Choose who gets a campaign

The To section of a campaign decides who hears from you. You start from a list, narrow it with tags, and take people back out.

Build it in four steps

1. Send to — pick All active contacts, or choose saved segments and groups. You can create or edit a segment here without leaving the campaign.
2. Must have tags — optional. Only contacts carrying at least one of these tags stay in. This narrows whatever you chose above, it doesn't add to it.
3. Exclude tags — optional. Anyone carrying any of these tags drops out, whatever else matched.
4. Do not send to — optional. Choose segments or groups to leave out, such as "people who bought last week".

Each contact is counted once in the audience, even when segments overlap. A campaign using more than one channel can still send that person a message on each selected channel.

Searching in the Send to box also shows matching contacts so you can preview the audience. It does not select individual recipients. For a specific set of people, create a segment and choose it as the audience.

Who Qcom leaves out for you

You don't have to keep a suppression list. These people are removed before anything is counted or sent:

• Anyone whose contact record is Unsubscribed, Bounced or Complained.
• For an email campaign, anyone who has opted out of your marketing email — through an unsubscribe link or their preferences.
• Contacts held above your plan's contact limit.

SMS and WhatsApp opt-outs are honoured too, but a moment later — those contacts are still counted in the audience and are then skipped when the message would have gone out. So the number sent can be lower than the audience, and nothing is wrong.

Check they can actually be reached

An audience total counts people, not reachable people. Email needs an email address, SMS needs a phone number, WhatsApp needs a WhatsApp or phone number.

When you launch, Qcom checks this for you. If nobody in the audience can be reached on your channel, it stops and tells you which detail is missing. If some can be reached and some can't, it warns you and sends to the ones it can. For WhatsApp it also tells you, before you commit, how many will be messaged and how many have no number.

When your audience comes back empty

Nothing matches. Your segment or tag rules include nobody right now. Check the segment on its own page and review whether its rules still describe the people you intend to reach.

Everyone was excluded. An exclude tag or a "do not send to" segment cancelled out the people you meant to reach.

The contacts have opted out. Respect their marketing choices. Importing copies or changing audience rules is not permission to send to them.

Contact details are missing. Check the details on the existing records and obtain the correct email address or number with permission. Adding a destination does not replace the channel's marketing-consent requirement.

The audience cannot be checked. An excluded segment may have been deleted or made inactive. Review that exclusion and choose a valid replacement before launching. Do not simply drop an intended exclusion to get the send through.

A scheduled campaign re-checks the audience when its time comes. If it has emptied out by then, Qcom puts the campaign back to draft instead of sending to nobody.

Once the audience is ready, write your campaign message. After sending, read the recipient results to distinguish excluded, skipped, failed and pending messages.

Related

• About campaigns
• Write your campaign message
• Schedule and send a campaign
• Why a campaign didn't send
• Create a segment or group
• Manage contacts
• Import contacts