This document is an overview and FAQ of Advanced Queries or Groupings in Audience Selector.
What Are Advanced Queries?
Advanced Queries in Audience Builder allow for you to have more control over your audiences and create more complex audiences. Grouping fields together dictates the "order of operation" of the query, giving you more control of how Ascent360 interprets an Audience query.
Toggling Advance Query
Advanced query is an optional feature when building audiences that can be toggled on and off in the top right of the Audience Builder.
By default, Advanced Queries are off for all users. If you open a Saved Audience that is already using Advanced Queries the function will be toggled on and cannot be turned off for that Audience.
Group Fields Together using Advanced Query
You can group two fields together by clicking the + icon between the two fields.
Once you group the fields, they will be surrounded by a box indicating they are grouped together.
Remove Groupings
You can remove the grouping by clicking the x icon between the grouped fields.
Grouping Limits
There is no limit to how many items can be groups together at a single level.
Nested Groupings
You can create up to two nested groupings or two levels of groupings. The image below show two levels of groupings. The innermost grouping in the white box and the second level of grouping in the gray box.
Order of Operations Examples
In the example below, the query would run in three steps:
- First, look for customers that met the Email Send Date criteria OR the Last Interaction Date criteria
- Next, use the audience identified in Step 1 and remove customers that met the Transaction criteria
- Finally, the query would look for customers in the audience that meet the gender criteria and keep only those customers for the final audience
In the example above, using the same fields and operators without Advanced Query enabled would evaluate all criteria simultaneously; the resulting count would pull a figure that would be much smaller than intended.
There is no limit to the number of unique groupings in an Audience.
In the example below, the query would…
- First, look for customers that meet the Email Name or Email Open Date criteria
- Then, suppress the Transaction date criteria to the audience from Step 1
- Identify customers that meet the Gender OR Product criteria
- Finally, compare the resulting audiences from 1 & 2 to the audience from 3 to generate your final audience
