How to create an audience within SAS 360 Audiences and its advantages for users

[#1]

Setting up an audience within SAS 360 Audiences is a straightforward process that involves just 3 steps:

1. Create Connections to Your Cloud Database:

Currently, the only available integrations are with Google Big Query and Snowflake, but we will see more options for integrations with cloud data sources coming soon. The main benefits of connecting Audiences to your cloud database are:

• Quick and easy connection setup.
• You can define one or more connections to use appropriate credentials with the different permissions needed.
• Data Management support for schema-free data loading.

 

2. Create Audience Sources:

The ability to define audience sources changes the dynamics of data availability. Now, it is possible for data to be at the reach of the marketer as soon as data is added to the data sources. Due to the simplicity of this step, it can be defined by IT or Markets, who will then select the schemas and tables to be used in a source and define intuitive, marketer-friendly attribute names. Highlights of how this step can bring value for users are:

• User-friendly interface that allows you to rename fields to a more marketer-friendly language.
• Flexible setup to include new attributes, either manually or automatically, when the database sources are modified.
• Define the Customer ID level for identity resolution and analytics purposes.
• Data Preview capability available for assigned users, ensuring data protection.

         

3. Create Audiences:

At this last step, it is time to use the defined sources to create audiences in order to meet customer engagement purposes. This step aims to give back control for Marketers to easily create and activate these audiences without needing skills or assistance from more technical teams. Users will be able to take advantage of the following features:

• Marketer-friendly interface with a drag-and-drop, no-code approach.
• Flexible operator options based on data types.
• Ability to select only the required attributes for activation purposes.
• Minimum data movement – only selected attributes are moved into CI 360 cloud.
• Audience expiration date setup to support data governance.
• Power to update counts and estimate Audience sizes on the go.
• Manual or schedule audience runs for single or multiple occurrences.

            

I hope this helps the understanding of the perks of Audiences in terms of customer segmentation.

Happy to answer any questions you might have!

[jcawesome]

Hi SAS Experts,

Are there any updates on Audiences and possible data sources for Audiences? Are the only data sources available Google Big Query and Snowflake at the moment (April 2024)?

Another question, our production tenant doesn't have the 'Audience Source' under Data Collection. Note that our tenant is under APAC region. Do you have any news on when this will roll out in our region/tenant? Do we need to activate any config to make this available for other users?

Regards,

JC

[LeonoraG]

Hi @jcawesome, hope you are well.

As at the moment the data sources for Audiences can be the ones you mentioned (Snowflake and GBQ), as of now we can also support Audience creation and import through API. Next in the roadmap we have On-premise Direct Segment Maps available in Audience Manager, support for Azure SQL, AWS Redshift and others. Hope it helps to understand a bit more of what we have now and what is coming for Audiences capabilities.

Audiences is available for all regions, please be in touch with your SAS Account team to explore how to make this capability available at your tenant. 😉

Kind regards,

Leonora.

[jcawesome]

Hi @LeonoraG 

Yes I am well. Thanks for sharing. I hope you are too.

Thank you for the update regarding Audiences. We have access now to Audience Manager after raising it to the right person in SAS. We're definitely looking forward to the "On-premise Direct Segment Maps" feature in Audiences. This will provide alot of confidence in using Audiences if Engage Direct is already in place (especially since Audiences is currently limited to the possible data sources available).

Regards,

JC

[LeonoraG]

Great news @jcawesome!!

I hope it can make the difference in your daily activities and accelerate the value you are getting from the solution. We are here if you need support! 🙂