Create audiencesLast updated on 03/10/2023
In Marketing Pro, you can create audiences for marketing campaigns to achieve different goals, or use the same audiences across multiple campaigns. Additionally, you can also define which customers are included in an audience to control who sees your marketing content.
Things to know
You can only create audiences to retain customers if you have access to Direct Mail.
Using Marketing Pro, you can create audiences to retain customers or to acquire new customers.
You can only use Acquisition Audiences in the Direct Mail campaigns.
To view a filter option, you need to add the filter on an active location/customer profile. For example, to see a recurring service type as a filter option, you need to save the recurring service type to at least one active location profile.
Work with filters and groups
To get the most out of Marketing Pro, it’s important to understand how groups and filters affect the inclusion and exclusion criteria of your campaigns. You can use small numbers of groups with many applied filters to target very specific customers, or use multiple groups with few applied filters to include large numbers of customers in a single campaign.
Groups
In Marketing Pro, you can add more than one Include and Exclude groups. It’s important to understand how using single or multiple groups, as well as single or multiple filters, will affect your audience.
One Include group: If you use a single Include group, then customers must meet all inclusion criteria to be included in the audience. This means that if you create a group that includes customers with an open estimate, in a particular ZIP code, and with an active membership, only customers that meet all of those criteria will be included in the audience.
Multiple Include groups: So long as customers meet all of the inclusion criteria for any of your Include groups, they will be included in the audience. Note: Customers only need to meet the criteria for a single group to be included, regardless of how many groups your audience has.
Include and Exclude groups: Any customers that meet the exclusion criteria will not be included in the audience, regardless of any inclusion criteria they meet.
Single filter within a group: If you use a filter that can accept multiple values, any customer that meets any of the values you select is included in the inclusion criteria for that group. For example, if you use the Membership Status filter and select both Suspended and Expired, customers with either Suspended or Expired membership statuses are included in the inclusion criteria for the group.
Multiple filters within a group: If you use multiple filters within a single group, customers must meet at least one selection per filter to meet the inclusion criteria for that group.
Filters
The variety of options for date-based inclusion and exclusion criteria allows you to choose between static or dynamic filters for things like membership end dates, scheduled job dates, and more.
Generally, you should use static filters when building one-time campaigns, and dynamic filters for automated campaigns.
Static filters: A fixed date (or range of dates) in time to filter against.
When using static filters in your audiences for events that happened on specific days, such as the last email date and the last completed job date. Marketing Pro only includes those events that happened before the chosen date. For example, if your audience’s Last Call Date is set to January 10, 2022, only those customers who called on January 9th or before will be included in the audience.
Dynamic filters: A changing date or range of dates to filter against. You can use dynamic filters to look for things like customers who have equipment that’s more than ten years old or have an estimate more than a month old. Dynamic filters let you control the window of time very granularly. You can set whether the filter
Works on days, weeks, months, or years
Looks for events in the past or the future
Is greater than, less than, between, or equal to a unit of time
If the above screenshot were used as part of an Include group, only customers with a recurring event date more than five days in the past would be included.
Tip: You can update the audience filters to get a better-targeted audience. But, if the changes you made do not align with the campaign expectations, you can redo and undo the recent changes you made.
How inclusion and exclusion criteria affect audiences
Audiences can be dynamic and can include or exclude certain customers over time. For example, you can create an audience that sends marketing content to all of your customers in a particular ZIP code except those who recently booked a job with you. As more customers from that ZIP code book a job with you, the number of customers in the audience will decrease. When a customer leaves an audience due to a filter you set in a group, they are said to exit the audience.
Inclusion criteria and best practices
Which customers are added to your marketing campaigns depend on the inclusion criteria you select when building your audience. Inclusion criteria are different data categories in your business, like estimates, memberships, and invoices. Broadly speaking, the more inclusion criteria you add, the fewer customers will be included in your audience. For example, you can set the inclusion criteria for one audience to include customers with open estimates over a certain dollar value, customers with a specific type of aging equipment, or customers that live in a particular ZIP code.
Exclusion criteria and best practices
Alternatively, exclusion criteria are how you remove certain customers from an audience. For example, you can set exclusion criteria for an audience to exclude any customers that you have emailed marketing content in the last week.
Tip: Create Exclude groups that use the Last Email Date, Scheduled Job Date, and Last Call Date options to make sure that you aren’t sending your customers too many marketing messages.
Audience targeting and scoring
When building an audience, your main goal is to get as many customers to open your marketing emails as possible. The more narrowly targeted your audiences are, the more likely that your customers will open your emails, see your content, and book jobs with you. As you build audiences, ServiceTitan will automatically evaluate their targeting and show you a targeting score.
There are three levels of audience targeting:
Strong targeting: Campaign will be sent to a very specific set of customers with a high likelihood that they will see and open it.
Moderate targeting: Campaign will be sent to a large set of customers, which means a lot of messages won’t be opened.
Broad targeting: Campaign will be sent to a very large set of your customers, and there’s a good chance most of your messages won’t be read.
If the targeting score of your audience is moderate or broad, you can remove some of your inclusion group criteria, or add more exclusion criteria to lower the total number of customers.
Create an audience to retain customers
In Marketing Pro, audiences are central to your marketing efforts. They determine which customers receive what marketing content and when. Create as many or as few audiences as you need.
To market to customers in your audiences list:
Go to Marketing > Audiences.
Click Create new. The Create Audience page opens.
Select Retain Customers using Email or Direct Mail campaigns to target customers existing in your database. Note: You can only use Acquisition Audiences to acquire new customers through the Direct Mail feature in Marketing Pro.
Enter a unique and meaningful name for your audience to help your team identify it from the others. Then, click Begin. A new screen opens with options to add groups.
To create a set of criteria for both Include and Exclude to define which customers will receive emails for the campaign, go to Include and click Add Group.
Click a category and use the filters to build your audience.
Note: For Recurring Service Events audiences, the list of required information changes.
(Optional) If you want to add additional inclusion criteria groups, click the plus beneath your first group. Add as many as you need.
(Optional) If you want to add an exclusion group, go to Exclude and click Add group.
When you’re finished adding Include and Exclude groups, click Continue.
Note: For Marketing Legacy, you can only create email campaigns. That is why you can create audiences to retain customers only.
Create an audience to acquire new customers
To acquire new audiences using the Direct Mail channel in Marketing Pro:
Go to Marketing >Audiences.
Click Create new. The Create Audience page opens.
Select Acquire New Customers.
Enter a unique and meaningful name for your audience to help your team identify it from others. Then, click Begin. The Acquisition Audience Builder opens with an interactive map interface of your local service area. This data comes from public and local home assessment records. The Acquisition Audience Builder can help you market more effectively and acquire new customers within your local area. Note: Data may not always be available or updated based on state, city, or county practices.
Select the ZIP codes you want to target in your service area by searching for them specifically, or by searching for the city you want to target through your direct mail marketing campaign. Note: You can only filter for up to 5 zip codes at a time.
Create a set of criteria you want to filter properties by, then click Continue. Note: You can remove and edit filters.
