Creating and Managing Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are built from segments. When you create a mailing list and attach one or more segments to it, the list automatically updates in real time as new contacts match the segment criteria. You do not need to recreate or refresh the list. This means a single well-defined segment can power recurring campaigns without ongoing list maintenance.

Before You Start

Before creating a mailing list, confirm that you have at least one saved segment in your Database. If you have not yet created segments, see Building & Managing Segments.

Creating a Mailing List

To create a mailing list:

1. Click Interaction
2. From the Mailing Suite Management screen, click "+ Create New Mailing List" under Your Contact Lists. This opens the Create New Mailing List form.

This opens the Create Mailing List form. Complete the following fields:

• Mailing List Name: Enter a unique name for the list. Names can only contain letters, numbers, spaces, underscores, and hyphens. If the Create List button is greyed out, check that the name does not contain other characters.
• Notes: Optional. Add notes for yourself or your team describing the purpose of the list or the criteria used to create it.
• Enable list: This toggle controls whether the list is active. Leave it enabled to use the list for campaigns.
• Select Segment(s): Choose one or more segments to attach to the mailing list. First select a folder from the top dropdown (the default is "Untagged," which contains segments that have not been organized into folders). Then select a segment from the dropdown below.

You can select multiple segments. Contacts from all selected segments are combined into a single mailing list.

If you realize mid-setup that the contact or segment you need does not yet exist, you can create it without leaving this flow. Click "+ Create Contact" to add a contact who is not yet in your Database, or "+ Create Segment" to define new segment criteria.

Click Create List to save.

Viewing and Modifying Mailing Lists

To view or edit existing mailing lists:

1. Click Interaction
2. Click "Edit Mailing List" 

From this screen you can toggle a list between Active and Inactive using the status switch. Only Active lists are available when scheduling email campaigns, so toggling a list inactive is a way to take it out of rotation without deleting it.

The overflow menu (three dots) to the right of each list offers three options: Edit to change the list name, notes, or attached segments; Move to Folder to organize lists into groups; and View to see the contacts currently included.

How Mailing Lists Stay Updated

Mailing lists update in real time. When a new contact is added to the Database and matches the criteria of a segment attached to a mailing list, that contact is automatically added to the list. You do not need to manually refresh or recreate the list. The same is true in reverse: if a contact's field values change so they no longer match the segment, they are removed from the list.

What's Next

With your mailing list ready, you can build the email that will go out to it. See Building and Designing Email Templates to design the message, or Adding a Contact to a Mailing List by Updating Field Values if you need to bring a specific contact onto a list by adjusting their data.