A Smart Audience is an Audience whose membership updates automatically, based on rules you define – rather than adding members individually, Thrive adds and removes users dynamically as they meet or no longer meet your criteria. This is in contrast to a Manual Audience, which requires you to select members yourself.
This makes Smart Audiences ideal for membership that should stay current on its own, such as everyone in a particular department, everyone who has completed a mandatory course, or everyone whose job title contains a certain word.
Create a Smart Audience
To create a Smart Audience, follow the steps in Create Audience, selecting Smart Audience under Audience Type. A Membership rules section then appears, where you build the conditions that control membership.
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Add Conditions to a Smart Audience
In the Membership rules section, click + Add a condition.
In the rule block, use the first dropdown to select a category for the condition – User Positions, User Activity, Manager Queries, User Profile, Content, or Badge. For details on each category, see Condition Types below.
Use the dropdown menus that appear to set the value to match against, such as a job title, a date, or specific content.
(Optional) Click + Add another condition to add more conditions to the same rule block. Conditions in a block are joined by AND – a user must meet every condition in the block to qualify.
(Optional) Click + Add OR rule block to add a new rule block. Rule blocks are joined by OR – a user who meets the conditions in any one block is included. Think of each rule block as defining one type of person you want to include – for example, Senior managers in the UK OR new starters in any region OR anyone who has completed onboarding.
Repeat steps 2–5 steps until your rules describe everyone you want included.
Note:
Membership is continuous, not a one-time snapshot: Thrive evaluates every user against your rules, adding them when their data matches and removing them when it no longer does.
Review your choices, then click Create audience.
Your Smart Audience is now live and appears on the Audiences tab.
Condition Types
Every condition begins with a category. Select the category first, then the specific field and matching options shown for it.
Category | Description |
|---|---|
User Positions | Their position in the organisation, such as job title |
User Activity | Activity such as first or last login date |
Manager Queries | Their reporting relationships |
User Profile | Profile data such as skills, tags, language, email domain, or custom fields |
Content | Whether they have completed specific content |
Badge | Whether they have attained a specific badge |
User Positions
Targets users by their position in the organisation, using fields such as Job Title, Organisation, Days in role, and start or end dates. Each field offers matching options suited to its data – for example, text fields like Job Title let you match exact values with Is any of, or match on part of a value using Starts with, Ends with, or Contains (useful when titles vary slightly).
User Activity
Targets users by their login activity, such as when they first or last signed in. Select the activity you want to match on, choose a date operator such as After or Before, then set the date.
This is useful for membership that depends on engagement over time – for example, welcoming people who logged in for the first time after a certain date, or identifying users who haven't signed in since a given point.
Manager Queries
Targets users by their reporting relationships. Choose one of the following questions, then answer Yes or No:
Do they have an indirect report?
Do they have a direct report?
Do they have a line manager?
User Profile
Targets users by their profile data – tags, skills, email domain, language, or custom fields.
Most User Profile attributes offer two operators: Is any of and Is not any of. Select one or more values to match against.
Custom Fields works a level deeper. After selecting it, choose the specific field configured for your platform (such as department or employee ID). Alongside Is any of and Is not any of, text-based custom fields offer three further ways to match:
Starts with, Ends with, or Contains: Match on part of a value – useful when field data isn’t standardised.
Is not empty: Include only users who have any value in the field, regardless of what it is. No value needs to be entered for this one.
Note:
For fields that use Is any of or Is not any of – Job Title, Email domains, and text custom fields – you don’t need to search for and add each value one at a time. Click Bulk add next to the value field to open the Bulk add dialogue box.
Content
Targets users by what they have completed. Choose Completed or Not Completed, then select one or more content items. If you select several items, the condition is met when a user has completed any one of them.
Then set the completion window:
Option | Includes |
|---|---|
Ever | Users who completed the content at any point |
Since | Only users who completed it after a date you choose |
Adding this condition can take up to 24 hours to find existing matches. After that, new completions are added instantly. A user is removed if their completion record is deleted. The same timing applies to Badge rules below.
Badge
Targets users by the badges they hold. Choose Attained or Not Attained, then select one or more badges.
Important
Text matching works on simple patterns, not advanced expressions or regex.
Because evaluation is continuous, the quality of your user data directly affects who is captured.