How to send to List A, but exclude those people who also appear on List B

[TrustinusLLC]

The subject header says it all.

I've got a giant list of customers in California.

But I've also got a list of "Customers of Client X".

Now I want to do a mailing to my giant California list, but need to EXCLUDE anyone on that list who is also in the "Customers of Client X" list.

Can someone please explain how you can easily do this in Constant Contact? 

I have been using another email provider, and this was simple to do.  You simply selected the California list as a "send to" list, and told the system to exclude anyone on the "Customers of Client X" list.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Michael

[Mixed Greens]

I would love to have the ability to exclude people from receiving an email based upon their membership in a specific list or based on the fact that they received a specific email campaign from me.

We all know that contacts can potentially join multiple lists. I would like the ability to send an email to one group (say, customers who signed up to receive info about our local store events). Then I'd like to send a different email to customers who signed up for our online store emails. But the key is that I don't want to over-contact people, so I'd like to exclude everyone who received the local store email from getting the online store email.

[DadBlaze]

Export the list of emails to which you sent the last campaign.
Export the list of emails in the target category.
Use Excel to sort and purge the duplicates.
Import the "clean list" to a new category.
Mail to that category.

[Mixed Greens]

Good idea. And Access makes that process even easier than Excel. Thank you for helping me see the forest for the trees. I was so stuck on doing everything within CC that I didn't think about the tools I already had at my disposal for segmentation.

[MDurkee]

I have a similar issue . . . I have a list of people who have signed up on my web site as a member and then I have a list of customers. I usually email each list about once per month offering them different discounts. When a person on that member list orders from my site, they become a customer and what I would like to do is remove them from the membership list at that point. Our list is large so what I have to do each month is export the lists separately, de-dupe them and then go in by hand to the Constant Contact membership list and remove them.
When the lists are large, this takes so much time and the chance for error is great. Doesn't CC have a way to query if an entry belongs to multiple lists?

Thanks for any help I can get here,
Maxanne Durkee
customerservice@oldhonolulu.com

[DadBlaze]

Even if the email address is part of different lists, if the lists are both included in the same mailing, only one copy will be mailed out.

But again, this is something that is easily handled by using Excel, exporting the lists, and sorting them by email address. Purge the duplicates, then re-import the list.

[FlatWorld]

I have a related issue that I struggle with :?: . I have multiple lists in CC (by Industry, by Location, and by Contact Type - ie. Lead, Prospect, Customer)...and I'd like to keep this categorization maintained and updated - so that I can send a particular promotion to, say, Small Businesses in Texas in the Automotive industry who are leads but not existing customers.

CC does not have an effective way to update/move these List Memberships for my contacts. Or am I missing something?

I typically maintain my master list in Outlook and use the Outlook upload tool and upload all my "prospects" from Outlook but existing contacts do not get their "List Membership" updated... So if I make changes in Outlook - they are not reflected in CC. (For instance, when some of my Prospects are updated to Customers - I can't do that easily...)

Any :idea: ideas?

Raj Menon
Flat World Design
Promotional Marketing Solutions

[DadBlaze]

Bout the only thing you can do, is use Excel as an intermediary.

[reinvestor]

Constant Contact does have a "Remove" option on the "My Contacts" page under the "Contacts" tab. If you have a list of people who have upgraded their status, say from Prospect to Customer, just add them to the Customer list using a CSV or similar file, then use the "Remove" option to take them off your Prospect list by selecting that list and uploading that CSV.

That should work for everyone who posted questions here.

[montanagrizzlies]

I have a similar question to the original post: "I would love to have the ability to exclude people from receiving an email based upon their membership in a specific list or based on the fact that they received a specific email campaign from me."

We, too, maintain many lists (newsletters, thank you emails, solicitations, etc.) and need the ability to unsubscribe people from one list but not necessarily ALL the lists they're on. If they opt out of a solicitation email, I still want to be able to email them a thank you note if they make a gift down the line. In CC, once someone opts out of any email campaign, they're on your Do Not Mail list for good unless they opt back in. Have any of you worked around this?

Also, how detailed are you getting on your sign up form? Do you give people the ability to sign up for all your lists, even for emails like thank you postcards or solicitations? How much information do you disclose about what you're sending out?

Thanks!

[DadBlaze]

On my sign-up, I only include the lists I want them to know about.

I handle all the rest with Excel spreadsheets and update them as needed.

Technically, once someone "opts-out" - you should not contact them further. I have done a validation email, and found a few for whom it was a mistake, but that is really not strictly kosher.

[bee1000]

I'm sending a special offer to a master list, but want to exclude a list of people who have already purchased. These purchasers have been imported as their own list.

Is it possible to automatically exclude these purchasers from this mailing by saying "mail to master, but exclude people on list A"?

[ChevyTalk_Tony]

Not that I am aware of. This can easily be done by just creating a second master list and then deleting the smaller list from it. The new list does not count against your total email address count. When your done you can keep the list or simply delete it.

[DavidKitchen]

CC really needs to add this. We previously used Exact Target, and really miss that feature. Is there an easy (automated) way to delete names? In other words, if I download my master list (currently 9,500 emails), and then download the list I'd like to exclude (250 emails), is there a way in Excel or another program where I can automatically remove emails on the smaller list from the larger list (without having to manually go through and delete all 250 emails)?

[massagebiz]

I have two contact lists.  One of them is all inclusive.  Is there a way to set up a mailing to go to everyone who is on list one (which includes all contacts) but not on list two (a subset of contacts)?

[Procrastinator]

Not easliy, but you can. Copy the list of everyone into a temporary list. Then delete those in list two from the temporary list. Now you can use the temporary list for the mailing.

[kbaker]

I don't have anything helpful to add to this except to say that this is a feature that I would love to see made available. I send out webinar invites to multiple lists - depending on the topic. When I send reminder emails it would be good to be able to separate out a list of the people I know have already signed up. I know that some other providers offer this function....

[trperson]

Hi all. Enjoying this great resource for CC. Our lists are categorized by type. For instance, I have a newsletter list, and a list comprised of trade professionals in our home state.
Yesterday I sent an email to my newsletter list. Today I want to send the same email to the trade pros, but I know that several people are in both lists.
Will CC filter them out? I don't think so... I know I can download the lists into excel and de-dupe, and then upload yet a third list, but would prefer not to.

What's the best practice here for mailing to multiple lists? Include all the lists in the sending queue or... ?

Thanks!

[Procrastinator]

If you mail to both lists at the same time, Constant Contact will only send 1 email even if the address is on both lists. If you want to send to each list separately, your on you're own to eliminate the duplicates. Best bet is using Excel.

[Procrastinator]

Yes, best practice is to send to all lists at one time, eliminates duplicates problem.

[trperson]

Thanks Procrastinator! Your advice re: the best practice of sending to all lists at once makes sense, and I can see that when accessing resend options. I'll use excel for my current situation and send to all lists at once in the future.