Marketing Lists How to build an audience for campaigns, and when a live filter beats a fixed list.

Operations, Data, Marketing Lists. Audiences that campaigns send to. You need the internal operations capability.

The Two Kinds

The choice you make when creating a list determines everything about how it behaves later.

Type	Behaviour	Use when
Live filter	Recalculated on every send. Stays current as contacts change.	The audience is defined by a rule
Fixed list	A frozen set you hand-pick or upload. Does not change on its own.	The audience is a specific set of people

Live filter is right most of the time. "Everyone in retail with an open deal" should pick up the company that qualified yesterday and drop the one that closed. You maintain the rule, not the list.

Fixed list is right when the membership is the point - the twelve people attending an event, a hand-picked list for a specific announcement. It will not change underneath you, which is exactly what you want, and exactly the trap if you forget.

Creating One

1. Start from a template if one fits the shape of what you need.
2. Pick the type - live filter or fixed list.
3. Define it. A filter gets its conditions; a fixed list is picked or uploaded.
4. Name it for what it is, including the date if it is fixed.
5. Save.

Naming

Lists accumulate faster than anything else in the platform. A name should answer, six months later, what this is and whether it is still valid. "Retail prospects, live" and "Dubai launch attendees, Mar 2026" both do. "Newsletter list 2" does not.

Consent

Marketing sends are consent-gated by the platform. Someone who has not consented is not sent to, regardless of which list they are on. A list is not permission - it is a selection.

Common Questions

My list has 400 people and only 250 received the campaign. The rest have not consented to marketing, or their email is invalid. Check contact data quality in Data Management.

Can I convert a fixed list to a live filter? Create the filter fresh. The two are defined differently and a fixed list carries no rule to convert.

Where do I send the campaign? From Marketing. This surface builds the audience; the campaign that uses it lives there.

Does adding a contact add them to my live filters? Yes, if they match. That is the point of a live filter - and the reason to check what your filters actually match before a large import.