A Smart Audience is a rule-based audience that automatically manages its own membership. Rather than adding users individually, you define the rules and Thrive handles the rest – adding and removing users dynamically as they meet or no longer meet the criteria.
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.
To access your audiences, go to Manage > Structures & Audiences in the Thrive menu.
Creating a Smart Audience
Click Create audience.
In the Audience Name field, enter a name.
Select Smart Audience.
Click Create.
Thrive then takes you to the Settings tab, where you define your membership rules.
How Membership Works
The Membership rules (Optional) section is where you decide who belongs to the audience. If you add no rules, the audience inherits all members from its parent structure. Adding rules filters that membership down.
Rules are built from conditions, which are organised into rule blocks:
Conditions in a block are joined by AND – a user must meet every condition in the block.
Rule blocks are joined by OR – a user who meets the conditions of any block is included.
Membership is continuous, not a one-time snapshot. Thrive evaluates every user against your rules, adds them when their data matches, and removes them when it no longer does.
To start, click + Add a condition.
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, such as tags, skills, email domains, language, or Custom Fields. For most attributes, choose Is any of or Is not any of, then select your values.
Custom Fields works a level deeper: after selecting it, choose the specific field configured for your platform (such as department or employee ID). For text-based fields, match against whole values with Is any of, or match on part of a value with Starts with, Ends with, or Contains – useful when field data isn't standardised.
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 |
Membership updates within 24 hours of a completion event, including historical completions and retroactive data uploads. A user is removed if their completion record is deleted.
Badge
Targets users by the badges they hold. Choose Attained or Not Attained, then select one or more badges.
Building Rule Logic
Use these controls to shape your rules:
Clone: Duplicates a rule block.
Delete block: Removes a whole rule block.
Remove Rule: Removes a single condition.
+ Add another condition: Adds a condition to the current block, joined by AND.
+ Add OR rule block: Adds a new block, joined by OR.
When your rules are ready, click Save changes.
Things to Keep in Mind
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.
Deleting an audience unlinks all its content and removes members' access to that content. This can't be undone.