Attributes are pieces of information about your users that can be used to define membership in audiences. Audiences are the cornerstone of targeting the right information to the right people, as outlined in the article about how to use audiences.
There is some information that we know about your users simply because they are part of the community. For example, are they registered? Do they access the community through Android, iOS, or web?
To take personalization to the next level, if you have an SSO or SFTP deployment you can provide additional information about your users in the form of custom attributes:
- CSV via SFTP - Specify certain attributes as audience attributes when configuring your SFTP deployment.
- SSO SAML - All attributes passed via a SAML claim attribute statement will be processed as audience attributes, including first name, last name, and email.
Once you send audience attributes to Firstup, we can generate audiences for you automatically or you can create audiences yourself. More details below.
Audience Attribute Handling
All audience 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.
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.
Date Operators
Both system and custom date attributes utilize the same date operators:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
Audience 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?
Examples
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.
- Work Location
- Department
- Company
- Job Title
- Gender
- City
- State
- Country
- Region
- Language
The following attributes can be helpful for audience creation depending on your organization and content strategy.
- Manager (Yes/No)
- Start Date
- Anniversary
- Date of Birth
- Birthday
- Employee Type (Contractor, Full-Time vs Part-Time, Union)
- Union/Non-Union
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
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