Prerequisites
Before getting started, ensure you have:
Required Permissions
Audience Slots are available to staff members with:
Marketing
Marketing Analyst
Operator
Owner
Plan Requirements
Marketing Starter or higher
What Are Audience Slots?
Audience Slots let you personalize one campaign for different groups of customers — without building a separate campaign for each group.
Normally, everyone who receives your email or text campaign sees the same message. With Audience Slots, you can mark a spot in your message where the content changes depending on which audience the recipient belongs to. For example, in a single email you could show a VIP discount to your loyalty members, a "welcome back" offer to lapsed customers, and a first-purchase deal to new sign-ups — each person only sees the content meant for them.
How to Add an Audience Slot to a Campaign
Recipients: When building a campaign, the audience listed in the recipients field is who the entire campaign will send to.
Choose either a landing page or email template, or build your own.
Add an audience slot. In the Campaign Builder, open Audience Slots and Add audience.
Select an audience that you want to target. This should be a subset of personas in your overall recipients audience.
Click "Edit" next to the audience you want to build content for.
Design the content for that audience. Each slot has its own content editor where you design what that specific group will see. If you've saved slot designs as templates before, you can start from one of those instead of a blank canvas.
Place it in your message. Each slot generates a short placeholder code (a "macro") that you copy and paste into your campaign template wherever you want the personalized content to appear. We recommend using an HTML block when inserting the audience slot macro. When the campaign is sent, that placeholder is automatically replaced with the right content for each recipient.
Audience Slot Templates
Once you've configured an Audience Slot you plan to reuse, you can save it as a template. Saved templates can be quickly applied to future campaigns so your targeting stays consistent without manual re-entry.
How to Save a Slot as a Template
Configure your Audience Slot as described above
After configuring the slot, click Save as Template
Give the template a descriptive name (e.g., "VIP Audience — Downtown Stores")
Click Save as New or Overwrite Existing
ℹ️ Note: Saving a template creates a new version of your slot configuration. This saved version can be applied to any future campaign independently — changes to the template will not affect campaigns already using the previous configuration.
How to Apply a Saved Template to a Campaign
Navigate to Step 3: Content in the Campaign Builder. Select a template or start from scratch to bring up the content editor.
Click Audience Slots
Click + Add audience
In the Select Template screen, browse or search your saved templates
Click on a template to preview its configuration
Click Done to apply the template to the current campaign
Copy the audience slot macro and paste it in an empty HTML block within your content.
ℹ️ Tip: If no saved templates exist yet, the template selection screen will show a blank option only. Once you save your first template, it will appear here for all future campaigns.
How to Manage Existing Templates
To view, edit, or archive your Audience Slot Templates:
Navigate to Marketing > Campaigns
Open a campaign and go to Step 3: Content > Audience Slots
Click + Audience Slot > + Add audience > Select Audience > Edit to open the template library
From the template library, select a template and click on the template to preview, use or delete.
⚠️ Editing a saved template does not retroactively update campaigns that already use it. Updates only apply to new campaigns that use the template going forward.
Slot Channel Types
Audience Slots are scoped to a specific messaging channel:
Channel | Slot Source Type |
Email slot — targets opted-in email contacts | |
SMS / MMS | Text slot — targets opted-in SMS contacts |
When building a multi-channel campaign, each channel will use its own Audience Slot configuration.
Audience Slots FAQs
How do I add the audience slot macro to my campaign?
We recommend using an empty HTML block which only contains the audience slot macro. You can insert multiple HTML blocks for multiple audience slots.
Where should I add the HTML block containing my audience slot macros within my existing campaign?
We have a few recommendations on this to ensure your content remains intact and clean.
Do not add audience slots in the middle of other custom HTML blocks you already have within your campaign. If you use HTML when building our your emails/landing pages, we recommend adding audience slots either above or below your custom HTML
Do not add custom audience slots which contain custom HTML in the middle of your landing page.
What's the difference between an Audience Slot and selecting an audience for my campaign?
Selecting an audience for your campaign tells AIQ who to send the campaign to. Audience Slots are built into the campaign to personalize content based on additional audiences filter. For example, I could setup my campaign to target "All Subscribers" but within the campaign content, I want to add a block that only gets sent to personas in a "High Spenders" audience. While all subscribers will get the campaign, only "High Spenders" will see the specific content you built in Audience Slots
Can I use multiple Audience Slots in the same campaign?
Yes. You can add more than one audience slot to a campaigns content. When we send these, we will check who is in each audience at send time and send them the custom content.
If I edit a saved Audience Slot Template, will it update my live campaigns?
No. Editing a template creates a new version of it. Campaigns that were already built using the prior template version are not affected. Only new campaigns that apply the updated template going forward will reflect the changes.
Can I delete an Audience Slot Template I no longer use?
Yes. Templates can be archived from the template library. Archiving a template hides it from the selection screen but does not affect any existing campaigns that already reference it. Right click the template and select "Delete template"
Do Audience Slot Templates work across both Email and SMS campaigns?
Templates are channel-scoped. An email slot template will only be available when configuring the Email channel of a campaign, and a text slot template will only appear when configuring the SMS/MMS channel. To use across multiple channels, you can save the audience slot as a template and use that template in other channels.
What will my customers see?
All personas in the recipient audience will see your main email/template that you build. As you configure audience slots, only members of those audiences will see the custom content. For customers who are not apart of those sub-audiences, they will not see the content and will not see any blank space where those audience slots live.
When should I use audience slots over multiple campaigns?
We recommend that audience slots are used to insert small graphics/information. If you want more customization, we recommend setting up different campaigns to be more detailed.
Related Docs
Need Help?
If you need assistance, reach out to AIQ Support anytime via the chat widget within your AIQ Dashboard.