🎯Choosing Your Audience
Target your campaigns with saved segments or an inline custom filter, preview exactly who will receive them, and understand why the recipient count is smaller than your full list.
When you send a campaign, you decide who receives it on the recipient step. There are two ways to do that, and a live recipient count updates as you go so you always know how many patrons you're about to reach.
You'll find email tools in the Emails section of your Dashboard sidebar.
Two ways to target
Saved Segment — a reusable audience you've defined and named, so you can target the same group again and again
Custom Filter — an audience you build inline, right on the recipient step, for a one-off send
Saved segments
A segment is a saved audience. Create one in the Segments area of the Emails section: give it a name and an optional description, then define who belongs using the same filter fields available on the recipient step. Reuse it whenever you send.
To use one, pick Saved Segment on the recipient step and choose it from the list. A Manage saved segments link takes you to the Segments area from there too.
Custom filters
For a one-off audience, choose Custom Filter on the recipient step and add one or more filters. Combine them with:
Match ALL filters — a patron must meet every filter to be included (for example, "Level 1 AND a specific event")
Match ANY filter — a patron is included if they meet at least one filter
The recipient count updates live as you add or change filters.
No filters = every patron
If you choose Custom Filter and add no filters at all, the campaign targets every patron — customers and students — in your theatre (still narrowed by the eligibility rules below).
A half-finished filter matches no one. A filter whose value is left blank deliberately matches zero patrons — your count drops to 0 rather than quietly ignoring the filter. Complete it or remove it.
Filter fields
Filters are built on data CrowdWork already keeps about your patrons:
Patron type
Whether they're a customer (ticket buyer) or student (class registrant)
Tag
A tag applied to the patron
Event (show or class)
A specific show or class they're associated with
Event date
The date of an event they're associated with
Event type
Whether the event is a show or a class
Last purchase
When they last bought
Patron signup date
When they joined your audience
Membership tier
Which membership tier they hold
Membership status
Where their membership is in its lifecycle — active, paused, canceled, or archived — or whether they’ve ever had a membership at all
Total spend
How much they've spent with your theatre
Donations
Their donation history
Gift cards
Whether they’ve purchased — or received — a gift card
Engagement (clicked but didn't buy)
Patrons who clicked a past campaign without purchasing
Membership, donation, and gift card filters look at customer records. Those histories live on the patron's customer record, so a patron who is only a student won't match them. Total spend counts both customers and students.
Preview exactly who you're emailing
Counts are useful; names are better. Choose Preview Recipients — available on the recipient step and in the segment builder — to open the actual list of matching patrons, 25 per page, searchable by email or name. In the Segments area, each patron also carries an Opted in or Not opted in badge showing their newsletter status.
Why your recipient count is smaller than your full patron list
The recipient count is resolved when you send, and it's usually smaller than your total number of patrons. That's expected. These rules narrow it down:
Newsletter consent — marketing campaigns only reach patrons who opted in to your newsletter. Patrons who didn't opt in are not included.
Suppression list — anyone on your Suppressions list (bounced, complained, unsubscribed, or manually added) is excluded from both campaign types.
Missing email addresses — patron records without an email address can't be emailed and are skipped.
Point of Sale placeholders — patrons rung up at your box office without an email address get an internal placeholder address; those are skipped too.
De-duplication — a patron who matches more than once is counted and emailed only once.
Marketing vs. transactional reach. The newsletter-consent narrowing applies to marketing campaigns. Transactional service messages reach every targeted patron regardless of newsletter opt-in, because they're operational rather than promotional. The other rules — suppressions, missing addresses, de-duplication — apply to both.
Want a bigger audience? Collect more newsletter opt-ins at checkout via Theatre Details → Checkout Options → Collect Newsletter Opt-Ins. See Customizing Your Theatre Settings.
Related Tasks
Build and send a campaign
Understand the two campaign types
See what a campaign earned
Manage the do-not-email list
Collect newsletter opt-ins at checkout
Need Help?
If you run into a situation this guide doesn't cover, contact our support team from your Dashboard. We're here to help!
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