Exclusion Lists

Overview

An Exclusion List consists of individuals who should not be targeted in your marketing Campaign, such as email addresses from competitors, for example. The Exclusion List automatically overrides all other criteria, including Filters, Seed Lists, and Proofing Groups. For example, if a specific individual appears within an Exclusion List, and that same person meets the Filter criteria used to define the Campaign audience, that person would still not receive the Campaign message.

Conceptually, an Exclusion List is the opposite of a Seed List. Both groups are designed to override the audience Filter criteria. The system will always send the Campaign message to a recipient on a Seed List, and never send a Campaign message to a recipient on an Exclusion List.

Messaging supports two different types of Exclusion Lists -- Standard and Virtual.

Standard Exclusion Lists

A Standard Exclusion List is populated with recipients that are provided by the user.

Unlike some of the other types of recipient groups in Cheetah Digital (like Proofing Groups or Alert Groups), Cheetah Digital does not allow you to type in the individuals who are to comprise a Standard Exclusion List. Instead, the system assumes that the individuals to be excluded are contained within an external text file that you must then import into the system. Therefore, before you can define a Standard Exclusion List in Cheetah Digital, you must first have this text file created and stored in an accessible location. This file must be saved as a text file (.txt), and must contain ONLY the properly-formatted relevant contact information.

The contact information contained in the file depends on the marketing channel being utilized:

  • For the Email channel, the import file must contain only email addresses.

  • For the SMS channel, the import file must contain only phone numbers.

  • For the Push Notification channel, the import file must contain only Push Registration IDs.

Note: Standard Exclusion Lists are available only for Email, Push Notification, and SMS Text channels.

You can also manage your Standard Exclusion Lists through the Exclusion Lists API. This API endpoint allows you to retrieve information about a Standard Exclusion List, to manage the recipients within a Standard Exclusion List, or to define a new Standard Exclusion List.

Virtual Exclusion Lists

A Virtual Exclusion List is populated with recipients based on parameters that the user defines.

Virtual Exclusion Lists are used by the Messaging's Load and Send feature. Load and Send allows you to import "campaign-ready" files containing all the information needed to build and deploy the Campaign (such as personalization fields, and contact information like Email Address). This data is loaded into a special table dedicated specifically to the Load and Send feature, rather than into the regular relational database tables. Client who execute Campaigns from both the Load and Send feature, and from a relational database, must define a Virtual Exclusion List in order to synchronize consumer opt-out information between the two Campaign methods.

A Virtual Exclusion List is defined by selecting the primary source table for your relational database Campaigns. From that table, you select an "Email" field, and an associated Sender Profile. The system will then create an Exclusion List comprised of all the recipients on that table who have an "ineligible" Sender Profile Status ID Code. You must assign this Exclusion List to your Load and Send Campaign, in order to suppress those recipients from that Campaign.

For Load and Send Campaigns, you're required to assign a Virtual Exclusion List to the Campaign, if you select a "promotional" Sender Profile (that is, a Sender Profile intended to be used for promotional marketing messages, rather than for operational messages like shipping notifications). When you launch the Load and Send Campaign, the system will verify that you've assigned at least one Virtual Exclusion List; if not, an error message is displayed.

Access

The Exclusion Lists screen is accessible by the following method:

  • From the Main menu, select Assets > Execution > Exclusion Lists

Features

 Create a New Standard Exclusion List

Click here

 Create a New Virtual Exclusion List

Click here

 Copy an Exclusion List

Click here

 View or Edit a Standard Exclusion List

Click here

 View or Edit a Virtual Exclusion List

Click here

 Delete an Exclusion List

Click here

 Assign an Exclusion List to a Campaign

Click here