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Hollie Francis
Account Engagement lists are a means of segmenting your audience. There are 2 different types; static lists, and dynamic lists, with each one having its own unique use cases and best practices. We’ll walk you through both types and provide you with real-life examples so that you can fully understand the differences.
Static Lists
Imagine an empty box. You can put things in the box, you can take things out of the box, but nothing will change in terms of its contents unless you have some manual input on it. This is exactly what a static list is. As such, any Prospects you add to a static list will remain on that list until they are removed manually, via an automation rule, or via an engagement studio action.
This makes them fantastic for tracking the exact time and date that a Prospect met certain criteria, or for importing Prospects from another database. You can even use static lists to ‘store’ Prospects that completed certain steps in your engagement studio programs to report on them or use them elsewhere.
How to make a static list
From the Account Engagement Lightning App, head to the ‘Prospects’ tab. Then from the left-hand sidebar, click the ‘Segmentation’ dropdown and select ‘Segmentation Lists’. Now, click ‘+ Add List’.
You should be met with the following popup:
Fill in the list name and select a folder. Optionally, you can add tags, and select whether or not you want to use your list for email testing purposes. Once you’re done, click ‘Create List’ and your static list is now ready to use. Simple.
Dynamic Lists
Dynamic lists update automatically based on a set of criteria that you define. This makes them ideal for a wide variety of use cases, but especially when filtering data that changes regularly. The time taken to update can vary depending on your database size, but you can typically expect lists to refresh every 10 – 15 minutes.
The sky really is the limit with dynamic lists. You could:
- Pull a list of Prospects that have become inactive and schedule them for deletion to keep below mailable database limits
- Find everyone that has already received at least 3 emails that week and exclude them from further emails to avoid marketing fatigue
- Generate a list of all Prospects not yet related to Opportunities so that you can nurture them down the sales funnel
- Identify brand new Prospects and send them a ‘Welcome’ email nurture flow
How to make a dynamic list
The first step of creating a dynamic list is the same as creating a static list. However, on the list creation popup, you need to tick the ‘Dynamic List’ checkbox. This will change the ‘Create List’ button into one that says ‘Set Rules’. Click the ‘Set Rules’ button, and you will be met with the following screen:
This is where you outline your list matching criteria. You’ll notice there are two options for match type, and two options for adding criteria.
‘Match type all’ means that a Prospect must match every single criteria you add in order to be pulled into the list, whereas ‘Match any’ means that they only need to match at least one of the criteria.
‘Add new rule’ lets you add a singular rule, such as ‘[X field] equals [Y value]’. The ‘Add new rule group’ option lets you add another layer of matching rules, such as ‘[X field] equals [Y value] AND [W field] equals [Z value]’.
Once you’re happy with the rules you’ve set, you can either preview the list to see who would currently match it, or you can run the rule straight away. Your list is now ready to use (although you might want to wait for it to populate first!). You will receive an email notification once it’s ready.
Looking to implement Account Engagement the right way? Simpala offers an Account Engagement quick start package, as well as Account Engagement implementation services. Contact us to get started.