Excluding segment criteria

When you add a contact list or segment filter to a segment, the contacts in that list are included in the segment by default. However, you can also use contact lists and segment filters to exclude contacts.

Example: You could choose to exclude people who opened an email in the last week from a segment that focuses on re-engagement. Or, you might want to exclude contacts who work for one of your competitors.

Using the segment editor, you can easily toggle filters and lists to specify inclusion or exclusion. You can view excluded contacts in the contact viewer.

Important: When you filter by activities, the filter can only select dates that are within the last year, and a filter can only return one year of data in total. Additionally our data retention will only retain data from activities for up to two years. However, for Subscription and Bounceback activities, filters can search up to 10 years.

For instance, if today is January 5th, 2025:
  • If you filter for activities before January 5th, 2025, the filter will search from January 5th 2024, to January 4th 2025.
  • If you filter for activities before April 22, 2022, the filter will search from January 5th 2023, to January 5th, 2024.
  • If you filter for activities within January 5th 2023 to January 4th 2024, the filter will return no data.
Each filter will display a visual bar with the date range that it will be returning.

To exclude the contacts in a segment filter or list:

  1. Navigate to Audience An image of the Audience icon., then click Segments.

  2. Open an existing segment, or create a new one.

  3. In the left pane, right-click the segment criteria, then click Switch to Exclude.

    The segment or list indicates how many contacts are now excluded.

    An image showing the number of excluded contacts.

  4. Click Save.

Learn more

Creating contact lists from a segment

Viewing segment contacts

Segments