Creating a Retargeting Audience with Contact Warmth or Contact Activity – Propensity

What this is

Retargeting audiences let you build a new audience from the contacts in your campaigns, based on how they have engaged. You can build one in two ways:

Contact Warmth: creates a new Account List or Contact List and associated Buying Circles based on Contact Warmth (Hot, Warm, or Cold) from selected campaigns.
Contact Activity: creates a fixed list based on recorded engagement, using Propensity Display Network (PDN) impressions, PDN clicks, and website visits that meet the thresholds you choose.

When to use this

Use Contact Warmth when you want to:

Re-engage contacts based on engagement level (Hot, Warm, Cold)
Create a follow-up campaign targeting only high-intent contacts
Segment contacts from one or multiple campaigns based on warmth
Quickly generate a buying circle based on engagement signals

Use Contact Activity when you want to:

Find contacts who reached a specific number of PDN impressions, PDN clicks, or website visits
Combine several activity thresholds in one audience, such as contacts with at least two PDN clicks and at least one website visit
Focus on activity from a specific time period

Creating an audience with Contact Warmth

Requirements

The following are required to create a Contact Warmth retargeted audience:

A name for the new audience
At least one campaign
At least one buying circle
A warmth type
At least one warmth value (Hot, Warm, or Cold)

The selected campaign must contain contacts with assigned warmth values.

List Type

When creating a contact-level retargeting audience, you can choose between two list types:

Static: Returns a fixed set of contacts based on your selection. The number of contacts will match what is shown in the Leads tab of the campaign.
Active: Dynamically updates the audience and may filter out contacts over time, resulting in a different total count.

If you need the audience size to match exactly with the campaign (1:1), use Static.

How to create a Contact Warmth audience

Navigate to My Audiences
Click New Audience
Select Retarget
Choose Contact Warmth Retargeting
Enter a name for your new audience
Select one or more campaigns
Select the relevant buying circles
Select the list type
Choose the warmth type
Select at least one warmth value
Click Create

The system builds the Account List and associated Buying Circle.

What to expect

The system first builds the Account List
It then builds the associated Buying Circle
The final contact count will match the selected campaigns and warmth filters, with contacts automatically deduplicated across buying circles
Once complete, the new Account List and Buying Circle will appear in your workspace

This follows the standard account list building process.

Buying Circles filter behavior

The Buying Circle dropdown shows only buying circles actively used in the selected campaign. Buying circles not attached to plays will not appear, since no warmth data is associated with them.

Contact vs. account-centric

Propensity supports two warmth models:

Account-centric (scores engagement across the account)
Contact-centric (scores engagement at the individual level)

When creating a retargeted audience, the selected warmth type determines which scoring model is used for filtering. For consistency, ensure the warmth type selected here matches the warmth model configured in the ABM campaign.

Important considerations

Campaign selection dynamically filters the available buying circles
Contacts are deduplicated across buying circles. If a contact exists in multiple selected buying circles, it will appear only once in the final audience
If All campaigns is selected, the system prioritizes contacts from the most recently ended campaigns first when applying the 100,000 contact limit

Creating an audience with Contact Activity

Contact Activity filters help you create an audience based on a contact's recorded engagement. You can combine impressions, clicks, and website visits to find contacts who meet the activity thresholds you choose.

How to create a Contact Activity audience

Navigate to My Audiences, click New Audience, and select Retarget Contacts
Select Contact Activity Retargeting
Enter a File Name for the audience
Under Select Campaigns and Select Buying Circles, choose the campaigns and buying circles you want to use for activity.
- Both default to All, and the buying circle options are based on the campaigns you select
Under Contact activity, add a rule: choose an Activity (Impressions, Clicks, or Website Visits), a Comparison, such as At least or Equals, and enter a Count
- (Optional) To start from a Contact Activity audience you created before, select it under Reuse criteria from a fixed audience. This fills in the campaigns, buying circles, activity rules, date range, and Only Include Previous Cohort setting from that audience. You can change any of them. The file name is prefilled with the original name followed by "copy".
Select Add rule to add more rules if needed. Contacts must meet every rule to be included. Select Remove to delete a rule
Choose a Date range (UTC): All Time, Last 7 Days, Last 30 Days, Last 90 Days, or Custom
Select Create Audience

For example, you could create an audience of contacts with at least two Propensity Display Network clicks and at least one website visit during the last 30 days.

How activity is counted

Impressions and clicks use recorded contact-level PDN activity from the selected campaigns and buying circles
Website visits count the contact's visits across your workspace during the selected date range. They are not limited to the selected campaigns or buying circles
You can use Only Include Previous Cohort when you have selected campaigns with a previous cohort. This applies the campaign and buying circle selection to that earlier cohort. Website visits still follow the date range you selected

Limits for both methods

A maximum of 100,000 contacts can be included in a retargeted audience
Large lists may take longer than expected to process