You can target users based on their properties. This is one of the most powerful features of Appcues that gives you the ability to choose what users see which content. With user and group property targeting, you can pick and choose which users or accounts see certain messages based on specific traits that you send in to Appcues, like role, plan type, company, or other properties you send in to Appcues.

User and Group Properties

On the Settings page of each experience, you can select the Audience that will see the content. Under "Who should see this experience?" you will find your own custom properties, auto-properties and group properties.

Most properties that you'll be targeting by are your properties, as in they're properties that are specific to your users or accounts and they're sent to Appcues by you. If you've installed Appcues manually, these user and group properties are passed to us through the Appcues.identify() call or the Appcues.group() call. 

Choose a Comparator

There are several different comparators you can choose from.

Equality

This comparator looks for an exact match. If the user has a value that is longer or shorter than the value you enter, the user will not be targeted.

• Equals — "name equals Jane" matches only people named Jane but not Jane Doe.
• Doesn't equal — "name doesn't equal Jane" matches anyone not named Jane.

Relative Size

This comparator is typically designed to work with numerical values as they compare quantities. For date properties, we recommend using the Occurrence comparators.

• Is greater than — "days_since_signup is greater than 7" matches users who signed 8 or more days ago.
• Greater than or equal to  — "days_since_signup is greater than or equal to 7" matches users who signed 7 or more days ago.
• Is less than — "days_since_signup is less than 30" matches users who've signed up within the past 29 days.
• Less than or equal to — "days_since_signup is less than  or equal to 30" matches users who've signed up within the past 30 days.

Inclusion

This comparator looks for a partial match. If the user has a value that is longer or shorter than the value you enter, the user will be targeted.

• Contains — "email contains @gmail.com" matches users with a Gmail email address.
• Doesn't contain — "email doesn't contain @outlook.com, @yahoo.com" matches any user who does not have an Outlook or a Yahoo email address.

Prefix/Suffix

Use prefix when you want to match values that begin with a certain word or pattern, and suffix when you want to match values that end in a particular way.

• Starts with — "created_at starts with 2016" matches users with a created_at date of "2016-5-4" but not "2015-3-7".
• Doesn't start with — "created_at doesn't start with 2016" matches users with a created_at date of "2015-5-4" but not "2016-3-7".
• Ends with — "email ends with .io" matches users with an email address registered to the British Indian Ocean.
• Doesn't ends with — "email doesn't end with .io" matches users with an email address with addresses that aren't registered to the British Indian Ocean

Existence

Checking for existence is good when the properties you send to Appcues vary for each user or type of user. For instance, you may have "freemium" and "enterprise" users, and only enterprise users have an account rep, which you're passing to Appcues as a user property.

• Exists — "account_rep_name exists" matches users whose account rep's name is being passed to Appcues.
• Doesn't exist — "plan_type doesn't exist" matches users who are not passing a plan type to Appcues.

List Membership

Use this option when you have a relatively short list of values you're looking to target (up to 1000 max.) Please note that this list looks for an exact match and will not qualify partial values.

• Is one of — "name is one of Jonathan, Jackson, John" matches people named "Jonathan" but not “Jane.”
• Isn't one of — "plan_type isn't one of Enterprise, Premium" matches users who are on a plan other than Enterprise or Premium.

Occurrence

This operator works for date properties and is used to filter or branch logic based on whether and when a particular property happened for a user.

• occurred more than — "first seen at occurred more than 7 days ago" matches users whose account was first seen 8 days ago or more.
• occurred less than — "first seen at occurred less than 7 days ago" matches users whose account was first seen 6 days ago or less.
• will occur within the next — "renewal date will occur within the next 30 days" matches users whose account will be renewed in the next 30 days.
• occurred before — "first seen at occurred before 2025/03/01" matches users whose account was first seen before a specific date
• occurred after — "first seen at occurred after 2025/03/01" matches users whose account was first seen after a specific date.

Important to note

It's important to note that the values associated with your properties are case-sensitive. For that reason, if you have a property like Plan Type, entering a value of ‘Trial’ or ‘trial’ is not the same thing, and will lead to users not seeing your experience if used incorrectly.

Additionally, the value must be entered exactly as it was sent into Appcues. For these reasons, we recommend that you double-check existing values to ensure the users are reached. Below we describe two ways of doing that.

1. Check user profiles 

Using this method, you're going to search for a user that you know has a certain value for a property. Go to the Users page in Appcues and search for that user however you prefer – you can find it via user-id or any other property, read more about this on our article Find a User. Open the profile of that user and check the Properties tab. On that tab you'll find all the properties associated with the user. Find the property you want to use and check how the value is used. For example, if I wanted to use the property Role, by checking this user I can confirm that I should type the value in all lower case:

2. Check example values in your properties page

Another option is checking some examples of values in your properties page. On this page, you'll find all the properties you're sending Appcues. If you find the property you're trying to use, click the i icon and a tooltip will show you additional information about it, including example values.