User attributes are pieces of information about your users that help define audience membership. Audiences are essential for delivering the right information to the right people. You may also hear user attributes referred to as audience attributes when discussed in this context.

In addition to audience creation, user attributes can be used to create more personalized campaigns. For more details on how to apply them, see Personalization Attributes and Personalized Fields.

Before You Start

This article assumes you are signed in to Creator Studio and have a role with permissions to manage user attributes.

User Attribute Types

Firstup supports two types of attributes: standard and custom. There is a limit of 80 attributes total and note that attribute names will be truncated after 60 characters.

Standard

There is some information that we know about your users simply because they are part of the community. For example, profile information. Are they registered? Do they access the community through Android, iOS, or web? These are considered standard attributes.

Note: All of the profile attribute data, as well as the basic Email attribute data can be created by the customer via API or CSV import. All other standard attribute data is automatically generated by Firstup.

Custom

To take personalization to the next level, you can provide additional information about your users in the form of custom attributes. Custom attributes can be completely unique and customized by you. Attribute updates depend on your deployment method.

• CSV via SFTP – Specify certain attributes as audience attributes when configuring your SFTP deployment. Attributes are updated whenever a new CSV file is uploaded (recommended at least daily).

• API integration – When using the User Sync API, any user attributes sent through the API can be designated as audience attributes. Updates may occur almost immediately, as soon as new data is received.

• SSO SAML – All attributes passed via a SAML claim attribute statement are processed as audience attributes, including first name, last name, and email. These attributes update each time a user signs in.

Once you send audience attributes to Firstup, we can generate audiences for you automatically or you can create audiences yourself. More details below.

User Attributes and Audience Creation

All user attributes will be available as attribute criteria when creating custom audiences (including country, department, title, and email), whether creating a basic custom audience or an advanced custom audience.

Refer to Custom Date Attributes for more details on using custom date attributes.

Using System Date Attributes

To aid in a wide range of use cases, including birthdays and anniversaries, Firstup supports both YYYY-MM-DD and MM-DD date formats. When Firstup is provided 'Start Date' or 'Date of Birth' in the (YYYY-MM-DD) format, we will automatically provide the MM-DD version of those fields ('Anniversary' and 'Birthday', respectively). The value of those fields will be in the (MM-DD) format of the provided 'Start Date' / 'Date of Birth'

'Start Date' / 'Anniversary' Ex.



'Date of Birth' / 'Birthday' Ex.

Applying Date Operators

Both system and custom date attributes utilize the same date operators:

• On, Before, or After - These operators will select a single day from the calendar drop-down. In the screenshot below, this audience would include all users who started at the company on the selected date. You could also change the operator to 'Before' or 'After' to include all users who started before or after the selected date.
  
  
   
• Between - Use the dual calendar drop-down to select your date range. In the screenshot below, this audience would include all users whose birthdays were between the selected dates, including the selected dates.
  
  
   
• Last or Next - Select the number of days, weeks, months, or years from the value drop-down. In the screenshot below, this audience would include all users who will start at the company in the next five days, including today. If today is the 18th, it will select today through the 23rd. The same would apply to weeks, months, and years, with the first day selected being today.
  
  
• Relative - Choose one or more time frames from the drop-down that the date attribute should be relative to. In the screenshot below, this audience would include all users who have a birthday during the current week (Sunday through Monday).
  
  (Last/This/Next) Week - Starts the Sunday of and ends the Saturday of
  (Last/This/Next) Month - Starts first day of month and ends last day of month
  Today - Starts and ends today
  Tomorrow - Starts and ends the day after today
  Yesterday - Starts and ends the day prior to today
  
  

User Attribute Recommendations

Not all attributes are useful for creating audiences. Before sending an audience attribute, ask:

• Will there be at least two audiences for this attribute?
• Will there be more than one person in each audience?
• Does our content strategy include targeting these audiences?

Required Attributes

• First Name
• Last Name
• UniqueID (such as: EmployeeID)

Common Attributes

These attributes are so common that we can easily map them to filters in Insights and use them for audiences. However, you should still ask if this information will result in useful information for your community and your strategy.

• Email - Strongly recommended, if available
• Work Location
• (City, State, Building)
• Department
• Division
• Business Unit
• Region
• Country
• Employee Type (Contractor, Full-Time vs Part-Time, Union)
• Is Manager (y/n)
• Is ELT (Executive Leadership Team) (y/n)
• Birthdate (arbitrary year)
• Hire Date (include year) / Anniversary 

Helpful Attributes

The following attributes can be helpful for audience creation depending on your organization and content strategy. 

• Job Title
• Gender
• Language 

Unhelpful Attributes

We recommend against sending the following because this data is too specific to create useful audiences. For example, there is no useful way to audience users by phone number - each phone number would have an audience with a count of one user.

• Display Name
• Phone Number
• Home Address