Analyzing Audiences with Performance Insights in IBM Watson

photo of the author Kristin Connors

Updated 5.28.2019

If you’re already familiar with the top five classic reports in Watson, you’re ready to tackle the relatively new Performance Insights reporting tool. The first thing you’ll likely notice in Performance Insights are the brightly colored graphs, or widgets, that fill the screen. They’re much more visual than classic reports, but the most unique feature is the ability to learn about your audiences. You can analyze how an email performed for groups of people such as season pass-holders, condo owners, past guests, etc.

Let’s dig in and find out how to set up audience analysis.

Create an Audience in Performance Insights

An audience can be any query or contact list you create in Watson. It does not need to be a list or query used as a contact source in mailings.

For example, to see how an email performed for people ages 35 – 44, you might create the following audience:

Create a query or a contact list containing the people who are in this age group.
Open Performance Insights in Watson (found under Reporting).
On the left sidebar, click Audience management.
Click Add audience and select the audience to add to Performance Insights.

Audience Details

Timing – It takes one day for an audience to sync with Performance Insights. Once they are synced, data about this audience will automatically start to populate the report widgets as you send emails.
Not Retroactive – No audience data is included for emails you sent before you added the audience to Performance Insights.
Automatic Updates – Audiences automatically update as new contacts are added, so you do not need to re-sync the audience.

View Audience Data on the Report

After syncing audiences, you can customize individual Performance Insights widgets, or the entire report, to show data for a specific audience.

To customize a widget:

In the upper right corner of the widget, click the three horizontal dots.
From the drop-down list, select Edit Widget.
Next to Secondary Dimension, click the pencil icon.
To add an audience to a widget, select the audience name. The audience data appears in the selected widget.

To add an audience as a filter to the entire report:

At the top of the report, click the filter icon and select Audience Name.
On the right, select the specific audience for which you want to see data. The report will show data only for the audience you selected.

Share the Report

Updated 5.28.2019….IBM recently added the ability to share a report via a link, so you can share the report with anyone, including non-Watson users. Click the three dots in the upper right corner next to Menu and select Share.

Updated 3.18.2019….IBM recently released the ability to export a report to PDF so you can share it with colleagues. Click the three dots in the upper right corner next to Menu and select Export PDF