Quick Overview of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Audience Builder

This article was published back in 2015 on another site and has since been deleted. I’ve had a request to put it back up and have also updated some of the links for 2024.

All screenshots and information are also dated by 9 years at this point — if I gain access to SMC again then I will try and update again.

The Audience Builder in Salesforce Marketing Cloud (formerly ExactTarget) is a way to create specific groups of people to send emails to, as well as further split that group up into smaller more targeted groups for different email content.

The first question would be where to find it? It does have to be enabled by SMC, and if it has then you should see it under Data & Analytics:

Before diving in, it is probably helpful to get familiar with some of the terms that are used in Audience Builder, such as Universe, Population and Contact. I made a quick cheat sheet to help remember, although if your attributes and dimensions are already set up then you just have to use them rather than know how to define them.

Once you have that, then you must understand how Segments work on your resultant Audience. You should note how Priority between segments work, as well as Waterfall suppression of which Audience members enter which segment. This will help avoid unexpected questions about why certain members were not included in an intended email mailing.

If you’re now comfortable with that, it is worth to just look at the Audience Builder screen to get an idea how it works. The Overview screen just shows a long list of all currently defined Audiences:

If you go ahead and click any of these, then the Summary tab has everything that you would expect, which is a high-level breakdown of your Audience, including how much of the Population your Audience is using and what is its current Segmentation:

The Filter tab is also straightforward. It defines the rule or rules that make up your Audience before segmenting. In this case all males between certain ages:

The Segment screen allows you to further split up your Audience. You don’t need to actually define any Segments; however, you can edit or add new Segments here if you wish. You can check the impact (in terms of Audience numbers) of any change here. Again, Waterfall Suppression comes in effect here, with priority to the lowest numbered Segments in the list.

Finally, when you are ready, you can Preview or Publish your Audience on the Publish tab:

Once your Audience is published, then you are ready to start defining emails to send to them, as well as particular variations on each segment.