Targeting audiences who have multiple dimensions

In the most general sense, there are two types of audiences that you can define for your company's targeted marketing and merchandising efforts: audiences with just one dimension, and audiences with multiple dimensions. You can think of dimensions as attributes or characteristics.

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Here's the short version

Treat different values of the same dimension as OR statements.

People who live in Amsterdam OR London.

Treat values of different dimensions as AND statements.

People who live in Amsterdam AND are using a mobile device.

Single-value audiences 

A single-value audience is a subset of your site visitors with one relevant dimension in common. When you define a single-value audience, you select just one dimension, like a device type. Here are some other examples of single-value audiences:

• People with birthdays in June
• People who want to go to your physical store to pick up an item they purchased from your site
• People who live in Zurich
• People who visited your site some time earlier this month
• People who arrived at your site from a specific other site

This list isn't exhaustive; you could have additional requirements.

What all of these examples have in common is that they're very simple to implement. You select just the one dimension for the audience, save it, and you're ready to target your company's latest email campaign or other marketing effort.

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Example audience dimensions

These audience dimensions are examples. The default dimensions are device, location, Not seen in X days, Not seen since X date, Referring URL, URL. Read more about the definition of these dimensions in the Defining audiences for targeted changes.

Multi-value audiences 

While single-value audiences are powerful, sometimes you need to define an audience with more than one attribute in common. These aren't difficult to define. You just need to think in terms of OR and AND. If you've ever searched for a dress that's both red and black or a pair of shoes that are either boots or sandals, then you already have a good idea of how to do this.

Let's start with AND

Fashion Forward is a retail site that sells apparel and accessories. Here are some of its recent visitors.

Rahul is a digital merchandiser and web administrator for Fashion Forward. He wants to show a special banner on the Fashion Forward site promoting the company's appearance at a convention in San Francisco for users of mobile devices. He wants to target this banner only at people who share characteristics like those of Molly.

In the Bloomreach Dashboard, these characteristics are called dimensions. Rahul defines the targeted audience with these values:

• Location: United States
• Device: Mobile

Rahul's audience definition includes only mobile users from the United States. When he targets his banner on this audience, Molly will see it. Frank, Danielle, and Devon will not see it. That's because all audience members targeted by Rahul's banner must share both dimensions: they must be from the United States AND they must be mobile device users.

Let's continue with OR

Rahul notices that his audience definition might be a little too narrow. The convention that his banner promotes generally attracts people from Canada, not just the United States. He decides to expand his targeted audience to reach more potential conference attendees. He adds Canada to his definition by using "OR". 

• Location: United States, Canada

Bloomreach treats dimensions with multiple values a little differently from multiple dimensions with single values. By assigning two values to the geographical region dimension, Rahul defined the targeted audience for his banner as people who reside in either the United States OR in Canada. Now, all of Fashion Forward's site visitors from the United States and Canada can see Rahul's banner. Molly, Frank, and Danielle see the banner. Devon, who resides in Wales, does not see the banner.

Let's work with both OR and AND

Rahul takes another look at the convention where Fashion Forward plans to appear. He realizes that it is the mobile users that this convention is very focused on. He decides to show a different banner to the following target audience:

• Location: United States, Canada
• Device: Mobile

Now his definition is a mix of OR and AND attribute values. Bloomreach determines that his banner is only for mobile users, AND these users must live in either the United States OR in Canada. Frank and Devon don't see Rahul's targeted banner, but Molly and Danielle do see it.