Uses for targeting and best practices

How can I use targeting in my event?

Use targeting as a visibility rule (communications and app content)

Apply targeting to determine who among your audience can see and access an item in the app, or who will receive an item sent from the workspace (email or notification).

More information on how to actually use the targeting controls in Backstage is available here, but to summarize, attendees will need to meet certain visibility rule(s) that are set up on an item in order to see/access or receive that item.

• Choose exactly who will receive communications from the workspace:
  • Notifications (standalone notifications).
  • Emails (email campaigns or registration emails)
    
    
• Choose exactly who can see and access content:
  • An agenda session
  • A live session
  • A poll (including the notification sent for it)
  • An app menu item
  • A feed
  • A content page
  • A content item within a content page
  • A form/survey/quiz (including the notifications sent for it)
  • A registration form

Use targeting to create custom lists of content that can be linked (like filtering)

Targeting can also be used to identify and group content/items together into custom lists, based on certain criteria or rules, the same as you would use filters.

You’ll find more details on how to create custom lists here, but to summarize you can use them to:

• Create a custom agenda with a select list of sessions.
• Create a custom attendee list with a select list of attendees.
• Create a custom speaker list with a select list of speakers.
• Create a custom sponsor list with a select list of sponsors.

You can then associate these filtered lists with app menu items or links in the app that have their own visibility rules (targeting) applied.

Combining visibility rules and custom lists

By combining visibility rules applied to app menu items/links and custom lists, you can create tailored lists or segments of content and then fully control who among your attendees can see each segment of content.

Below we have compiled a list of use cases with best practices that should be followed when applying targeting in your workspace.

Examples of the power of targeting

Apply targeting to content based on whether attendees are attending “on site” vs attending “virtually”

Apply targeting to content so that it is visible only to either on-site attendees (using the attending: in-person metadata) or to the virtual audience (using the attending: virtually).
This can, for example, be applied to app menu items that point to logistics pages that are only relevant to onsite or remote attendees, or feeds that are specific to each audience type.

Do

✅ If you send out notifications or emails that point to content that is only visible to attendees who are attending “on site” or “virtually”, make sure that the same targeting rule is applied to the notification as the content. ✅ Remember to assign (and communicate) a value (in-person or virtually) to the Backstage users who are team members, to ensure that team members who are previewing the app will know what to expect. ✅ Use the existing attending “in-person” and “virtually” options that are available by default in the user profile, so that all attendance type targeting follows the same principle. ✅ Check that all targeting applied in a page also matches (check under both profiles).

Don’t

❌ Don’t use open text fields from the registration page for creating your targeting rules. The targeting rules are spacing and case sensitive and this can make it difficult to apply rules properly to open text fields, which can result in increased risk of errors. ❌ Don't target live session polls to attendees based on the attending “on site” or “virtually” user field. the system will automatically take into consideration how an attendee is joining a live session and deliver the experience accordingly (i.e. adjust to match the live stream delay).

Apply targeting to make content available to moderators who have early access to newly created content, in order to approve it before it becomes publicly accessible

In the context of a live event, Backstage users can use targeting to restrict access to newly created content so that it is only visible to certain audiences who are considered “moderators”.

This allows content to be seen in-app by the “moderator”  in order for them to review it in context and approve it before it's made public.

Do	✅ If needed you can target yourself as a validator if you need to perform approval yourself. ✅ Once content is validated, make sure to remove the targeting or to adjust it so that it becomes visible to the right audience.
Don’t	❌ Don't communicate to your audience about content that is not yet validated

Use targeting to create custom lists for when attendees are separated into groups for activities

When participants are assigned to groups at an event, you can create custom attendee lists that are only visible to each group, so attendees can see who is part of their group in the app, and so you can target the groups separately. You could also imagine having two audience segments that attend a live session throughout the day (one attending in the morning, one in the afternoon), and to create two targeted users lists (one list for the morning, and one for the afternoon).

Do	✅ Make sure that your targeting rules are aligned between the custom user list and the visibility of the app menu item that is linked to the custom list.
Don’t	❌ Do not use custom lists linked to navigation bar items, as targeting is not supported in the navigation bar items. Targeted custom lists should instead be associated with app menu items (where the visibility targeting can be configured).

Use targeting to create custom session lists for personalized agendas

Create a “My agenda” app menu item, and then link it to a custom session list that only includes sessions that the participant is targeted to, has bookmarked, or has registered to, to allow them to build their own personalized agenda.

Do	✅ If you link live sessions to your agenda sessions, make sure to apply the same targeting to your live sessions as you do to the “My agenda” app menu item. ✅ If you send out notifications or emails that point to your agenda sessions, make sure the targeting in the notification or email is aligned with the targeting of the session.
Don’t	❌ Do not use custom lists linked to navigation bar items, as targeting is not supported in the navigation bar items. Targeted custom lists should instead be associated with app menu items (where the visibility targeting can be configured).
Tip	💡 Why use custom lists instead of directly applying visibility targeting to individual sessions? - Custom lists may be the easier approach if the event has many sessions that require different sets of visibility targeting. For example, with custom lists, to set-up or edit targeting you would only need to update the user metadata target + one single target on the whole custom session list. With direct session targeting, you would have to update both the user profile metadata and the targeting in each individual session. - You can also use custom lists to create personalized agendas (i.e. "My agenda" app menu items) using the option "Sessions I'm registered for". This will allow allow you to better differentiate between "targeted" and "registered" sessions, and to combine pre-assigning specific sessions to attendees, while also leaving the option for attendees top self-register for sessions. More information

Apply targeting to different content items within a page, to accommodate multiple audiences

You can apply visibility targeting to each item in a content page to decide what your attendees will see when they access the page. Instead of having several pages, you can for example have a single “Logistics” page for your event, where you would create a content block for each hotel that attendees are staying at (hotel 1, hotel 2, hotel 3), and target each content block to the attendees using a “What hotel are you staying at?” field in the user profile.

Do	✅ If you send out notifications or emails containing a link to updates or information changes (for example to a specific hotel), make sure you only target the email or notification to attendees who are staying at that specific hotel.
Don’t	❌ Don’t remove the targeting from the content page, or target everyone with notifications, if the notifications are only informing of a change to one (targeted) part of the content.

Personalized notifications/emails linked to forms based on attendance type

Create custom feedback forms for attendees based on who attended a session, whether they attended in person or virtually, and target the form notifications and emails based on the same attendance type rules.

Do	✅ Always align your form targeting rules to the attendance and type of the attendee.

Registration page with targeted content and customized automated emails

Use the targeting in registration pages to define what registration forms the registrants will see based on the information they already provided in the previous forms of the registration journey. More information

Do

✅  Make sure you have listed all the exact conditions needed for attendees to see the conditional form. ✅  Remember that for public registration pages you can only apply targeting to conditional forms based on the fields present in the main form. For Private - RSVP and Public & Private combined pages,you can apply conditional targeting based to the fields in all the forms (including the conditional ones).

Targeting emails/notifications to attendees based on agenda session registration or attendance

When sending emails or notifications out to your audience, you can use custom targeting to send tailored emails to your attendees based on whether they have registered and/or attended an agenda session. For example, if you wish to encourage attendees to register for an open agenda session, you could send them a “Don’t miss the next session” email. You can also target emails based on session attendance, for example by sending a “Thank you” email to participants that attended an agenda session.

Do	✅ Always align your notification/email targeting rules to the attendance of the attendee.
Don’t	❌ Don’t send targeted communications before having previously closed the session registrations, to ensure that you include any last-minute registrants in your email or notification recipients.

Some general best practices to keep in mind when using targeting

Always test that your targeting is working properly
After setting up your targeting, we always recommend that you test that your targeting is working properly. To do this, configure your own user profile fields (and those of your team members if possible) to match the targeting rules, and perform tests to verify whether or not you have access to the targeted content, or whether you receive communications.

Always set-up and test targeting before going live with your event
Once your event is live, it will be more tricky to set-up and test your targeting, as there is the risk that attendees see content that is not targeted properly. It is therefore preferable to do this before your attendees start to access the app.

Always check the users affected by targeting rules that you set-up
When setting up your targeting rules, a quick way to ensure you are setting up your targeting correctly is to verify the “affected users”. This is visible beneath the targeting rules, where you can see the number of affected users. If the number is “0”, and you expect to be targeting at least some users, then this is an indication there may be a problem with your targeting rules.

Access the web app as a targeted attendee
From a user profile, you can preview the web app from the perspective of a specific targeted attendee (“access app as”) in order to verify what that attendee can see and access, or what notifications they receive.

Align targeting between notifications and content
If you are sending out notifications that point to targeted content, always make sure that the targeting in the notification aligns with the targeting on the content.
If not, you risk sending notifications that point to content that some of your audience cannot access, or sending notifications to all your audience when only a segment has access to the content.
Tip: In some cases, it can be preferable to send out a generic communication to your audience with no or little targeting, and to instead apply the targeting to content within a page or an agenda. For example, sending a generic "Check out your travel details" notification that will point to a page where the content blocks are targeted can be very efficient.

Facilitate testing using the “Edit my profile link” in the registration page
To facilitate the testing of the targeting, you can use the registration page's "Allow attendees to edit their profile" functionality. This will anyone testing the targeting, to easily update their information in their user profile without via the registration page, without accessing Backstage, and to test different targeting views on different user fields.