Personalize content with an audience

In this module, you will learn how to apply audiences to content in Optimizely CMS so that different visitors see experiences tailored to their segment. You’ll see how to embed personalized content within pages or blocks, preview what each audience will see, and use fallback content logic when no audience matches.

After completing this module, you should be able to:

• Identify where in the UI you can personalize content using audiences
• Apply audiences to content in both the rich-text editor and in content regions
• Preview personalized content before publishing
• Use fallback content to ensure that all visitors see something, even those not matching any audience
• Understand how audiences can be used for targeting in campaigns and commerce scenarios

Applying Audiences in the Rich-Text Editor

When editing a page, select the specific content you want to personalize (text, image, or block) then use the Personalized Content option in the editor toolbar. This opens the audience picker, where you select one or more audiences. Once assigned, the content is saved under those audience criteria. You can then use the Preview > Audiences mode to see how the content will appear for each audience before it’s published.

Applying Audiences in Content Areas

If your site uses structured content regions (outside the rich-text editor), you can right-click (via a context menu) on a block or region and choose Personalize. This allows you to assign one or more audiences to that block or region. Again, you use Preview mode to verify how those audience-specific versions will render.

Designing Fallbacks & Groups

• When a visitor matches more than one audience, personalized recommendation groups help manage content so you don’t show duplicate content.
• You should include fallback content (i.e., content shown when no audience matches) in your personalization groups to ensure no user sees a blank section.
• The order of blocks in a personalized group doesn’t matter, but placing the fallback content last makes it clearer how the flow should operate.

Audience Use in Campaigns & Commerce

Audiences can also be applied to Commerce campaigns. For instance, you might define an audience of "Returning customers" (e.g. people with 2+ orders in the last 45 days) and then restrict a discount campaign to only that group.

SEO & Indexing Considerations

Personalized content may impact how search engines index your pages. The content crawled depends on how the audience criteria are evaluated during the crawl. For example, if you have a UK audience rule, the crawler may index the UK variation if its IP falls within the UK. If not, it may index the default variation. Because of this, it’s good practice to include Everyone content in personalization groups so search engines always see something to index.

Watch the video walkthrough to learn how to personalize with audiences:​

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