What this helps you do
Audiences group your customers by what they want to hear about, so a message reaches the people it is relevant to. You always have one All Customers audience that reaches everyone connected and cannot be deleted. Onboarding seeds five interests most stores share: New Arrivals, Back in Stock, Events, Offers and Store Updates. On top of those you create the interests your store actually runs on, named the way a customer would pick them: a department, a category, a brand you carry, workshops, or one per location. Open audiences appear as choices on each customer's preferences page, so customers sort themselves; you can also assign customers to any audience by hand from Customers. A customer can be in as many as they like.
When to use it
Use audiences whenever a message fits some customers and not others, which in a store is most of the time: a product or category that is back, new or seasonal merchandise, a limited shipment, a workshop with places left, an author signing, holiday ordering dates, or the occasional offer. Store Updates carries the operational news a customer wants whatever they buy: hours, closures, holiday schedules. A closure or an emergency is one of the few things that genuinely goes to All Customers, and the Hub asks you to confirm that send.
How to do it
- Open Audiences.
- Keep the five starter interests, or rename them in your store's words, and add the departments or categories customers would choose by name: Books & Authors, Yarn & Fiber, Kids & Toys, Workshops, or one per store.
- Choose how people join each one: customers choose it themselves, the store assigns them, or either. Interests should stay open so customers can pick them; a list you curate by hand can be set to the store assigns.
- Send customers to the preferences page to choose their interests, and use Bulk assign from Customers when someone tells you at the counter what they want to hear about.
- To group interests inside a broader one, set Inside audience to a parent, for example Author Signings inside Events.
- Decide per audience whether replies to its Blasts are allowed; leave replies on for anything a customer would ask about, such as a restock.
Example
Forty of a limited run land on a Tuesday. The buyer sends a photograph to New Arrivals with a YES or NO reply to gauge interest, and someone at the counter follows up with each YES by hand. The customers who care hear it first, and the people who only ever wanted your holiday hours are not interrupted. On Thursday the workshop note goes to Events, and the Friday hours change goes to Store Updates. Not three messages to every customer: three messages to the customers who wanted them.
Good to know
- Audiences are lists that customers choose or you assign. There are no rule-based or dynamic audiences, and the Hub does not read your point of sale, your online store or your inventory. Nobody is sorted by what they bought.
- Back in Stock is an interest, not a per-product subscription: a customer who ticks it hears when you say something is back. Nobody follows one item, and the Hub does not know that stock changed until a person says so.
- Sending to All Customers asks for a step-up confirmation first, on purpose: a store's news is rarely for everyone.
- A customer can be in several audiences at once: new arrivals, events and one department.
- A hold, a special order or a pickup is not an audience. Those are one-to-one notes your team sends from Conversations to one person.
- Store managers can be limited to their own audiences on the Team screen, both for sending and for reading replies.