Prerequisites: Customer Studio overview
Customer Studio helps you build, activate, and orchestrate campaign-ready audiences—directly from your warehouse.
This quick-start guide walks you through setup (for platform teams) and day-to-day usage (for marketers), with links to each key step.
Setup for platform admins and data teams
Before anyone can build or sync audiences, Customer Studio must be configured with the correct schema, traits, and governance settings. This setup is typically done once per workspace.
Configure your schema
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Define the schema | Connect models for users, events, and related data so they’re available in the audience builder. | Define data schema → |
Set governance and consent policies
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Apply destination rules | Control sync behavior, redaction, and opt-outs. | Destination rules → |
| Filter with subsets | Narrow audience delivery on a per-destination basis. | Subsets → |
| Manage consent | Respect user consent preferences by syncing only users who have opted in. | OneTrust Snowflake Native App → |
Enable audience visibility and testing
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Enable sampling | Turn on row-level sampling so marketers can spot-check audience matches. | Sampling → |
| Enable holdout group logs | Track unsynced audience rows in your warehouse after each sync. | Holdout group logs → |
How marketers use Customer Studio
Once the schema is set up, marketers can use the visual interface to build and activate audiences without SQL.
Build audiences
Use filters, traits, and events to define who qualifies for a campaign.
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Create audiences | Apply filters and logic to build your target group. | Audiences → |
| Use traits | Add calculated values like LTV, preferred channel, or last seen date. | Traits → |
| Validate with insights | Preview audience size and breakdowns. | Insights → |
| Spot-check with sampling | Review a sample of matched users to validate your logic. | Sampling → |
Activate audiences
Send users to your tools on a schedule or in real time.
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Sync audiences to tools | Deliver audience data to destinations like Klaviyo, Facebook, or Salesforce. | Sync audiences → |
| Enable real-time syncs | Send updates with sub-second latency for same-session personalization. | Real-time syncs → |
Orchestrate campaigns
Manage flows, priority, and message timing across audiences.
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Create journeys | Build multi-step campaigns with syncs, waits, and conditions. | Journeys → |
| Manage conflicts | Use priority lists to ensure users only sync to the most relevant campaign. | Priority lists → |
| Run tests | Use splits and holdouts to test variations or exclude a control group. | Splits → |
Manage and reuse audiences
Keep audiences consistent, auditable, and reusable.
| Step | What you’ll do | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Use templates | Save standard audience or sync configurations for reuse. | Templates → |
| Capture snapshots | Record audience membership at a point in time for auditing or comparison. | Snapshots → |