Getting the audience right is the most important part of any campaign. Inrō gives you a few ways to define exactly who receives a campaign and who doesn't.
Who a campaign can reach
A campaign sends only to your Active contacts: people who can currently receive a DM from you. The live count in the audience panel is your reachable, active contacts, not your total follower or contact count. For what makes a contact active, see Understanding Contact Status.
So even when you target "everyone," some contacts won't be in the send: anyone who's inactive, opted out, or outside Instagram's messaging window is left out automatically. There's also a separate billing cap (your monthly activated contacts) that can park extra contacts if a send is very large. See What Are Activated Contacts?.
If a campaign reaches fewer people than you expected and you want to understand why, My Campaign Is Stuck or Not Sending: How to Fix It covers the full list of causes.
The two audience options
You target a campaign in one of two ways:
All reachable contacts sends to every Active contact in your inbox. The count updates on its own, and any contact who becomes unreachable before the send is skipped.
Specific folder(s) or segment(s) gives you precision. Expand either to browse and select: - Folders are manual groupings you create, like "Hot leads" or "Customers." Target them directly. - Segments are saved filter sets from your Contacts view, like "clicked a link in the last 30 days" or "follower count over 10k." Any segment you've saved shows up here.
You can combine folders and segments in one campaign. The count at the bottom reflects the combined audience after duplicates are removed.
Setting exclusions
Expand Don't send campaign to to add folders or segments you want to skip. This removes a subset from an otherwise broad audience without rebuilding the targeting.
A few common patterns:
Send to all reachable contacts, but exclude a "Do not contact" folder.
Send to your "Warm leads" segment, but exclude anyone already in "Customers."
Send to everyone, but exclude a "VIP" folder that gets its own separate campaign.
The 72-hour exclusion rule
At the bottom of the audience panel is a checkbox: Exclude contacts who have received a campaign in the last 72 hours. With it on, anyone who got any campaign in the past three days is removed from this send.
It's worth leaving on for most campaigns. Spacing out your sends keeps your audience from feeling spammed, and because a campaign arrives without the contact asking for it, the frequency should be one they'd welcome.
Building segments for campaign targeting
If you don't have the right segment saved yet, go to Contacts, use the filter panel to build it, then save it. You can filter by activity (clicked a link, booked an appointment, completed a survey), Instagram engagement (commented on a post, replied to a story), folder membership, custom properties, and more.
Segments and filters are a contacts feature with plenty of depth, so for the full toolkit see Segmentation & Filters: Build Smart Audiences. Build your segments there before you start the campaign; it's easier to get filters right when you're not also writing the message.
When the audience locks
This is the part that catches people out. Your audience is resolved and frozen the moment you press send, not while you're editing the draft.
What that means in practice:
Edits before sending count. If you add contacts to a targeted folder or segment while the campaign is still a draft, they'll be in the send (as long as they match and are active when you press send).
Late joiners are left out. Anyone who matches your targeting after you press send does not receive that campaign.
No one gets it twice. A contact can only receive a given campaign once, even if they match more than one targeted folder or segment.
So if your audience is still growing, wait until it's settled before you send, or schedule the send for after it's complete.
Previewing the audience
Before you build the flow, click View contacts to see exactly who's in. Each contact shows with their folder tags, so you can quickly spot anyone unexpected.
🐾 Netsuke's Tips
Tighter audiences almost always win. A campaign to 200 highly relevant contacts beats the same message to 2,000 loosely matched ones.
For a time-sensitive send like a flash sale, check the contact count one more time right before sending. Folder membership can change between drafting and sending.
The Don't send to section protects your best relationships. Excluding a "VIPs" or "Clients" folder from broad campaigns keeps those conversations feeling personal.
Save the segments you reuse (re-engagement, recent buyers, link clickers) so you can target them in one click next time.
What's next?
With your audience set, it's time to build the flow. See Creating Your First Campaign: Step-by-Step to add your first step and set up the sequence your contacts receive.