This article provides tips for understanding how Swrve estimates audience sizes for push and in-app campaigns and support for troubleshooting common issues you might encounter.
Estimating your campaign audience
When you go through the process of setting up a push, in-app, or conversation campaign, you have the option to generate an estimate of your audience based on the custom segmentation you intend to use for your campaign. After you set up your audience and select the "Refresh Estimate" button, two figures are displayed:
- Est. Total Audience:
- % Total Users:
The Est. Total Audience displays an estimate of your users who qualify for your audience. The estimated audience is calculated differently depending on the campaign channel. For example, in-app campaign audiences are based on a sample of recently active users in the last seven days, while push notification audiences are based on a sample of your total user population.
Push notification audience estimates
Swrve calculates push notification audiences based on a sample of your app’s total user population, and the filters you’ve selected to target your audience by. So, how do you estimate an audience for your push notifications?
Set up your audience
- First, set your criteria through the Audience Builder and add a combination of the following:
- User Profile filters – criteria that are based on user, device, or event profiles.
- User Behavior filters – filters based on historical user behavior.
- Once you’ve determined your target audience, to refresh the audience figures, select Refresh Estimate.
How does Swrve generate the estimate?
Swrve uses a few different factors to calculate push notification estimates, including your target audience, your app's total active population from the last 365 days, and the availability of push tokens. See below:
- Once you set up your target audience, Swrve runs and processes the criteria for users within a randomized sample of 10,000 users.
- From there, Swrve receives a count (and percentage) of users who match those individual criteria AND have a valid push token.
- Swrve then applies that percentage of users and scales it by your app’s total user base who have push permissions enabled.
- Swrve then generates an estimate that includes, as part of the output, a count of users and a percentage of your total user base for your campaign.
Push Audience Estimate = % of Eligible Users (from a 10K User Sample) x Total Active Population
Note: Swrve’s user databases refresh several times throughout the day, so the sample is based on the most recent batch job available from your app.
What about an imported audience?
Swrve supports the upload of a custom list of users for a specific audience (contact your CSM to discuss this option). When you import a custom list, you probably want to know what percentage of your users will be a part of this audience. The process for reviewing an audience estimate is similar. However, when you set up your audience, you're targeting based on a custom property, for example, campaign_name=2020Q4Promotion.
When you import your audience, you will not receive an audience estimate right away. Why? As mentioned before, Swrve’s user databases refresh several times throughout the day and it's unlikely the system will refresh immediately following list upload. If you try to review and estimate your audience size immediately, you'll likely receive a result of zero.
The best thing to do when this happens is to return to your draft audience between 4 and 6 hours later and try to refresh your estimate.
In-app message audience estimates
In-app campaign audiences are based on a sample of recently active users in the last seven days, multiplied against your total population. The process for setting up your target criteria is the same as with a push notification, however, the way the estimate generates differs.
How does Swrve generate in-app audience estimates?
Swrve uses a few different factors to calculate in-app message estimates, including your target audience, your app's DAU, and recency. See below:
- Once you set up your target audience, Swrve runs that criteria and compares the criteria against users who have been active in the last seven days.
- Swrve then receives a sample count and percentage of users who match your audience filters and have been recently active.
- Swrve takes that percentage of users and multiplies it by your app’s Weekly Active Users (WAU).
- Swrve then displays that output as a count of users and a percentage of your total user base.
IAM Audience Estimate = % of Eligible Users (from the last 7 days) x WAU
What about an imported audience
Just as with a push notification, Swrve supports the upload of a custom list of users for a specific audience. When you import a custom list, you'll want to know what percentage of your users will be a part of this audience. Similar to a push, it’s not possible to determine an estimate for these users for an in-app message campaign, and you'll always receive an estimate of zero. Why?
When you upload a custom list based on a user property, for example, campaign_name=MyNovemberPromo, the Swrve system has not yet seen that new custom property value—as such, there are no users who were active in the past 7 days that match that criteria. Therefore, the sample of users is zero. When you scale zero against your DAU (0 x DAU=0), the estimate is also going to be zero.
Conversation audience estimates
See in-app message audience estimates.
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