Exclude contacts from list that we are already in communication with so they are not enrolled

[CCoates-Hussa]

Hello, 

Appreciate any help. 

We are currently running email campaigns going out to our personas. We do not want contacts that we are already in discussion with recieving these. 

I initially thought to add a filter onto the list we use to enrol into email sequence, but can't seem to figure it out. 

I thought to add a property to 'lead status' of 'in discussion' and assign this to all relevant contacts, then exclude this property to the list. This way they are not being included in the list, but options are 'is any of', 'is none of' etc. 

When testing this- I have assigned this property to a relevant contact, tried the filter and they are still included on the list. 

Can someone please advise? Or suggest another way.

Thanks in advance. 

[AdamLPW · Accepted solution]

Hi @CCoates-Hussa,

Can you share a screenshot of your list filter criteria?  

You should be able to use "Lead status is none of 'In Discussion'" - is this what you've already tried?  

As above, should be able to advise better, having seen a screenshot of your filter.  I'd like to think what you're looking to do is definitely achievable.  You could also try filtering based on activity, either instead of or as well as your lead status property, just to ensure that clients who are already engaging with you are excluded even if nobody sets the property to "in discussion".  

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

Hi @CCoates-Hussa There are many ways to manage lists, but one I have found to keep things fairly simple with filtering is to separate your INCLUDE and EXCLUDE lists.

This provides the most flexibility and reduces the total number of lists - you'd also have to have a really robust naming convention to account for all the possibilities (a good naming convention will also help here).

For example, these would be your INCLUDE lists:

- Persona A

- Persona B

- Persona C

and these could be your EXCLUDE lists:

- Leads - In Discussion

- Unsubscribed

- Bounced

For Unsubscribed, Bounce, etc. where you would always want to EXCLUDE, I use a naming convention that specifically says, "EXCLUDE - Unsubscribed" to avoid it being used as an INCLUDE.

You can also combine these into a single list (I keep them separate for reporting), but this is what the filters would look like:

The nice thing about doing this way, technically, you could email your "Leads - In Discussion" as an INCLUDE list if the need arose (a major event like a pandemic per se) and still be able to customize the message.

Rather than building complex individual lists, I think of it as building a series of larger lists that can be used to INCLUDE and EXCLUDE for specific use cases. It also removes the complexity from building individual lists if you aren't very familiar with the filters yet.

Then when you set up your email, workflow, filter views, etc. you could choose which lists to INCLUDE and which to EXCLUDE.

So for your email campaigns, you would send each email by persona like this:

INCLUDE = Persona A

EXCLUDE = Unsubscribed, Bounced, and Leads - in Discussion

If you can't get this method to work or want to stick with a single list, as @AdamLPW a screenshot would really help to troubleshoot the filters.

[AdamLPW · Accepted solution]

Hi @CCoates-Hussa,

Can you share a screenshot of your list filter criteria?  

You should be able to use "Lead status is none of 'In Discussion'" - is this what you've already tried?  

As above, should be able to advise better, having seen a screenshot of your filter.  I'd like to think what you're looking to do is definitely achievable.  You could also try filtering based on activity, either instead of or as well as your lead status property, just to ensure that clients who are already engaging with you are excluded even if nobody sets the property to "in discussion".