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Why can't I do age-based targeting?
Why can't I do age-based targeting?
Monique Clark avatar
Written by Monique Clark
Updated this week

Peptalkr adheres strictly to Privacy Principles and recommendations of the OAIC - this includes limiting data we handle to limit risk/exposure to your patient data.

You may have noticed when creating segments, or setting up triggers that you cannot filter/target by age or by year of birth.

The marketing list does contain the date of birth (so you can send happy birthday emails), but the year of birth is set to a default value of 1970 - this is just an arbitrary year.

Why is it like this?

When we designed Peptalkr, we consulted with Cliniko on security best practices. Cliniko strongly recommended we do not store the 'year of birth' of patients - as this is potentially sensitive identifying information about a patient that poses risk if your data was exposed (i.e. by a malicious actor or someone accessing your account unauthorised).

As such, the marketing list does not contain the year of birth, and so age-based segmentation is not currently possible.

The same applies to triggers and SMS - there is no age/date of birth filter for the same reason.

Is there a workaround?

Yes. We recommend you use Appointment Types or Categories to differentiate between essential age groups - for example, Children should have their own Child appointment types/categories. The same could be said for Seniors or other age groups that require specialised targeting.

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If specific appointment types are not possible for some reason - the only other workaround for the timebeing is to do an export of patients from Cliniko, and manually import them into a Custom List for whatever email you're trying to send.

However, this workaround is only suitable for one off campaigns - we don't recommend using it for any automated journeys as custom lists do not automatically sync with Cliniko, it'll just be a static list.

We are working on a solution to this - namely adding a new field for 'Age range' and placing patients into an age bracket without storing their actual year of birth. It is not scheduled just yet, but it is planned for development.

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