Managing Lists Overview

Lists maintain segments of your user base that you can track and message across all channels. Lists can be used across email, web, SMS, and mobile.

Types of Lists

You can create two types of lists - Natural and Smart Lists:

  • Natural Lists: a main repository for your users, who are typically added to these lists deliberately on acquisition, import, or through one-time Audience Builder queries, and
  • Smart Lists, with users sourced from your Natural Lists. Smart Lists add/remove users automatically in real-time based on your custom Audience Builder criteria. For example, you could create dynamic lists of:
    • high-value users, to send special offers or to regularly push to Facebook to find similar prospects
    • users who have not opened email recently, to suppress them from sends and target them through other channels
    • users who share a particular interest, location, signup source, or any other data point, to target communications accordingly

A user can exist on any number of lists. Information about each user is stored in their user profile, no matter how many lists the user is on.

  • A user can also have no list memberships; though typically, when the user is added to your account for the first time, you have imported the user to a specific list or configured the acquisition method to automatically add the user to an applicable list.
  • Your account can maintain up to a maximum of 2000 lists.

Whether a list is a Natural or Smart List, you have the option mark it as either a:

  • Primary List if you would like changes to the list to be tracked for reporting, or
  • Secondary List if the list does not require reports, for example, it is for a test or other one-time use.

The Lists Interface

To access the Lists page in the UI, from the Users menu, select Lists.

Users menu to access lists

On the Lists page, you can:

  • View all lists, or toggle between just Primary, Secondary, and Smart Lists.
  • Search for an existing list
  • Create a New List
  • Access Reports on List
  • Begin an Audience Builder query on a list
  • Perform an individual User Lookup

In the table that displays your lists, you'll find the following columns

  • Primary - Use the toggle to determine whether the list is classified Primary or Secondary.
    • Green/right [screenshot] means Primary
    • Red/left [screenshot] means Secondary
  • ListThe list name. Click to view options for modifying the list. These will differ depending on whether the list is a Primary List or a Smart List.
  • Users - Number of users on the list.
  • Valid Emails - Number of users on the list, minus hardbounced and opted out users. See User Engagement Levels page for a definition of "hardbounce".
  • Valid SMS - Number of valid phone numbers on the list.
  • Created - List creation date and timestamp.
  • Last Send - Timestamp of the last email send using this list.
  • List Functions - In the rightmost column, use the icons to perform the following functions

    Icon

    Function

    copy icon

    Copy a Smart List

    Get Reports on your list

    Download your list as a CSV file

    Note: The EXTID and SMS identifiers are included when present on the user profile.

    Sync your list to other services and partners

    Rename this list

    Delete this list. Note that you must be designated as an account admin to delete lists.

Create a List via an API Call

The only parameter required to create a list is a list name. Optionally, you can include the type of list (normal or smart), any variables you wish to include, primary or secondary list status, and a query for a Smart list. For more information, see the list API documentation. . To create a list, make an API call that resembles one of the following examples:

Natural List

Example Call:
{
   "list":"natural test list",
   "primary":1,
   "vars":{"color":"blue"},
   "public_name":"natural test list public name",
   "type":"natural"
}
Example Response:
{
   "list" : "natural test list",
   "type" : "normal",
   "primary" : 1,
   "public_name" : "natural test list public name",
   "vars" : {
   "color" : "blue"
   },
   "list_id" : "5840769f83ba8848008b458e"
}

Smart List

Example Call:
{
   "list":"smart test list",
   "primary":1,
   "vars":{"color":"blue"},
   "public_name":"smart test list public name",
   "type":"smart",
   "query":
   {
      "source_list":"main",
      "criteria":["match"],
      "field":["color"],
      "value":["blue"]
   }
}
Example Response:
{
   "list" : "smart test list 1",
   "type" : "smart",
   "description" : "All primary list users: 'color' is 'blue'",
   "primary" : 1,
   "public_name" : "smart test list public name",
   "vars" : {
   "color" : "blue"
   },
   "list_id" : "584086cd83ba8845008b458e"
}

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