The Power of Exclude Lists

Exclude lists may seem like they have a straightforward use case, but there are ways to utilize this feature in your Single Email and Nurture Campaigns to make your life a little easier.  Using exclude lists strategically allows you to work more efficiently and streamline your workflows. 

Simplify the List Building Process

One of the most common situations that the Services & Support team at Sugar hears from customers is “I want to send to everyone except for…”.  In Sugar Market, you have the option to choose from custom lists (distribution, report, preference, etc.) or marketing lists (campaign engagement, nurture participation, landing page responses, etc.) to include or exclude from your campaigns.  The lists that you exclude from the campaign will always trump the included lists.  If someone happens to be on both lists, they will not receive your campaign. 

Rather than trying to build one list that accounts for everyone, you can use multiple lists together to ensure the correct leads/contacts receive the information from your campaign.  Here are some examples of situations where we opted to use multiple lists that we already have, instead of creating a new list for a campaign:

• I want to send a campaign to everyone in California, but I don’t want to include current customers…
  • It’s likely that I already have a list of leads in California and a list of current customers. Rather than making a new list with both filters (including and excluding), I can use my ‘California’ list as an include and my ‘Current Customers’ list as an exclude.
• I want to resend my webinar invite, but I don’t want to include anyone who has already registered for the event…
  • Use the ‘Event’ type list for the webinar session for the include and exclude list. Use your recipients filters to narrow this down for each.
• I don’t want anyone active in a nurture to also receive my weekly updates
  • Use the ‘Nurture’ type list for each active nurture as exclude lists. Use your recipients filter to exclude all active participants from your Weekly Update.

Simplify your Nurture Workflows

It is very easy to overcomplicate your nurture flow.  Often users build logic into a nurture to determine who should continue and who should not, but you can save time and effort by eliminating those steps & simply excluding individuals using a list.  Here are some examples of situations where we used lists to remove active individuals from a nurture based on the criteria of an exclude list:

• I want someone removed from my prospect nurture when they become engaged with Sales…
  • Instead of using conditional logic to end their path, use a list to perform the logic for you. You will need to create a dynamic list to exclude that filters for the criteria, and when an individual meets the criteria that adds them to the list, they will be removed from the nurture.
• I want to nurture my prospects to encourage them to sign up for my webinar…
  • Instead of using conditional logic to check for form engagement to end their path, use an ‘Event’ type list to perform the logic for you. Use the ‘Events – Registered’ list type for your webinar as an exclude list.  Once the individual registers, they will be removed from the nurture.

Target Content Based on Preferences

Preference lists are a great way to make sure that you are targeting content at the people who are interested in receiving it.  There are a few different ways to set up preference options within Sugar Market, but if you are using the Suppression Lists available on the global unsubscribe page, then you will have those lists created and available to you to use as campaign lists. 

Using your subscriber lists in combination allows you to include those who wish to receive that communication and those you think should receive it, while excluding those who do not wish to receive it.  Here is an example of a situation where we used suppression lists to ensure we were abiding by the individual’s preferences for communications:

• I offer the preference of receiving communications about upcoming webinars…
  • Some leads/contacts have opted out of receiving communications about webinars
  • I also have a list of prospects and customers whose industry relates to the webinar topic that I would like to invite.
    • Include: Industry List & Previous Registrants
    • Exclude: Event Opt-Outs

In Conclusion

Using a combination of lists to include and exclude recipients can save you from wasting precious time and the eventual headache you may endure.  Don’t hesitate to test out different combinations and even create suppression list options if you don’t have them already.