns" potentially being marked as spam and in turn, blocked. You can always use the preview link to see what an SMS campaign will look like in lieu of sending an actual SMS test campaign.
How do I download a list of all my shoppers?
Option 1. Use the existing "Financial Reporting" audience (not available for all accounts)
Navigate to Customers > Audiences
Search for the "Financial Reporting" audience
Download using the (...) in the audiences table
If the download option is not available, open the chat widget in the bottom right of your AIQ dashboard and ask Astro to request a report export — Astro will confirm your request and route you to a short form to capture the details.
Option 2: Create an audience of all shoppers & request report
Navigate to Customers > Audiences
Click Create new audience
Add a name
Do not add any traits and click "Forecast"
Save
Open the chat widget in the bottom right of your AIQ dashboard and ask Astro to request a report export — Astro will confirm your request and route you to a short form to capture the details.
What if I have 2 ecommerce sources for online orders, can I differentiate between the 2 in my audiences?
Yes, you can create an audience "Performed event/Payment method ---> contains ---> "ecomName1" or "ecomName2" (replace with the name of you ecommerce provider).
How long does a created audience take to be available / load?
Typically about 10-30 minutes.
ℹ️ Note: It is not advised to send campaigns to newly created audiences. However if the audience in question shows a number under the "Audience Size" column on the Audiences page, it can typically be used in a campaign send.
How Do I Upload an Audience?
See Bulk Import Personas, and once you've imported personas, an audience is automatically generated for those shoppers.
What time frame is the audience trait "Likely to return soon" considering to be "soon"?
The trait "Likely to return soon" means a shopper is expected to return in next 6 days to be considered "Soon".
What options do I have if I need more audiences or signup forms?
If your plan isn’t enough, you can purchase à la carte add-ons for $100/month, each including 5 additional audiences and 5 signup forms. Please reach out to your CSM for more details.
I archived some audiences but still can’t create new ones — why?
This usually happens when you’ve hit your custom audience cap, not your overall total. Pre-made and custom audiences have separate limits — archiving a pre-made audience doesn’t free up a slot for a new custom audience.
To work around this: rename and edit an existing pre-made audience to serve your new purpose instead of creating a new custom one. If you genuinely need more custom audiences, see the add-on options above.
Need Help?
If you need assistance, reach out to AIQ Support anytime via chat widget within your AIQ Dashboard.