# Is it possible to target returning visitors who never signed up?

Asked by nsandvik on 2025-10-08. Tags: cql, audiences.

The user story I need to cover: as a returning anonymous visitor, I should see
a sign-up incentive instead of the generic hero. Signed-up users should never
see it.

I found `user is returning` and `user is anonymous` in the docs as separate
examples. Can they be combined in one audience? And does "anonymous" actually
mean never identified, or just not identified in this session

## 2 answers

### Answer from lena_b (2025-10-08)

They combine directly, behavioral conditions are just boolean expressions:

```cql
user is returning and user is anonymous
```

For the inverse (people who did create an account) there is `user has signed
up`, so you could run a separate experience for them with different copy.

Anonymous means the user has not been identified via croct.identify. Croct
still builds a full behavioral profile for anonymous visitors, so returning,
pageview history, cart abandonment and so on all work before anyone logs in.
When they eventually sign up, identity resolution links the anonymous journey
to the identified profile, so the history is not lost.

### Answer from Josh Whitfield (2025-10-09)

If "returning" turns out to be too broad for the incentive, frequency
conditions give you finer control. We ended up using:

```cql
user's stats' sessions is greater than 3 and user is anonymous
```

so the nudge only hits genuinely engaged visitors. There is also stuff like
`user has abandoned a cart at least 2 times` if you want to catch a specific
behavior rather than raw visit counts. Worth experimenting with the threshold,
our conversion on the incentive roughly doubled going from "any return visit"
to "3+ sessions".

#### Reply from nsandvik (2025-10-09)

Went with sessions > 3 in the end. The basic combined condition matched
more people than I expected.