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Attributes Beta

Use attributes to target users with precision, using complex expressions to evaluate audience inclusion.

Today we are launching our beta program for Airship Attributes, a segmentation feature that provides a new kind of flexibility when targeting users. Like tags, attributes can be used to form expressions to target an audience for a message. Unlike tags, an audience attribute expression can hold a comparision operator (e.g., equals, contains, greater/less than, etc.), and a value, allowing you to form complex expressions when evaluating an audience for targeting.

Tags vs Attributes

Tags are a great way to target users, especially for use cases where it is only the presence or absence of the tag that matters. If the expression “Does the user have this tag?” evaluates to true, send to this user, otherwise, don’t send.

You may, for example, classify customers with a certain lifetime value in your CRM as “big spenders” and wish to target your big spenders for your annual VIP Sale, like so:

Audience Tags
{
   "audience": {
      "tag": "big_spender"
   }
}

But let’s say that over time you want to be more inclusive with your VIP Sale invitations, including people who haven’t quite reached big spender status but who might reach that threshold at the sale.

You don’t want to invite all the “basic spenders,” but you would like to include those near the next level, which starts at $1000.

For this expression, rather than evaluating yes/no for the “big_spender” tag, let’s use an attribute, lifetime_value, and send to users whose lifetime value is greater than $750 so we can include our would-be big spenders in the invitation.

Audience Attributes
{
   "audience": {
        "attribute": "lifetime_value",
        "operator": "greater",
        "value": 750
   }
}

 Note

In Phase II of the beta we will release Number attributes, which can be either an INTEGER or a DECIMAL. The example above uses an attribute value type of ‘INTEGER’.

How do I get started?

Adding attributes to your marketing mix requires an upgrade to your mobile SDKs because you will need to implement the new attribute classes in order to set and remove attribute values on a user.

For details, see: Attributes Beta.

Beta Program

This beta is planned to run in three phases:

Attributes are currently a beta feature. If you wish to participate in the beta program, please contact Airship Support. GA release: April 30, 2020.