Both group customers. Both can be the recipients of a WhatsApp campaign. They are still not interchangeable, and picking the wrong one is the most expensive small mistake in the product. The rule fits in one line: > **If you can point at the customers, use a label. If you can describe them, use an audience.** ## Side by side | | Label | Shared audience | |---|---|---| | **What it is** | a sticker stored on the contact | conditions stored under a name | | **Who puts a customer in it** | a person | nobody — the conditions decide | | **When membership changes** | when somebody adds or removes it | every time the audience is used | | **Can go out of date** | yes, silently | no, there is nothing stored to be out of date | | **Can record a decision** | yes, that is its only job | no | | **Can express "bought in the last 30 days"** | not durably | yes | | **Who creates it** | an administrator creates the label; any agent applies it | any agent saves one; an administrator shares it | | **Visible to the account** | always | only when shared | | **Campaign recipient source** | yes | yes, when shared | | **Automation condition** | no | yes, when shared | ## The test Ask: *can this change without anybody touching the contact?* A customer becomes a "recent buyer" because time passed. Nobody did anything. That is an audience. A customer becomes "VIP" because somebody decided so. There is no data that implies it. That is a label. ## Three things, not two People usually compare labels with audiences and forget the thing in the middle. | | What it is | How long it lasts | Who else sees it | |---|---|---|---| | **A contact filter** | conditions you have applied to the list you are looking at | until you clear them or leave | nobody | | **A personal audience** | the same conditions, saved and named | until you delete it | nobody | | **A shared audience** | the same conditions, saved and owned by the account | until an administrator deletes it | everyone | A filter is a view. It is the right tool for a question you are asking once. Saving it is what turns the view into something you can come back to, and sharing it is what makes it available to a campaign, to an automation rule, and to your colleagues. Nothing can reference an unsaved filter, because there is nothing to reference. So the honest sequence is: filter to explore, save when you will want it again, share when something other than you needs it. ## What only a label can do Record a judgement. `vip`, `wholesale`, `complaint-escalated`, `do-not-call`, `event-attendee`. None of these can be worked out from your data, so no set of conditions will ever reproduce them. A label is also the only way to pin an arbitrary set of people — the thirty contacts from a trade show, the list somebody sent you. Lynomia Chat has no static audience. Import or select those contacts and apply a label in bulk; see [import contacts](import-contacts) and [bulk actions](bulk-actions). ## What only an audience can do Stay correct. "Spent over 1,000 SAR", "has an open order", "has never written to us", "customers of one store" — each is re-answered when it is used, so there is no moment at which it is quietly wrong. An audience is also the only one of the two that an [automation rule](automation-rules) can test. A rule can ask *is this conversation's contact in audience X*. There is no condition anywhere that asks whether a contact carries a particular label. ## The trap that costs money Two things that look alike and are not: **A conversation label is not a contact label.** They come from the same catalogue and are stored separately. Tagging a conversation `vip` does not make that person a `vip` contact, and a campaign reads **contact** labels. Build a campaign to a label that only ever went on conversations and it reaches nobody. **No automation action labels a contact.** An automation rule's "add label" action always labels the *conversation*. There is also no trigger for a contact being created or changed. So you cannot build a rule that maintains a contact label for you — which is exactly why the questions people want such a rule for ("who has contacted us?") are audience presets instead. ## Which to use, by case | What you want | Use | |---|---| | customers who bought in the last 30 days | shared audience | | customers with an order still open | shared audience | | customers who have spent above a threshold | shared audience | | customers of one connected store | shared audience | | customers who have never written to us | shared audience | | customers we decided are VIP | label | | customers who asked not to be contacted | label | | the thirty people from last week's event | label, applied in bulk | | a one-off question you will not ask again | a filter, unsaved | ## A worked example You want a monthly offer to good customers who are not wholesale accounts. "Good customers" is describable: *Visible spend (SAR) — more than — 1000*. That is a shared audience. "Wholesale" is a decision: your team knows which accounts those are. That is the `wholesale` label. Lynomia Chat has no "exclude these" option on a campaign, so you cannot subtract the label from the audience. Add a condition to the audience instead — contact labels are a filter field, so *Labels — not equal to — wholesale* joined with **and** does it, inside the audience, once. ## Both are recipient sources A campaign takes labels and shared audiences together, and each contact receives it once however many of them they are in. So choosing correctly costs nothing at the point of sending — the cost is paid earlier, in whether the group is still right by the time you send. ## Limits - Nothing maintains a label for you. No rule, job or schedule anywhere adds or removes a contact label. - Nothing writes an audience's membership onto contacts, either. There is no synchronisation in either direction. - A personal audience cannot be used by a campaign or a rule. Only shared ones can. - Label names are stored in lower case, must be at least two characters, and cannot contain spaces. - Deleting a label removes it from everything carrying it, with no undo. Deleting an audience removes only its conditions. ## Related - [Shared audiences](shared-audiences) - [Labels](labels) - [WhatsApp campaigns](whatsapp-campaigns) - [Automation rules](automation-rules) - [Contacts](contacts) - [Bulk actions](bulk-actions) ## If it does not work **My campaign to a label found no recipients.** The label is on conversations, not contacts. Open it under **Contacts → Tagged with** — an empty page is the answer. Apply it to the contacts from the contacts list. **I built the filter but cannot find it tomorrow.** An applied filter is not saved. Use **Save as audience**. **I cannot see the audience I need in the campaign form.** It is personal. An administrator has to share it. **I want a rule that fires when a contact gets a label.** That does not exist. Describe the same people as a shared audience and have the rule test the audience instead.