Priority Lists

Priority lists let you manage audience overlap by defining which audiences take precedence when a customer qualifies for multiple segments. This prevents customers from receiving conflicting messages or being targeted by too many campaigns simultaneously.

The Overlap Problem

When you have multiple active audiences, some customers inevitably qualify for more than one. For example:

• “High-Value Customers” — lifetime_value > 500
• “Churning Customers” — days_since_last_purchase > 60
• “Win-Back Campaign” — inactive for 90+ days

A customer with a lifetime value of $800 who hasn’t purchased in 95 days qualifies for all three audiences. If each audience is synced to a different campaign, this customer could receive a VIP offer, a churn prevention email, and a win-back discount — all at the same time.

Priority lists solve this by letting you declare: “If a customer qualifies for both High-Value and Churning, treat them as High-Value.”

How Priority Lists Work

A priority list is an ordered list of audiences. When evaluated, SignalSmith processes the audiences from highest to lowest priority:

1. Start with the highest-priority audience
2. Assign all qualifying members to that audience
3. Move to the next audience
4. Assign qualifying members who haven’t already been assigned
5. Repeat until all audiences in the list are processed

The result is that each customer is assigned to at most one audience in the priority list. Customers who qualify for multiple audiences are assigned to the highest-priority one.

Priority List: "Retention Campaign Targeting"

Priority 1: High-Value Customers       → 5,000 members assigned
Priority 2: Churning Customers         → 3,200 members assigned (excluding those already in High-Value)
Priority 3: Win-Back Campaign          → 1,800 members assigned (excluding those in High-Value or Churning)
Priority 4: General Re-engagement      → 8,000 members assigned (excluding all above)

Creating a Priority List

Step 1: Start

Navigate to Segment > Priority Lists and click Create Priority List.

Step 2: Name and Describe

Give the priority list a descriptive name (e.g., “Email Campaign Prioritization”) and an optional description explaining the business logic behind the priority order.

Step 3: Add Audiences

Add audiences to the list and arrange them in priority order. The audience at the top of the list has the highest priority.

• Click Add Audience to select an audience from your workspace
• Drag and drop to reorder audiences
• All audiences must belong to the same entity type

Step 4: Save

Click Save to create the priority list. SignalSmith evaluates the list immediately, computing the de-duplicated membership for each audience.

Priority List Output

After evaluation, each audience in the priority list has a de-duplicated membership — the access filter of its original members that were not claimed by a higher-priority audience.

You can view these metrics on the priority list detail page.

Syncing with Priority Lists

When you create an audience sync for an audience that belongs to a priority list, the sync uses the de-duplicated membership — not the original audience membership.

This means:

• The destination receives only the customers assigned to that audience after priority resolution
• No customer appears in more than one destination from the same priority list
• If you change the priority order, the de-duplicated memberships are recomputed and the next sync run reflects the new assignments

Example: Email Campaign Prioritization

A marketing team runs four email campaigns and wants to ensure no customer receives more than one:

The 500 VIP customers who also abandoned a cart receive the VIP campaign (Priority 1), not the cart abandonment email (Priority 2). The 3,000 customers who would have received the feature announcement but are already in VIP or Cart Abandoners get their higher-priority campaign instead.

Editing a Priority List

Reordering Audiences

Drag and drop audiences to change the priority order. After saving, SignalSmith recomputes the de-duplicated memberships. Active syncs will reflect the new assignments on their next run.

Adding an Audience

Adding a new audience inserts it at the specified priority position. Members of existing audiences who also qualify for the new audience (and the new audience has higher priority) will be reassigned.

Removing an Audience

Removing an audience from the priority list releases its de-duplicated members. Those members may then be claimed by lower-priority audiences on the next evaluation.

Multiple Priority Lists

You can create multiple priority lists for different use cases. For example:

• “Email Campaign Prioritization” — Controls overlap for email campaigns
• “Ad Platform Audience Prioritization” — Controls overlap for ad audiences
• “Push Notification Prioritization” — Controls overlap for push campaigns

An audience can belong to multiple priority lists. Its de-duplicated membership may differ across lists depending on the other audiences and their priority order in each list.

Best Practices

• Prioritize by business value — Put audiences representing higher-value actions or more time-sensitive messages at the top
• Keep lists focused — Create separate priority lists for separate channels (email, ads, push) rather than one giant list
• Monitor overlap metrics — High overlap removal percentages may indicate that your audiences need refinement or that you have too many overlapping segments
• Document the rationale — Use the description field to explain why audiences are ordered the way they are, so team members understand the business logic
• Review after audience changes — When you modify an audience’s filter conditions, check how it affects the de-duplicated memberships in any priority lists it belongs to

Next Steps

• Audiences — Build the audiences to prioritize
• Splits — Divide audiences for A/B testing
• Audience Syncs — Activate de-duplicated audiences to destinations