Groups let you segment your community to deliver targeted animations and activations to the right members.
To access to this feature or if you have any questions, need help, or want to know how Groups can support your community strategy, contact the Brand Communities team.
Group creation and deletion are handled by the Brand Communities team. Reach out to your contact to set up new groups based on your needs.
What are Groups
Groups are the segmentation layer of your Brand Community. You can create named audiences and use them consistently across all your activation tools: missions, contests, channels, product testing, and communications.
By directing your activations to well-defined audiences, you increase participation rates and get more return from each campaign: more UGC, more relevant feedback, and less effort spent on the wrong members.
What Groups are not:
- A temporary targeting element
Groups are persistent audience segments, use them to structure your community over time. - A community space
To give a group its own space, configure a channel and restrict its access to that group. - A sub-community
Members of different groups share the same community platform.
Group types
Groups combine a visibility setting and an access type. These are defined at creation depending on your needs or use case and cannot be changed afterwards.
Visibility | Access | How members join |
Visible | Open | Members join freely from their profile |
Visible | On application | Members apply, admin accepts or denies |
Visible | On condition | Auto-assigned when conditions are met |
Hidden | On condition | Auto-assigned when conditions are met |
Hidden | Handpicked | Admin manually selects members |
Differences between Visible and Hidden group in the community:
- Visible groups appear in the community's discover flow. Members can see they exist and, depending on the access type, choose to join or apply.
- Hidden groups are fully invisible to non-members: they do not appear anywhere in the community. Members can only see a hidden group in the My groups section of their own profile.
Access the groups listing
In Configuration > Groups, the listing is available to all admins and sorted alphabetically. Each row displays:
- Name and icon of the group
- Visibility
- Access type
- Member count
Group detail page
Click a group to open its detail page. The header shows the icon, name, description, visibility and access type. This is also where you can directly manage a group or its members.
The group detail page will be displayed differently depending on the access type:
The detail page for open groups includes a tab that displays all members currently enrolled in that group.
From there, you can manually add members, view their profiles, send them messages, and manage the group.
The detail page for on application groups is divided into two tabs: one to manage applications, the other to manage group members.
From there, you can manually accept or deny members, view their profiles, send them messages, remove members and manage the group.
Applications tab:
Members tab:
The detail page for on condition groups includes a tab that displays all members currently assigned in that group depending on the defined conditions.
From there, you can view members' profiles, send them messages, and manage the group.
The detail page for handpicked groups includes a tab that displays all members currently enrolled in that group.
From there, you can manually add/remove members, see their profiles, send them messages & manage the group.
Edit a group
Admins can update the name, icon and description of any group at any time. To do so:
- Open the group detail page and click on Edit
- Update the name, icon, and/or description of the group
- Click Save to confirm, or Cancel to return without saving changes
Visibility and access type cannot be changed after a group is created. If you need help, contact the Brand Communities team.
Manage members
The detail page shows a pre-filtered member list with the following columns:
- User ID
- Profile picture and username
- Joining date
Action buttons: See profile (opens in a new tab) and Message (opens the inbox in a new tab)
Depending on the access type, you can also:
Adding members manually is available for Open and Handpicked groups.
- Click + Add members on the group detail page
- Select members from the pop-up (pre-filtered to users not already in the group), you can select in bulk
- Click Confirm selection
Individual removal of members is available for all group types except "On condition". In "On condition" groups, a member is automatically removed when their profile no longer meets the group's access requirements.
From the members list, you can click Remove next to the member you want to remove from the group.
For On application groups, the member management view is split into two tabs:
Applications tab
This tab shows the number of pending applications and displays user ID, profile picture, username and application date for each applicant. From this tab, you can:
Accept the application
Deny the application
- Use
Members tab
This tab is the equivalent of the detail group page, it shows all accepted members.
Group deletion
When a group is deleted, all linked missions and contests will be soft-deleted (members' history and points are preserved, but they will disappear from the list of active missions and contests).
The permissions associated with the channel will be removed, and the channel will be closed.
Target activations with groups
A targeting condition is available in mission and permission configuration: Is in the group
With this condition:
- Only members of the selected group can see and complete the targeted mission
- An Exclusive label is displayed on the mission for eligible members
- Non-members cannot see the mission at all
- Only one group targeting condition is allowed per mission or permission (selected from a dropdown list of active groups, sorted alphabetically)
- No start or end date can be set on this condition
The targeting selector lets you restrict a contest to a specific group or leave it open to all members.
- Select a group from the dropdown (only one group can be targeted per contest), or leave it as All users
- Targeted contests display an Exclusive label for eligible members
When creating a By invitation only product testing campaign, you can use groups to filter the member list and target the right testers.
When the invitation table is displayed, use the Groups filter to narrow the list down to members of a specific group. Select the members you want to invite from the filtered results.
The Groups filter is only available at the invitation step of By invitation only campaigns. It is not available for open testing campaigns.
When an Access to channel permission is configured with an Is in the group condition, only group members can view and interact with that channel.
Non-members see a clear message explaining the access requirement. Access is removed immediately when a member leaves or is removed from the group.
Channel visibility in the menu depends on the channel's visibility configuration, independently of the group setting.
Notifications
User joins a group (Open) example: | User automatically joins (On condition) example: |
User leaves a group (Open) explanation: | User automatically leaves (On condition) explanation: |
This notification is for informational purposes and isn't a rejection. | This notification is for informational purposes only and is not a rejection. It may indicate new opportunities for the member (for example, if they move from being a nano to a micro-influencer). |
Application accepted by admin (On application) | Application rejected by admin (On application) explanation: |
| This notification is for informational purposes and can help members find other groups that are a better fit for them. |
User added by admin (Handpicked) example: | User removed by admin (Open, On application, Handpicked) explanation: |
| This notification is for informational purposes and can help members find other groups that are a better fit for them. |