How to exclude lists or segments from a campaign send

You will learn

Learn how to exclude certain groups (i.e., lists or segments) when sending campaign emails or SMS. In addition to selecting who you want to send to, you will also see don't send to, which you can use to exclude any number of lists or segments from your send, for example:

• Don't send to your unengaged subscribers segment from an evergreen newsletter campaign to avoid having these unengaged recipients damage your sender reputation. In-between regular list cleaning, this can be a good way to ensure you're only sending to an engaged list.
• Don't send to subgroups of people that may not be interested in a specific campaign's content, or may engage better with a personalized message through a separate campaign. For example, when launching a new collection, you may want to send your VIP Customers an advance sneak peak. When the time comes for your general announcement, you may want to exclude those VIPs you've already notified.

Another use for this feature is if you're using segmentation to send similar campaigns to numerous discrete target audiences. Some of these target audiences may overlap, however, so you want to avoid recipients from receiving multiple or duplicative messages. One option is to use Smart Sending to ensure recipients only receive a single message from you in a, for example, 16-hour period. If you do not want to use Smart Sending, you can alternatively choose to exclude all other segments you'll be targeting from each individual send.

If you would like to exclude specific individuals from a campaign, you will first need to add them to a dedicated list, then exclude this list from the campaign send.

How to exclude lists and segments from a campaign

1. Navigate to the Campaigns tab in Klaviyo. 
2. Select Create campaign. 
3. In the sidebar that appears, set the campaign’s name and choose a channel (i.e., email, SMS, or push). 
4. Click Continue. 
5. In the Audience section, choose the list(s) or segment(s) you’d like to send to in the Send to section. 
6. In the Don’t send to section, select the unengaged segment for the channel you’re sending to.
   
7. Click Next to create and send the campaign.

How to calculate expected recipients

Below the lists and segments you've chosen for inclusion and exclusion, you will see a section labeled Expected Recipients. The number shown estimates the number of people who will receive your campaign. When calculating this number, we do the following:

• Add together all profiles that exist in the lists/segments you've chosen to include
• Subtract duplicate profiles that may exist in multiple lists/segments you've chosen to include
• Subtract profiles within any included groups that also exist in lists/segments you've chosen to exclude
• Subtract unsubscribed contacts and global suppressions from all included lists and segments

Klaviyo automatically skips suppressed profiles at send time, so by excluding these profiles from our expected recipient calculation, you are able to see an accurate count of who will receive your campaign.

If none of the lists you have chosen to exclude contain any recipients that are also on lists chosen to be included, you won't see the expected recipient count be dramatically different from the number of members in the included lists.

Additional resources

• How to create and send an email campaign
• How to create and send an SMS or MMS campaign
• How to resend a campaign email to "non-openers"