Select or exclude individual contacts/lists when sending email

[JimC6588]

Hey there! It would be great to have an efficient way to create exclusion lists. The tag system is a cumbersome process to go through when the goal is to simply send an email to List A, but exclude anyone who is also on List B. If a checkbox-to-exclude feature became a reality, you'd have a lot of happy customers! (I did search the "Constant Contact Community" when trying to find out how to exclude a list BTW.) 

I didn't necessarily want to post this particular message to the entire "community" but I couldn't find a way to just email my exclusion list request to your developers.

Thanks,

Kim

[JimC6588]

Hi everyone, thank you for your patience as we looked into this! Though this type of function is currently not available, we have received reports that users can now use our contact segments as a workaround.  

Contacts in List A who are also on List B can can be segmented from the full list. So in this case, users will want to tag list B with the list name and exclude this tag when creating your segment.

[LauraR600]

Only allowing us to add, not subtract, makes the entire process very clunky. Allow us to say: I want LIST A, except for those who are also in LIST B. This ought to be a basic function of a database, yet it's not present here.

[BridgetW33]

Agree!

[hult_center]

Would love a way to designate existing lists as suppressions. So I can choose to mail a list but exclude people on another list.

[Hannah_M]

Thanks for sharing this feedback!

[Jamazio]

I'm tired of time-wasting clunky work-arounds. The capacity to compile a mailing by subtracting lists as well as adding them is a common practice in many CRM-systems, and I want to see it included within CC.

[ClyffordStillMuseum]

Three cheers, Jamazio. Agreed.

[USHS_Communications]

Please create a function for list suppression.  For example, I would like to be able to upload a list of all donors who contributed to my nonprofit in November. When sending a solicitional email in December, I need to be able to suppress the list of November donors. 

[RacielF]

 Can't believe this is still missing. Years later.

[JulieU1]

There needs to be a way to enter just ONE name in to send an email. I have a referral program and personalize a thank you to them. I don't want to create a list for every note I send out. I am a small business and it is important for me to personalize information to my existing clients.

[Patrick_W]

@JulieU1 Are you creating a new email each time you send a thank you to your clients, or is it the same one you have to send to 1 person each time?

I'm wondering if our quicksend feature might be helpful for you: https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/articles/KnowledgeBase/5901-use-quicksend-to-resend-a-camp...

This feature will work if you're trying to send an email that was already sent to a single contact.

If that's not what you're trying to do, I'd like to understand better.  Where would you want to enter in one name to send to?

[JoyM31]

Yes, this is badly needed.

[DawnH1634]

Yes, I cannot believe this isn't an option on Constant Contact. I've had it available in other mailing platforms.

[StephanieW782]

I really like the product but can't believe you can't suppress a list during the sending process. I have a big list but am always needing to exclude subscribers and patrons from that list. The system needs a way to select lists to not send to just as it has options for who to send to

[SarahScates]

I would love to be able to create new lists by subtracting one list from another. It happens often that we want to send a similar email to specific audiences, but with slightly different text (i.e. Thank you for your donation last year vs Thank you for being a member) This means I need to edit the lists so that a person who is a donor and a member receives only one email. I would love to be able to do suppression within Constant Contact instead of having to export to excel to create entirely new lists. For example, Send Email A to Donor List. Send Email B to Member List minus Donor List.

[Nathan_L]

Thank you for the feedback! We currently offer this functionality with tags and being able to include or exclude by tags on the scheduling page for your campaigns.

You can find more information on this on our Knowledge Base.

In your scenario, you can have your Members List and tag all your contacts within that list with a Donors tag. If this isn't the specific functionality you're looking for, please let us know!

[Nathan_L]

Thank you for the feedback! Can you provide me with a little more detail as to what you're trying to achieve? Our system requires you to select all lists you're wanting to send to, so if there is a list you do not want to send to, you can leave that unchecked.

[Amputee_Associates]

It would be very helpful to add a feature where you can select one contact to send an e-mail to. So when you create an e-mail and go to send it out, instead of selecting a list, there would also be an option to just select 1 contact. 

This concept could also let you select multiple contacts if need be without having to have a specific list created. 

Would love to see this as a feature!

-Mike 

[Patrick_W]

Great feedback @Amputee_Associates,

I'm going to open this up for voting. 

I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for but it might be helpful.  Once you have sent a campaign you have the ability to 'quicksend' it to individual contacts from your Contacts tab.  Here are instructions on how to do that in case it's helpful:  https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/articles/KnowledgeBase/5901-use-quicksend-to-resend-a-camp...

[ToddK4]

This has long been one of my biggest complaints and wants from CC. It is amazing to me that they still do not have this feature!  I send out emails for an upcoming event with a registration link.  I want to exclude anyone who has already registered, but removing that email manually from all my lists is unreasonable. So people who have already registered end up getting multiple emails and some of them register more than once. Simple suppression functionality, where I can upload a CSV of emails NOT to send to, would solve this!

[AdministrativeS]

Are you kidding? Constant contact doesn’t have this? 

[SeamusO81]

Yes, badly needed!!

[KateH572]

110% agree. This is so badly needed.

[AnnaS1520]

Agreed!

[bryanm771]

I agree, just started using CC, and I have to say using it sucks big time

[TLCD5]

 Is there a status on this? I agree, badly needed. 

[DennyL08]

I realize that your platform is about mass emails,however, I do a lot of individual emails as well. I see that you have a quick send option, but I find that to be a lot of extra work and time. I hope that you may consider providing an email option on the profile page other then the quicksend.

[MountEvans]

Agreed! This needs to be updated. For now, I have to scrub emails myself. An cumbersome and unnecessary step with suppression functionality. 

[MyrthaC7]

Dear Constant Contact Admin, your question shows you don't understand Exclusion / Suppression lists.  This is very basic email marketing concept.  You guys are Constant Contact.  You must know what this functionality is.

[JenniferW7288]

Hi Constant Contact, 

You should really look into list exclusions. Sometimes, a person may be on our main list, but because they've already donated to a campaign, we would want to exclude them from our mailing. If you're unclear about what we're asking for, check out one of your major competitors: iContact, which has this feature readily available. 

[SallyN620]

I absolutely agree that a List Suppression capability is needed.  It is extremely cumbersome to have to wade through my list of contacts manually to alter the lists to exclude people who have already responded to my next mail blitz.  Managing the contacts list is cumbersome with the scrolling necessary to wade through the entries.  I also wish that we were able to sort by tags.

[Candace_M]

Thanks for submitting your idea. At this time we will be marking this as closed due to the number of votes it has received.

[AlexisK58]

Agreed.

[HotelIconaDiamondBeach]

How is this STILL not an option?! Crazy. The tag option is nice....but only if you have less than 10k contacts? Come on.

[MyrthaC7]

Please we really need this Exclusion Feature.  It's a basic List Pull function.   Constant Contact is best of breed out there.  How can you not have this basic function? We need it very badly.   -- Kay, Boston, MA

[DonalM6]

Suppression lists are a 101 feature of any commercial email platform.

Could somebody from CC explain why they have decided not to offer this feature?

This has been asked for many many times over many years.

See here for a thread from 2011!

https://community.constantcontact.com/t5/Developer-Support-ask-questions/Suppression-lists/td-p/3092...

[JuliaH3]

I can’t tell you how embarrassing it is to use Emma and Mail Chimp with capabilities like anchors and list exclusions and start working with a client that needs both those things, I tell them we can do it and jump into their Constant Contact and those simple functions are not there. 

Here is what we need - we have a general interest list we constantly add to. Sometimes the boss wants to send the newsletter twice in a two week period after new contacts are added. I want to make a list of people who opened the first email and put them on an exclusion list. Then, click General List, exclude former clicker group. This is super simple on Emma. 

I’m a consultant and I’m THIS CLOSE to telling them to switch. 

How would I export ppl who opened an email? I don’t see the open folks as a click - just successfully delivered and bounced and unsubscribed, but not plain open. 

Thanks. 

[JenniferW7288]

Hi - 

Would like to echo the sentiments regarding the need for exclusion lists. This would also be useful for when syncing contacts with DonorPerfect. That way, if a contact is on one list but I want to exclude them if they're also on another list - I can do so without having to make several compound filters. If you're unclear about what the Constant Contact Community is asking for see this help article from iContact's system which does feature exclusions: 

https://app.icontact.com/icp/core/help/docs/view/en-us/icontact/message-sending/exclude-contacts-fro...

[SunCoveOffice]

I would SO love this. I work at an HOA and, along with mass-emails like our monthly newsletter, I often find it necessary to use Constant Contact for 'official' notifications (i.e., you're using too much water, the previous owner of your property wasn't left the mailbox keys we signed out to you, etc.), so I can see whether or not the emails are opened/viewed (kind of like an electronic certified letter).

Going through all the trouble to make the letter only to get to the screen that demands I send it to a 'list' is endlessly frustrating...I have to save, go back out, make a new list, put the *one person* in it, save it as a separate list, and then send the letter to that 'list,' even though it's only one person! Then it makes managing the lists annoying, time-consuming and interruptive, because they become bloated with obsolete one-offs, etc.

[MattD6475]

Me too - how difficult is it to just send one personalized email??? I like being able to send a mass campaign, but often I need to create a classy looking email and send to one person. I really don't understand why this is such a difficult feature to add. I see notes going back 4 or 5 years with people asking for this. Also - we are NOT talking about quick send because with quick send, you have to have already emailed a campaign for it to show up on your list. A Draft email does not.

[EstherG40]

I WANT THIS TOO!!

[CathJ3]

I agree- this is absolutely needed and would make emailing an even easier process. It would be helpful if I could just make a new segmentation of contacts by saying they are part of List A, AND they are NOT part of list B. My specific issue is that I want this email to go to everyone in a specific industry which I made a  custom field for (list A), but I don't want it to go out to the people who are already signed up to attend our webinar (list B ). If Constant Contact customers have been asking for this for years...could you make it happen?

[MikeL701]

I can't believe this doesn't exist. Please Constant Contact, do something about this!

[BradM248]

I want it too!!!!!

[PeterP893]

Why doesn't this exist? Yes its bee a request by many since more than 5 years back. Please add this Constant Contact, its a major part of small businesses "constant contact" strategy for smaller and more high ticket type businesses. Will need to find another solution otherwise.

[gcmuseum]

We segment a lot of our emails with different characteristics. Being able to exclude by tag is helpful, but we have to make sure our lists are up-to-date AND that the tags are applied properly. There is a lot of room for error and it would be helpful if we could just exclude by a list or by a segment. Currently, the only option is to exclude by tag.

I would also like the option to send AND do not send simultaneously. For example, we do re-engagement campaigns. If someone doesn't open an email from us in 90 days, we want to exclude them. But if we're doing a regular campaign, we may need to include a segment. Need the option to send to one group and not send to another.

[PatriciaF]

Having a feature in Constant Contact that allows us to compare list and/or apply some type of rule or filter would be great. Most times we send out campaigns/newsletters that require registration, it would be helpful if we could filter out those who have registered without permanently removing them from the list, so that we don't continue to send them the same campaigns/newsletter. For example a rule or filter could be I want LIST A, except for those who are also on LIST B.

I know several people have made this suggestion but it doesn't seem like its been implemented, and I called to double check.

[AndrewS37]

Much needed.  Any updates on this?

[Amputee_Associates]

Still would love this feature... HELP US, CONSTANT CONTACT, YOU'RE OUR ONLY HOPE!

[St-Martins]

Yep. Definitely want this. Who has time to create a list for one person? Or even just a small number of people that I'll never email all at the same time again. I vote yes.