Not every contact is necessarily appropriate for a campaign. The Exclude feature gives you two "exclusion" options:

• Do not include in campaign
• Remove from campaign

Despite them sounding very similar, there are differences that you should understand in order to choose the appropriate option for your campaign.

Exclusion options

This section describes the exclusion options to help you decide which is right for you.

Do not include in campaign

When the campaign looks for contacts to add, those contacts who are associated to the chosen Target Groups and/or listed email addresses are excluded.

• This is a temporary exclusion.
  • If, at some point, a contact no longer matches this criteria, that contact is then added to the campaign within five minutes of the change in criteria.

Remove from campaign

Contacts in the campaign who match the chosen Target Groups and/or listed email addresses are immediately moved to the campaign's Stop step.

• This is a permanent exclusion.

Targeting contacts

Both of these options allow you to target which contacts you want to exclude:

• based on email addresses and/or
• based on association with Target Groups.

TIP: Both of the targeting options are available with both of the exclusion options.

Exclude contacts

To exclude contacts from a campaign:

1. Navigate to the Campaign Designer > Activate tab.
2. Set the various activation options on the dialog, and click Edit next to the Exclude field.

The Exclude Subscribers dialog opens.

3. At the top of the dialog, click the If someone matches the exclusion criteria dropdown and make a selection.

TIP: A description of the selected option displays below the dropdown. Feel free to choose one, then the other, and read the descriptions to be sure you're selecting the appropriate option.

NOTE: The set-up steps are identical; it's the subsequent system behavior that differs.

4. Use the checkboxes to set whether to exclude contacts based on Target Groups, email addresses, or both.

• • Target Groups - click the Folder and Target dropdowns and select Target Groups for exclusion or removal. Click Add to List and Remove from List to manage them.
  • Email addresses - in the field, specify (type or paste) up to 15 addresses (one per line) for exclusion or removal. 

5. Click Update.

The campaign will exclude contacts based on your settings.