Select target groups and/or exclude contacts

Choosing the right audience for each campaign is one of the most important decisions you make as an email marketer. In step 2 of the campaign creation flow, you select who receives your campaign, and you can also exclude specific groups from the send. Getting this right means relevant content reaches the right contacts and the wrong ones are never bothered.

Prerequisites

• You have at least one segment, interest, or preference list set up in your account.
• For exclusions: you have a segment or interest that captures the group you want to exclude.

Selecting recipients

You can select one or more segments, interests, or preference lists as recipients. Mix and match as needed. If a contact appears in multiple selected groups, they'll only receive the campaign once, no duplicates.

You can also add specific individual email addresses directly, without needing a segment for them.

Excluding contacts

Exclusions let you remove a specific group from your send, even if those contacts also appear in a selected segment or interest. This is more flexible and easier to maintain than creating a separate segment for every edge case.

To exclude a group, click the Exclude button next to the recipient selection and add the segments or interests you want to block. Any contact in an excluded group will be skipped, regardless of their other group memberships.

Examples

Excluding recent buyers

You're sending a promotional campaign to your full customer segment, but you don't want to contact customers who purchased in the last 30 days. Create a segment of recent buyers and add it as an exclusion. Those contacts are skipped, while everyone else receives the campaign.

Excluding a specific interest group

You're sending an event invitation to a broad audience, but contacts who already have the interest "Attended event" should be excluded. Add that interest as an exclusion and they'll be automatically skipped.

Where to verify your selection

The campaign overview page (step 3) shows both your selected recipients and your excluded groups. Take a moment there to confirm the recipient count looks right before you proceed to the sending options.

Pro tips

• Build reusable exclusion segments for common cases: recent buyers, contacts who already converted, or contacts who received a specific campaign in the last 30 days. Keep them updated and apply them consistently.
• Use interests as exclusions for opt-in category management. If someone is tagged with "Not interested in promotions", that interest can serve as a permanent exclusion from promotional campaigns.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Forgetting to check the recipient count on the overview page. If the number looks unexpectedly high or low, go back to step 2 before sending.
• Creating duplicate segments instead of using exclusions. For example, creating a "Newsletter subscribers who are not recent buyers" segment when you could simply select the newsletter segment and exclude recent buyers. Exclusions are much easier to maintain.
• Not excluding contacts who have already converted. Sending the same promotional content to someone who just bought is at best irrelevant and at worst annoying.

GDPR considerations

Next steps

• Build your standard exclusion segments now, recent buyers, recent converters, contacts who requested reduced frequency, so they're ready to use in your next campaign.
• See "Get started with interest" to learn how interests can double as exclusion criteria.
• After recipient selection, proceed to the campaign overview page to verify your count before sending.

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