Not every contact is necessarily an appropriate candidate for a campaign, so you have the ability to exclude select contacts from a campaign.

The Exclude feature gives you two "exclusion" options:

• Do not include in campaign
• Remove from campaign

The next section describes the differences in these options so that you can understand which is the better choice for excluding contacts from your campaign.

Exclusion options

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

Targeting contacts for exclusion

Both of the exclusion options give you the ability to select which contacts you want to exclude. The exclusion can be based on either or both of the following criteria.

• Individual email address
• Association to one or more Target Groups

TIP: Both of these targeting options are available with both of the exclusion options that are described below.

Do not include in campaign

When the campaign looks for contacts to add, it will exclude all contacts who meet any of the following criteria that have been set.

This option excludes from the campaign contacts who:

• are associated to one or more of the selected Target Groups
• are specifically listed by their individual email addresses

You can set both of the above criteria for your exclusions.

NOTE: This exclusion could be temporary. If, at some point, a contact no longer matches the exclusion criteria that is/are set, that contact is then added to the campaign within five minutes of them no longer matching the exclusion criteria.

Remove from campaign

This option is limited to a campaign that is currently running (it's listed on the Active tab of the Campaigns list page). The campaign has to be deactivated, whereupon, it "moves" to the In Progress tab where it can be edited.

When this option is set, the campaign looks for current participants who match any of the following criteria that have been set and immediately moves those contacts to the campaign's Stop step.

This option removes from the campaign contacts who:

• are associated to one or more of the selected Target Groups
• are specifically listed by their individual email addresses

You can set both of the above criteria for your exclusions.

NOTE: This removal is permanent. Contacts who are permanently removed will not be re-added to the campaign at a later date, even if they no longer match the exclusion criteria.

Exclude and remove contacts

To exclude or remove contacts from a campaign:

1. Navigate to the Activate tab in Campaign Designer.
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 associated system behaviors that differ.

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.