In the world of digital marketing, one of the key objectives is to engage with your audience and maintain a healthy relationship with them. However, in certain situations, it may be necessary to prevent certain contacts from receiving your communications. This is where suppression lists come in – they allow you to exclude specific contacts or groups from receiving your marketing messages.
In this article, we will be discussing how to create a Pardot suppression list. Pardot is a popular marketing automation platform that allows businesses to streamline their marketing processes and drive engagement with their target audience. By creating a suppression list in Pardot, you can ensure that you are not sending emails or other communications to contacts that have requested to opt-out or those who have met certain criteria that make them unsuitable for certain campaigns.
We will be covering step-by-step instructions on how to create a suppression list in Pardot, as well as best practices to ensure that your suppression list is effective and up-to-date. Whether you are a seasoned Pardot user or just starting out, this article will provide you with the knowledge and tools needed to effectively manage your Pardot suppression lists and optimize your marketing campaigns.
What is a Pardot suppression list?
A Pardot suppression list is a tool that allows you to exclude certain prospects from receiving specific email communications. By adding a prospect to a suppression list, you can ensure that they will not receive the email even if they are included in the recipient list for an engagement studio or list email.
Types of suppression lists
There are two types of suppression lists available in Pardot: dynamic suppression lists and static segmentation suppression lists. The choice between these two types of lists depends on your specific goals for the suppression list. Selecting the appropriate type of suppression list enables you to efficiently suppress your target list of prospects.
Why use a suppression list in Pardot?
Pardot suppression lists are a convenient way to ensure that your emails are only sent to the right people. There are several reasons why you might choose to use a suppression list, including:
- Avoiding emailing competitors, vendors, or partners
- Ensuring that prospects are not emailed too frequently
- Preventing prospects who meet certain criteria from receiving specific emails, such as those with a particular job title.
In essence, Pardot suppression lists allow you to tailor your email communications to the right audience, ensuring that your messages are relevant and effective.
Creating a dynamic suppression list
A dynamic suppression list is a powerful tool that can automatically add or remove prospects based on specific criteria that you have set. The key advantage of using a dynamic list is that it constantly updates itself, ensuring that only the appropriate prospects are being suppressed. With a dynamic suppression list, you can enjoy a flexible and efficient way to ensure that your marketing efforts are being directed towards the right audience, thereby optimizing your campaign performance.
In order to create a dynamic suppression list first follow these steps click on the segmentation list option and then select the blue + Add list button.
Next you want to name your dynamic suppression list and check the dynamic list option. To move to the next step click on the blue Set Rules button.
Dynamic suppression lists can be useful in various ways, and we’ve provided a couple of examples below to illustrate how they can be applied.
Example #1: Suppressing prospects who have recently been emailed.
Overwhelming prospects with too many emails can lead to email fatigue and increased opt-out rates. To mitigate this, you can create a dynamic suppression list that captures prospects who have been recently emailed.
When defining the rules for your suppression list, it’s important to determine how frequently you want to email your prospects. For instance, you may choose to limit the number of emails sent to each prospect to one per week. To do this, you could set the following criteria: “Prospect has been emailed at least once in the last seven days.”
Example #2: Suppressing your competitors
Another common scenario where a suppression list can be useful is to exclude your competitors from receiving your marketing emails. This ensures that your competitors cannot monitor or copy your email communications.
To set up a suppression list for your competitors, follow the steps mentioned above. When configuring the rules, you have a few different options to exclude your competitors. One option is to use the prospect’s account name, but this may not be entirely effective unless you always obtain your prospects’ account name in your forms.
Another effective approach is to use a “contains” match for the email address. Since you always collect the email addresses of your prospects in your forms, this approach will typically allow you to exclude a larger number of your competitors.
To configure the rules for this, enter the Pardot default field -> Email -> Contains -> @competitoremailaddress. You can include multiple email addresses by listing each of them in the appropriate field, separated by a semicolon (;).
Creating a segmented suppression list
A segmented suppression list is a static list of prospects who you don’t want to email. Unlike a dynamic list, a segmented suppression list does not adjust automatically when new prospects meet the criteria you set. Rather it is a list of prospects who at a set point in time met the criteria that you set.
To create a segmented suppression list click on the segmentation list option and then select the blue + Add list button.
Name your segmentation list and click on the blue Create List button.
Now that you have created your list you need to create your segmentation rule. Select Segmenation Rules, name your segmentation rule and then set the criteria that you want for your segmentation list.
For example you may want to only supress any prospect who has a Pardot score under 100, so that you are communicating only with your more engaged prospects. To do this you would set the following rules:
Prospects score -> Is greater than -> 100
Once you have set the rules for the segmentation list, you then need to choose the Actions. The actions is what you want to happen to the prospects that have met the criteria that you have set. In this case you want to Add prospect to list then choose from the drop down the segmentation list that you have previously created.
After you select the appropriate segmentation list, then you can preview your list by clicking on blue Preview button. This will show which type of prospects would be added to your list. When you are happy with your segmentation rule, then you can click on the green Run Segmentation button.
Using your suppression list
Your suppression list will actually be applied when you are creating either an Enagement Studio or a List Email. Below you can see where you will add your suppression list in either case.
Adding your suppression list to an engagement studio
To add a suppression list to your engagement studio first you need to select Engagement Studio from the menu and then click on the blue + Add Engagement Studio button. You will now be provided with a form to complete with the details of your engagement studio.
Towards the bottom of the form you will see a drop down option to add a Suppression List. Use the drop down list to select the suppression list that you created in the previous steps. You can add in multiple different suppression lists using this field.
Adding a suppression list to a list email
If you’re looking to send a Pardot email, you have the option to use a list email. Similar to the engagement studio, you’ll be able to add suppression list(s) when setting up your email. Once you’ve created your list email draft, head over to the sending tab above your email template builder.
On the sending page, you’ll have various options for sending out your email. At the top of the page, you can add one or more suppression lists by selecting them from the drop-down menu. These suppression lists will ensure that your email is not sent to contacts on those lists.