Use this article to set up, edit, and troubleshoot audience rules in Intercom. Audience rules let you target specific customers with outbound messages, workflows, and help content — using attributes like email, tags, or behavior to make sure the right content reaches the right people, and the wrong ones are excluded.
How do I edit and configure audience rules for outbound email?
Note: The steps below apply to outbound email audience rules. Outbound email is available on all Intercom plans (Essential, Advanced, and Expert). To set outbound content live, you need the Can bulk message visitors, leads and users permission. To manage reusable audiences under Settings > Data > Audiences, you need the Can access workspace data permission. Contact your workspace admin if options aren't visible.
Edit audience rules for an outbound email
You can only edit audience rules on outbound emails that haven't been set live yet.
Important: Audience rules can only be edited before an outbound email is set live. If you need to change the audience after sending, create a new draft or duplicate the email, update its audience rules, then set the new version live. For Dynamic emails that are still sending, pause the original first to stop further sends — note that Fixed emails cannot be unpaused once paused.
Open the specific outbound email in Intercom.
Click Edit in the top-right corner to enter Edit mode.
Scroll to Rules > Audience and click + Add audience rule.
Configure targeting using people/company data and logical filters (AND/OR).
Click Set live to publish immediately, or Schedule to set live if sending at a future time. The audience rule is now active and will be evaluated before the email is sent.
Target a specific People tag
In the email audience builder, add a rule using the Person Tag filter.
Set the condition to Person tag is [TAG_NAME].
Note: The tag won't appear as a standalone field — you must select the Person Tag condition first before the tag becomes available.
Create a catch-all workflow for outbound messages
Set the audience rule to "conversation starter is outbound message." This targets all outbound messages without requiring individual configuration for each chat.
How do AND and OR operators work in audience rules?
Choosing the wrong logical operator is one of the most common causes of audience rules not working as expected.
OR logic: If you use negative conditions with OR (e.g., "Email domain is not A OR Email domain is not B"), the rule will always match at least one condition, causing the message to trigger unexpectedly.
AND logic: To correctly exclude multiple values, use AND logic (e.g., "Email domain is not A AND Email domain is not B"). This ensures all exclusion conditions must be true simultaneously.
Important: When building exclusion rules, always use AND logic — not OR. OR exclusions will almost always match, defeating the purpose of the rule.
Why aren't my audience rules working?
Workflow fails to go live
If a workflow using a "current page URL" audience rule can't be set live, make sure you've specified a valid URL or URL pattern in the condition. Without this, the workflow can't be enabled.
Exclusion rules not working as expected
Use workflow preview and audience simulation to verify excluded customers follow the correct path.
Check for overlapping triggers or conflicting audience rules across workflows — go to Automation > Workflows and review any workflows that share the same audience conditions.
Periodically review and audit audience rules to ensure accuracy as your data evolves.
What are the email eligibility requirements for outbound audience rules?
For outbound emails, recipients must meet all of the following baseline eligibility criteria before audience rules are evaluated:
Email has any value
Marked email as spam is not true
Has hard bounced is not true
Unsubscribed from emails is false
What are the best practices for maintaining audience rules?
Beyond those baselines, follow these best practices to keep your audience rules accurate and effective:
Regularly review audience rules to confirm they align with your targeting goals.
Audit branch conditions periodically to maintain accuracy.
Use audience simulation tools to test rule configurations before setting workflows live.
Avoid hard-coding specific values; prefer dynamic conditions like "attribute contains" or segment-based rules.
Validate segment conditions at the time of conversation creation to ensure workflows run as expected.
Separate workflow and content audience rules, as they don't inherit each other.
Use user-level attributes or permission flags for granular targeting.
Create filter groups using the "Add audience rule" button. Each group and the connector between groups can be set to AND or OR logic depending on your targeting needs.
How do I set up advanced audience rule configurations?
Managing help content visibility
Internal articles are never visible to external customers on the help center. You control which Fin AI agents (Service, Sales, Ecommerce) and Copilot can use each internal article — each has its own toggle. Copilot makes internal articles available to teammates directly in the inbox, so they can reference them while handling conversations. To control AI agent access and keep external customers on public-facing content only:
On each internal article, use the Fin section to toggle availability on or off for each Fin AI agent (Service, Sales, Ecommerce) and Copilot independently.
Use audience rules to segment customers — internal teammates can access internal articles via Copilot (Intercom's AI assistant for support teammates), while external customers only see external-facing resources.
Viewing and managing audience rules
To view all audience rules in your workspace, navigate to either:
Fin AI Agent > Fin Settings > Audiences, or
Settings > Data > Audiences
From here you can review existing audiences, their rules, or create new ones. Audiences can also be applied to Fin content through the Knowledge Hub.
FAQs
Why is my exclusion rule not working?
Why is my exclusion rule not working?
Exclusion rules fail most often because of OR logic. When using negative conditions, OR means the rule will almost always match — switch to AND logic so all exclusion conditions must be true at the same time.
Why can't I set my workflow live?
Why can't I set my workflow live?
A workflow with a "current page URL" audience rule can't go live until a valid URL or URL pattern is specified in the condition. Add a valid value and try again.
Can I use the same audience across multiple workflows?
Can I use the same audience across multiple workflows?
Yes — audience rules can be reused across workflows. Go to Fin AI Agent > Fin Settings > Audiences to create reusable audiences that can be applied to multiple workflows from a single place.
Where do I go to manage all my audience rules?
Where do I go to manage all my audience rules?
Audience rules are managed under Fin AI Agent > Fin Settings > Audiences or Settings > Data > Audiences. From either location you can review, edit, or create new audiences.
How many filters can I combine with OR logic?
How many filters can I combine with OR logic?
A maximum of 10 filters can be combined within a single OR filter group. This applies to both audience filter setup and workflow branch conditions. If you need to match more than 10 values, consider splitting conditions across multiple rules or using a broader attribute to cover the range. In addition, workflow triggers support a maximum of 10 OR filter groups in total. See "Why is the + Add audience rule button grayed out?" below for details.
Why is the + Add audience rule button grayed out?
Why is the + Add audience rule button grayed out?
The + Add audience rule button becomes disabled when a workflow trigger already has 10 OR filter groups — the maximum allowed per trigger. This is separate from the 10-filter limit within each group. To add another group, you'll need to remove or merge an existing group first to bring the total below 10.
Can I build and test a tour in staging but trigger it in production?
Can I build and test a tour in staging but trigger it in production?
Yes. Build and test in staging, then set an audience rule like "page URL contains [your production path]" to match all customer subdomains. Make sure staging mirrors production for accurate testing.
How do audience rules affect checklist eligibility?
How do audience rules affect checklist eligibility?
Audience rules use AND logic by default — OR logic is opt-in. For example, setting "Email domain contains example.com" makes only users with that domain eligible. If no rules are satisfied, users won't see the checklist.
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