Templates


Audience	Platform admins, Marketers
Prerequisites	A saved audience A configured sync Or a saved journey

Templates let you reuse common logic across audiences, syncs, and journeys--helping you reduce manual setup—especially for recurring targeting strategies or multi-team workflows.

Learning objectives

After reading this article, you'll know how to:

Create audience, sync, and journey templates
Apply templates to new audiences, syncs, or journeys
Standardize workflows across teams

Types of Templates

Templates are reusable components in Customer Studio. There are three types:

Template type	What it stores	Where it’s used
Audience templates	Filter conditions, traits, and event logic	Audience builder
Sync templates	Destination, identifiers, sync frequency, and behavior	Sync setup
Journey templates	Workflow steps and logic	Journey builders

Templates are workspace-wide and can be created by platform admins or users with appropriate permissions.

Use cases

Use case	Example
Standardized targeting	Create an audience template for “High-value cart abandoners” used across channels
Faster setup	Prefill sync fields for destinations with consistent matching settings
Cross-team coordination	Let marketers safely reuse logic built by analysts or engineers

Audience templates

Create an audience template

Go to Customer Studio → Templates → Audience templates
Click Add audience template
Select a parent model
Define filters, traits, or events like you would when building a normal audience

Leave blank fields where customization is expected—users will be prompted to fill these when applying the template

Name the template and optionally add a description
Click Finish

Apply an audience template

To use an audience template:

Go to Customer Studio → Audiences
Click Add Audience and select a parent model
Open the 3-dot menu and click Add a template (or select a template beneath Start with an audience template)

Select a template with a matching parent model
Fill in any required blanks (highlighted in blue)
Save and finish editing as needed

You can apply more than one audience template to the same audience. Filter logic from each will be combined.

When managing many audiences, it can become tedious to recreate the same sync configuration each time. For example, you may want to sync several Lookalike audiences to Facebook. Hightouch offers a tool called sync templates to streamline your audience sync setup.

Sync templates let you define sync configuration settings once for a particular destination. You create the sync template and then use it to add syncs for each audience requiring the same configuration settings and schedule. You can also use multiple templates for an audience if you're sending it to several destinations.

Create a sync template

Go to Customer Studio → Templates → Sync templates
Click Add sync template
Choose a parent model
Select a destination and configure the sync settings. Follow individual destination configuration instructions →
Click Save

You can now use the sync template for multiple audience syncs.

Apply a sync template during audience creation

Build a new audience and proceed through:
- Select parent model
- Define audience
- Configure audience details
On the Sync to destination (optional) step, select one or more matching sync templates
Click Finish, or Save audience without syncs to skip for now

Apply a sync template to an existing audience

You can only use sync templates for audiences derived from the same parent model as the sync template.

Go to Customer Studio → Audiences
Select an audience
Click Add and choose Sync from the dropdown

In the modal, select one or more Sync templates
Click Add syncs

The sync inherits configuration and scheduling from the template. If the template changes, those changes propagate to all derived syncs.

Unlock sync template fields

You can configure templates to leave certain fields “unlocked,” allowing users to customize them per sync.

Supported destinations include:

Contact your Customer Success team to enable unlocked fields for your workspace.

To unlock a field:

Open the sync template configuration
Toggle Lock this field off

Some fields are dependent on others. Hover over the toggle to see dependencies.

Once the template is attached to an audience, you can override unlocked fields.

You can update these overrides at any time from the sync configuration.

Journey templates

Create a journey template

Go to Customer Studio → Templates → Journey templates
Click Add a journey template
Select a parent model
Enter a template name and optionally add a description
Click Create template

Use a journey template

Go to Customer Studio → Audiences
Select an audience
Click Add and choose Journey from the dropdown
In the modal, enter a name and optional description
Click continue

You’ll be taken to the journey builder with the selected template pre-applied.

Best practices

Use templates for commonly used audiences, especially suppression groups or VIP cohorts
Leave placeholders in audience templates where campaign owners should customize filters
Use sync templates to enforce consistent identifiers and opt-out handling across destinations
Name templates clearly by purpose (e.g., “Klaviyo cart abandon sync” or “Loyalty email segment”)