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How to create audiences for your marketing outreach
How to create audiences for your marketing outreach

Discover how to create targeted marketing audiences in Nutshell for effective marketing outreach and track engagement.

Andy Fowler avatar
Written by Andy Fowler
Updated over a week ago

Create targeted lists for email outreach and use actionable metrics to get a better understanding of how your contacts are engaging with your emails.

Haven’t signed up for Nutshell Campaigns yet? Admins can get started by going to their Nutshell account billing page.

Creating your audience

Audiences are targeted lists of individuals to which your campaign is aimed. While you can send email outreach to any contacts on the fly, we highly recommend creating an audience for better visibility into the engagement of your outreach.

To start, go to Nutshell Campaigns > Audiences in your Nutshell account and select the Create your first audience button. If you already have audiences within your account, but need to create new ones, click Create new audience.

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Provide a descriptive name for your audience so you’re able to find it later, then click Create.

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Once created, you’ll be dropped onto your new audience page.

Adding existing companies, people, and leads to an audience

Now it’s time to add your contacts to your audience! Select the Add members button. Nutshell will provide you with the following options:

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  • Add contacts from your already existing Nutshell people, companies, and leads

  • Import new contacts into Nutshell via CSV spreadsheet or from another email marketing tool

When viewing a list of companies, people, or leads, select the contacts to add to your audience by checking the box next to their name. Once you have made your contact selections, click Add to Audience at the bottom of the list view.

Select which audience in the drop-down, and click Add to Audience.

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Congrats! You just created your new audience! You can return to your audience anytime by clicking View Audience.

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Importing your audience

To import contacts to an audience, you will need to go to Nutshell Campaigns > Audiences, select an existing audience (or create a new Audience) and click Add members.

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You can select to import from a CSV spreadsheet, import contacts from a Mailchimp or Constant Contact exported file, or import contacts with an exported file from any other email marketing tool.

When importing your spreadsheet or exported file to your audience, the process will be similar to importing new contacts and leads in your Nutshell account.

You will need to select your CSV file of contacts and select Next.

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At the top of the importing Match page, you should see ‘Import into [the name of your audience]’.

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From here, you will need to map your fields of data. Nutshell tries to automatically identify fields for you, but since your file contains information that's unique to your business, you will want to double check that all fields are correctly mapped during the Match stage.

You can learn more about our importing process and how to map your fields of data here.

You are able to map your fields to the same Company and Person selections that are available through our original importer. We also provide three additional Person selections, unique to audience importing:

  • Audiences: Allows contacts to be imported directly into a determined Audience

  • Unsubscribe date: Allows a contact to be imported as unsubscribed for a particular date (for date fields, use the format MM-DD-YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY)

  • Unsubscribe status: Allows a contact to be imported as unsubscribed (must be either Unsubscribe or blank (blank defaults to Subscribed status))

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Lead selections are not available for audience imports. Click here to see how to import leads.

Once you have your fields mapped, select Preview. The Preview page will share what action the importer will take.

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From here select Begin Import, and you’re all set! You can return back to your audience to see your recently imported contacts within their audience list.

Members vs. Subscribers

When viewing an audience, contacts are segmented into four groupings:

  • Members: All contacts within your audience.

  • Subscribers: Contacts within your audience who have a valid email address and can receive your messages.

  • Unsubscribed: Contacts who have unsubscribed from this particular audience or from all email marketing outreach. Contacts who choose to unsubscribe will remain within your audience, however they will not be able to receive your outreach.

  • Undeliverable: Contacts without a valid email address, with duplicate email addresses, or email addresses that have bounced.

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The graph on your audience page shows your audience’s growth over a determined date range.

Unsubscribes

Whether you’re sending a Broadcast, Newsletter, or Drip sequence, an Unsubscribe link will be required within your outreach emails. Don’t worry, Nutshell will remind you to add one if you forget!

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Unsubscribing is a permanent action, intended for use by the outreach recipient.

Once a contact has unsubscribed from an audience, or from all audiences, they cannot be re-subscribed. While you will have the ability to unsubscribe any contact from your audiences, we don’t recommend it unless the contact directly requests to be unsubscribed.

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Maybe a contact recently relocated and they’re a part of an audience that is specific to a territory or geological location that no longer applies to them. If you need to remove a contact from an audience, but not unsubscribe them from the audience or outreach altogether, you can do so from the contact’s profile page.

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Selecting the x on their listed audience(s) will remove them from that audience.

Engagement Metrics

The Engagement section of your audience provides actionable metrics that highlight your contacts’ engagement with your email outreach.

  • Messages Sent: The total number of emails sent to contacts in your audience

  • Open Rate: The percentage of email sent to your audience that have been opened

  • Click Rate: The percentage of emails sent to your audience that have been clicked

  • Bounce Rate: The percentage of emails sent to your audience that have bounced

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Engagement Rating (stars)

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These ratings can be found within your audience member list view, as well as on your contact’s profile pages. These ratings are calculated using open, click, and reply engagement rates as well as total emails sent.

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FAQ

Will my Nutshell email health be affected by emails sent out via Nutshell Campaigns?

No. Nutshell Campaigns and your personal Nutshell Inbox are completely separate. Emails sent out via Campaigns will not affect your Nutshell email health rating nor your 300 emails per day limitations.

Can I delete an audience?

Audiences can be archived when not being actively used.

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How can I view all of my Marketing contacts?

Nutshell provides each User with a saved list within your account called Marketing Contacts.

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If I add a person with multiple email addresses to an audience, will they receive my marketing messages at each separate email address?

Nope! Their primary (starred) email address will be included in the audience and they will only receive messages at that email.

I just bulk updated an audience but I'm not seeing those contacts under 'Members'—what gives?

You didn't do anything wrong! Bulk edits in Nutshell are processed through a queue, so it may take a few minutes for those updates to be accurately reflected across your entire account.

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