"And" / "Or" discrepancy in list building with exclusions

[Ad3pinto]

I am building a list with 2 basic criteria (is not one property, another property is known) followed by 3 list exclusions. Originally i had it set up with a single "block" of criteria, with the 2 basic ones I mentioned and a single string of "and" criteria for the lists ("is not a member of x AND is not a member of y AND is not a member of z").

If I was building this based on INclusion of lists I know I'd need to use the OR function and separate out the lists because i'm not asking that the contact be in all 3 lists simultaneously, I just want anyone from any of the 3 lists. But being an exlusion i thought the AND function would work. Technically it is asking that the contact not be in all 3 of them, but I thought that should not matter, since being in any one would "kick out" anyway, which is what I want.

Yet as a failsafe I decided to reset it with OR functions, cloning the block and making one for each of the 3 lists i wanted to exclude, and in doing so the list added a significant number of contacts. I thought it would be exactly the same if I'd done it right.

I think I am going to use my original list as described above since it's smaller and would seem more precise for that reason alone, but I'd love to konw what is going on here, can anyone help unwind this?  

[karstenkoehler]

Hello @Ad3pinto,

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@Ad3pinto wrote:

But being an exlusion i thought the AND function would work. Technically it is asking that the contact not be in all 3 of them, but I thought that should not matter, since being in any one would "kick out" anyway, which is what I want.

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If you use the OR operator for the "is not a member of ... list" criterion, a contact will enter your list as long as the contact is not in all three of the lists at once.

Let's think of the list criteria as a bouncer and a contact is in list 1 but not in list 2 and not in list 3. The bouncer will ask "Are you in list 1?", contact says "Yes", bouncer says "Well, you can't get in". Bouncer follows-up by asking "Are you also in list 2?", contact says "No", bouncer says "Well, you can get in after all".

Being a little bit more seriously, a contact will enter as long as this contact is not in one of the lists. Because then the he or she will enter through this loophole.

The difference between AND and OR is also explained here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/lists/difference-between-and-vs-or-logic-in-lists-and-workflows

Hope this helps!

[Ad3pinto]

This makes sense, I appreciate your response Karsten. While this is intuitive the way you have described, when I put the OR function in place, it should "kick out" more users, in theory, but in fact the list ended up being much larger. 

[karstenkoehler]

Could you post a screenshot of the list criteria of the AND version and of the OR version, including the list size? (blackening out the list names and individual-related information if needed)

[Ad3pinto]

Sure, the OR one is not complete but it's the 3rd block is the same in setup as what's shown. 

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Thanks @Ad3pinto, I've noticed an error in reasoning in my earlier post which I've now corrected.

A contact will be let into your OR list if he or she is not in list 1 OR not in list 2 OR not in list 3. If the contact is in list 1 but not in list 2 or 3, then he or she will get into the list. Because he or she's not in list 2 or 3.

Effectively, the OR list is only suppressing the overlap of list 1+2+3.

If you want to work around this brain teaser, I'd suggest that you build an overall suppression list which contains contacts from list 1 or 2 or 3 and then you suppress this one master list.

Hope this helps!