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Filter audience from a CSV

Filter and tag your users and leads using a CSV file to create a targeted audience.

Beth-Ann Sher avatar
Written by Beth-Ann Sher
Updated over 3 months ago

If you have a list of users that you want to email, you can use this feature to bulk add them to your audience by uploading a CSV file with the attributes you want to filter the audience with. This saves you having to add each user to your rules individually.

When the csv file is imported, this will automatically tag existing users and leads that match the attributes and allow you to send targeted outbound messages.

Note:

  • Filtering the audience using a CSV will only filter and tag existing users and leads, it won’t update or add new data.

  • Any attribute data not matching existing data will not filter and tag those users.

  • Make sure you use a clear file name that doesn't contain special characters, such as hyphen and other symbols.


Filter audience with a CSV

Go to the Audience section of your outbound message to add an audience rule, then select “Filter audience from CSV” to upload a CSV file.

Drag and drop your CSV file, or select a file from your computer and click “Upload” to import the CSV.

Now check the “Matching attributes” tag to make sure it matches the column header from your CSV file.

Important: Column header names are case sensitive and all the headers need to match an existing attribute in order to upload. Learn more about attribute matching.

Then enter the tag name and click the tick icon to create the tag.

Once the tag is added, you’ll be able to click “Save” and the tag will be applied to the audience rules automatically.

Note: If you don’t click “Save” after adding the tag, the tag is still created but it won’t be applied to the audience rules for this message.

Preview your new audience

The audience preview will refresh every 500ms to reflect the users that have been tagged, and you can also manually refresh the page to preview the audience.

Filtering and tagging the audience using the CSV could take a few hours at peak times depending on the file size and number of users matched. While the users are still being tagged, the tag will have an in-progress status.

Audience rule with the in-progress tag:

Audience rule with tag after processing:

This list will keep updating until you receive an email to confirm that your tag has been created using values from your CSV.

Tip: For very targeted messages, you can add multiple audience rules to upload more CSV files and filter the audience further.

Difference between Dynamic and Fixed audience

Selecting the audience type changes how you send a message with the audience filtered using a CSV.

Dynamic audience

With “Dynamic” selected, the message will be sent to everyone who matches the filters now and anyone who matches the filters in the future. This means a message with the CSV audience filter can be set live immediately without waiting for the tagging to be completed.

Fixed audience

With “Fixed” selected, the message will only be sent to people who match your audience filters at the time on saving. If the tagging is not complete, then you will see a warning message to say the tagging is not complete yet.


Attribute matching

Each CSV file must contain a column header matching the attribute name saved in Intercom, in order to filter the audience and tag users that match these values.

The CSV file should only contain up to 5 columns that you want to filter the audience with. All other columns should be removed before import. Any CSV file with more than 5 columns will show an error message.

Each attribute is taken as an AND rule. For example, if your CSV contains name, user ID, email ID, and company name, all four attributes will have to match for the user to be tagged.

What are the supported attributes?

The attributes can be from People Data and/or Company Data.

User attributes

You can filter users and leads with any attributes saved under People data in the General settings. These include attributes like Name, User ID, Email, Phone, etc.

For example, if you want to filter your audience by user ID saved in Intercom, your CSV should look like this:

Company attributes

You can also filter users and leads with attributes saved under Company data like Company name, Company ID, Company industry, etc.

For example, if you want to filter your audience by user ID and company ID, your CSV would look like this:

If you import company data alone, it will filter all the users who belong to those companies and apply the tag to the users.

Admins need the permission "Can manage tags" in order to be able to use the filter by CSV tag function for Outbound messages.


Filter audience with a CSV from Contacts

Audience can also be filtered using a CSV from Contacts. You’ll need to follow the same steps and requirements as filtering with a CSV.

Admins need the permission "Can manage tags" in order to be able to use 'Filter audience from CSV' in Contacts.


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