| Audience | Platform admins and data teams, Marketers |
| Prerequisites | Customer Studio overview → |
Customer Studio helps you build, activate, and orchestrate campaign-ready audiences directly from your warehouse.
This guide covers:
-
Setup for platform admins and data teams →
Configure your data schema, apply consent and governance rules, and enable features like sampling and holdout logs. -
Day-to-day usage for marketers →
Use the visual interface to build audiences, sync to tools, analyze performance, and run campaigns.
Setup for platform admins and data teams
Before marketers can build and sync audiences in Customer Studio, your workspace must be connected to the right data and destinations. This setup is typically done once per workspace.
Connect sources and desintations
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Connect your warehouse | Ensure data sources are connected so models and traits can be defined. | Sources → |
| Add destinations | Set up tools where audiences will be delivered (e.g., CRMs, ESPs, ad platforms). | Destinations → |
| (Optional) Enable Lightning Sync Engine | Improve sync throughput and speed for large or high-frequency audiences. | Lightning Sync Engine → |
Configure your data schema
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Define the schema | Connect models for users, events, and related data so they’re available in the audience builder. | Define data schema → |
Optional setup
Enable observability and optimization
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Enable sampling | Speed up previews for large models by materializing a subset of data for audience and trait previews. | Sampling → |
| Enable holdout group logs | Track unsynced audience rows in your warehouse after each sync for auditing. | Holdout group logs → |
Manage governance and consent
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Apply destination rules | Control sync behavior, redaction, and opt-outs. | Destination rules → |
| Filter with subsets | Narrow audience delivery on a per-destination basis. | Subsets → |
| Manage consent | Respect user consent preferences by syncing only users who have opted in. | OneTrust Snowflake Native App → |
How marketers use Customer Studio
Once the schema is set up, marketers can use the visual interface to build and activate audiences without SQL.
Build audiences
Use filters, traits, and events to define who qualifies for a campaign.
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Create audiences | Apply filters and logic to build your target group. | Audiences → |
| Use traits | Add calculated values like LTV, preferred channel, or last seen date. | Traits → |
Activate audiences
Send users to your tools on a schedule or in real time.
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Sync audiences to tools | Deliver audience data to destinations like Klaviyo, Facebook, or Salesforce. | Sync audiences → |
| Enable real-time syncs | Send updates with sub-second latency for same-session personalization. | Real-time syncs → |
Analyze and validate
Check audience size, composition, and performance to ensure your segments behave as expected.
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Preview with insights | Check size and breakdowns by trait or property. | Insights → |
| Spot-check with sampling | Review a sample of audience members. | Sampling → |
| Run experiments | Use splits to test variations or apply control groups. | Splits → |
| Measure test results | Use charts to evaluate audience splits. | Splits charts → |
Orchestrate campaigns
Manage flows, priority, and message timing across audiences.
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Create journeys | Build multi-step campaigns with syncs, waits, and conditions. | Journeys → |
| Manage campaign priority | Use priority lists to handle audience overlaps. | Priority lists → |
Manage and reuse audiences
Keep audiences consistent, auditable, and reusable.
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Use templates | Save standard audience or sync configurations for reuse. | Templates → |
| Capture snapshots | Record audience membership at a point in time for auditing or comparison. | Snapshots → |