Objective
In this article we will be starting our walk through creating a Core iQ schedule. This is the first article in the series, and we will be exploring the following:
- How to create an audience, as well as how to define that audience
- Naming conventions for creating sets of audiences that are easy to find later
- How to further filter down your audience using custom criteria
How to begin creating your Core iQ Audience
To begin, we will want to find the Target Audience and Communications option within the Communications menu. This is where we will find a list of all of our current audiences and their scheduled touch points. To create a new audience, you will click the Add New Audience button in the top right-hand corner of the screen. This will bring you to the Audience Definition page of your automated schedule.
This is where we can define who will potentially qualify for this audience in the broadest sense. Not everyone that we include in this audience will receive a communication, but this will be our funnel at its largest point. Within this screen, we will define the individual accounts and services that qualify for this audience. We will also look at what it takes to add additional filters to our audience to remove customers/members based on account balances, date fields, or other custom criteria.
Naming conventions for your audiences
Let's begin by naming our audience. We can name this audience, and add a description for later, using the Audience Display Name and Full Description boxes respectively. These will influence what any user sees on the Target Audience and Communications page, as well as what displays elsewhere in Core iQ when we are referencing this audience. It is best to follow some sort of naming convention for these audiences in order to group them and give them context.
The convention that we recommend most often with our customers is Context - Name of Audience. In this case, Context represents our larger purpose for the audience. Is it an Onboarding audiences, a Cross-Sell Audience, or an Opportunities audience? Then, we include a detailed name for our audience, such as 'New Customer Onboarding Schedule'. The Context portion will provide us with groupings of our Onboarding/Cross-Sell/Opportunity audiences later. The detailed Name of Audience will give us an idea of what the audience and schedule relate to.
Defining who we would like to be a part of our audience
Once you have given your audience a name, and an optional description, we can move on to defining who will qualify for our schedule. To do this, we have a few options that are all housed in the next block of choices called Who would you like to be a part of this audience? The first dropdown in this area allows us to choose whether we want to look at Active customers, or those who used to be Active and are now Inactive. We can also make our audience an Opportunities-based audience, but we will not be covering that explicitly here.
That means that the two options we will choose from will be 'Those who are active' and 'Those who were active, but are currently not'. The first option will only pull in ACTIVE products, meaning those that are not closed/charged-off/etc. The second option will look to find those products that were ACTIVE in the past, but are currently INACTIVE.
The second option in this area is a choice of whether to require an OR choice for all of our qualifying products, or an AND choice for those products. The first option, 'in at least one of these service groups', will place an OR between every product we list next in our audience. The second choice, 'in all of these service groups', will place an AND between every product we list next in our audience.
So, if I wanted to choose 'Those who are active in at least one of these service groups', I would be telling Core iQ to find someone with an active product in this service group OR that one OR this other one. If I were to choose 'Those who are active in all of these service groups', I would be telling Core iQ to find someone with an active product in this service group AND that one AND this other one. The first option means that I can qualify if I have an active product in 1 or more of those three service groups. The second option means that I can only qualify if I have an active product in all 3 service groups.
After I have made my choices for the two dropdowns in this section, I will move on to selecting the groups of products that I want to include as qualifying products for this audience. Service Groups are the bundles of product codes that you have defined in Core iQ using your incoming core assigned codes. Each service group can be made up of one or more product codes, and any of those product codes will count as qualifying products for this audience. I will want to choose all of the relevant service groups for this audience in order to include the accounts that matter.
A few examples
If I was creating an audience for new nonbusiness customers in order to send a welcome letter coming from my institution's president, I might want to define my audience as such:
- If I work at a bank, I would want to choose 'Those who are active in at least one of these service groups'. Then I would want to include every service group that is consumer facing. This means all my consumer loans, core deposits, time deposits, etc. Anyone who has a product in this group can qualify for this audience.
- If I work at a credit union, I would want to choose 'Those who are active in at least one of these service groups'. Then I might be able to just choose my Share account, if that is what we require for all new members. Anyone opening this new account would need to qualify for this audience.
Now, it's important to note again that these are the people that qualify for this audience in the broadest sense. The people we are including here may not ever receive a communication for this schedule if they do not qualify for our touch points. So you will want to think about including all the service groups and products that could qualify as needed to receive the items from this schedule.
Filtering your audience further
If you have other custom criteria that you would like used with your audience, you can always use the Additional Criteria area to add other filters. These filters can represent anything from balance information to age restrictions. Common criteria to add to your audience includes:
- Customers Age GREATER THAN OR EQUAL TO 18
- Customer Type EQUALS Nonbusiness
- Only Customers with an Email Address (we will have to help you create this option)
If you have any other custom criteria that you would like added, please feel free to reach out to our support team using the Submit a Request option on this website. We would be more than happy to assist you in creating new custom criteria for any of our audiences.
What's next?
Now that you have an audience name, definition, and any criteria, it's time to move on to creating our schedule touch points. In our next article, we will cover how to create these touch points, as well as how to begin thinking through your cross-sell priorities. You can find that article HERE.