Retarget a message audience

How retargeting works

Audience retargeting groups a parent message’s audience into engagement-based segments so you can send follow-up messages to those segments.

Airship builds the segments from how recipients engaged with the parent message: direct opens for push notifications, and opens and clicks for email. Segments appear in the message report with size metrics, and you can compose a follow-up from any of them.

The original message is the parent, and each follow-up is its child. A follow-up is a copy of the parent with the retargeting segment set as the audience in the Audience step, so you can narrow the audience further but cannot change channels. For the app channel, the message type is limited to push notification, and you can disable app platforms but cannot add new ones. The child’s message report links back to the parent.

You can generate retargeting segments for up to five parent messages per day. There is no limit on the number of follow-up messages you send from those parents.

Multi-channel messages

If a parent message targets multiple channels, you set up a separate follow-up for each channel. Each child targets only the channel it came from. For example, if a parent targets email and app channels, its retargeting messages activate only on the email or app channel, depending on where the qualifying interaction happened.

Segments

These segments are generated for app and web push notifications:

• Direct Engagements — Audience members who engaged with the message
• No Action — Audience members who did not engage with the message
• All Recipients — The entire app and web audience

These segments are generated for email:

• Email Sent — The entire email audience
• Email Opened — Any email address with at least one open event for the message
• Email Clicked — Any email address with at least one click event for the message, excluding unsubscribe links and non-HTTP/HTTPS links
• Email Opened, No Click — Any email address with at least one open event for the message, but zero click events
• Email Sent, not opened or clicked — Any email address with no open or click events for the message

Enable retargeting for a message

In the Message composer Audience step, enable Generate retargeting segments. The option is only available when your channels are limited to app platforms, web, and email.

Also enable the option on child messages to chain retargeting and progressively narrow an audience.

Send a follow-up message

Go to Messages, then Messages Overview, and select the report icon () for the message containing the audience you want to retarget. Under Retargeting Segments, each segment is listed with its audience count and percentage of the parent message’s audience.

Select Compose follow-up for a segment. This opens a copy of the message in the Message composer with Target Specific Users set to that segment. Add any criteria to narrow the audience further, then finish composing the message.