The Power of a Master Suppression List

This is a post in our Mastering Dynamic Lists series. To view more posts in this series, visit the main blog page.

Account Engagement plays a crucial role in streamlining email communication for numerous businesses, serving as the central hub for email marketing activities. Sending the right message to the right person at the right time is a fundamental principle of any successful email marketing strategy, and Account Engagement facilitates that.

The Challenge 

It’s not uncommon for users to struggle with identifying the right recipients, leading to the inadvertent sending of emails to the wrong groups. One significant challenge is the unintentional omission of a suppression list in a mass email, potentially causing recipients to get emails they shouldn’t.

But what if I told you there’s a way to significantly reduce or even eliminate this risk? It might sound like a dream, but it’s not! By maximizing the capabilities of dynamic lists, you can substantially decrease the likelihood of someone receiving an email they shouldn’t.

The Solution

You can call it what you like, but I prefer to call it a “Master Suppression List.” It’s a centralized dynamic list encompassing every prospect you want to exclude from your email marketing communications, simplifying the logic for you. The beauty of it is that whenever you send out an email campaign, you and your marketing team only have to remember a SINGLE suppression list, rather than a long list of them.

How to Implement

Now let’s explore how to create a suppression list of your own.

Step 1: document all the segments (other lists in your Account Engagement database) of your database that shouldn’t be emailed every time. Common ones are: 

1. Competitors – a dynamic list of all your competitors by filtering based on their Company Name and/or their Email domain. 
2. Customers – a dynamic list of all your customers by filtering based on your CRM’s identifier for customers. For some businesses, they use Account Type, while others rely on a different field(s) entirely. Check with your admin if you’re unsure. 
3. Employees – a dynamic list that captures anyone with your company’s email domain.
4. Email frequency list – a list of everyone who exceeded the limit you set for how many emails an individual should receive in a given time period. 
5. Active in Nurture – these lists are some of my favorites because it suppresses anyone receiving nurture content on a preset schedule. We don’t want to email someone when they’re in a set cadence and increase the risk of an unsubscribe or worse…a bad user experience. 

Step 2: create a new dynamic list called: Master Suppression List. You can title it however you like. I prefer to label it as above to make it clear what it is. Other naming conventions could be “Suppress on Every Email,” “Global Suppression,” or “Email Suppression List.” The name is up to you. 

Step 3: Add each list identified and created above as an individual criteria.
Prospect List → equals → “yourListName”

Step 4: Finally before you hit ‘save & run’ be sure you set the match type at the top to “match any” to ensure you’re pulling in all the correct prospects. 

Step 5: Save and run your list.

Once completed, you’ll have a single source of truth that consolidates all the prospects in your database, ensuring they are excluded from marketing sends.

In my experience, a list like this is utilized in upwards of 93% of email sends a company conducts. The scenarios where you wouldn’t want to implement it vary based on the filters you add. For instance, if you’re sending an email to your customer database, you might not use it as you already have a criteria for customers on the list.

That’s it! You’re now equipped to send out emails more efficiently and with less risk of reaching unintended inboxes. Happy email marketing!