What this helps you do
Audiences decide who receives what, and every send goes to exactly one audience. For a publisher, the audiences that matter are the publications: each one is open, so readers choose it on their preferences page and in Blasts as an interest, and a send to it reaches its readers and nobody else. Announcements is a list readers choose for news from you between editions. An audience your organization assigns is a group you fill yourself, like contributors or beta readers; it never appears to readers.
When to use it
Create a publication's audience before its first edition, and whenever you start a new publication.
How to do it
- Open Audiences and create the publication with the name readers know, and a one-line description of what it covers and how often it arrives.
- Leave it set to readers choose. Set contributors, beta readers and any group you fill yourself to organization assigns.
- To announce a new publication, send to Announcements and ask readers to add it on their preferences page. Nobody is added to a publication for them.
- Put people in yourself only where they asked: an import's audiences column, the webhook's interests field, or Bulk assign for readers who wrote to you.
Example
A publisher adds a monthly recipe edition. It creates Recipe of the Month, open, with the description "One tested recipe, first Saturday of the month", and sends one message to Announcements about it. Readers who want it add it on their preferences page; nobody else receives it.
Good to know
- A cadence is not a publication. Name audiences after what readers chose, not after how often it arrives.
- There is no paid tier or early-access audience. Anything left open can be chosen by any reader, and the Hub holds no payment or plan information.
- A reader who replies STOP is removed from every audience, every publication included. If they reply START later, nothing is restored: they choose their publications again on their preferences page.
- Archive a publication's audience when it ends; the readers stay.