Sending filters use a conditional to subdivide your subscriber lists into groups that are based on a selected criteria. This criteria can include email address, name, date subscribed, and any previously set subscriber fields.
To create sending filter click on Presets and then Sending Filters on the left.
Presets -> Sending Filters
Add a new custom filter
To create a sending filter click on Add new custom filter. Select a criteria based on email address, name, date subscribed, or any previously set subscriber fields. Next set the a conditional and then define your criteria. If you wanted to send to only gmail addresses this would look something like:
Where:
email addresses | equal (Is) | gmail
you can then add a second conditional based on another criteria. In this example you can set your conditional to send to those addresses only if they subscribed after July 1st.
Where:
Email Address | Contains | gmail
And
Date Subscribed | Is Greater Than | 2006-07-01
You can always add additional conditionals for more complex statements. Next, name it and choose whether it can be used for your admin user only or for anyone that uses that list. After clicking on submit you can view your sending filter on the sending filter page. Select View Matching to ensure that sending filter is catching the subscribers you are trying to catch in your filter.
Using a Sending Filter in a Mailing
You can select a sending filter for a mailing from a drop down menu on the first screen after you click on Create a New Message.
Add a new filter based on email address
There is an additional option which allows you to go through your entire subscriber list and manually select which email addresses you want to use in your filter. Click on Add a new filter based on e-mail addresses. This works much the same way as adding a new custom filter. The difference is that you do not have to worry about creating a criteria with which to set against a conditional. Simply, check the email addresses that you want to use in your filter.
Sending Filters Effect Sending Rate
Sending filters will inherently cause a mailing to go slower as it has to check subscribers against a set of options you set.
There can be two reasons why mailings send very slow with sending filters:
On a 1,000+ list you create a filter for one or a couple subscribers. When sending with a filter the system goes through and checks each subscriber to see if they match your filter. So if you have a list of 10,000 and filter out one address it will have to go through all of the addresses to find the one that matches. Your message may appear to be stalled during this time as nothing is being sent but the system is going through every address to find matches. For test sending we suggest you use the "test send" feature on the preview page.
You create a filter and sending seems to go slower the more you filter. For every filter option the system looks subscriber by subscriber to see if they match each option. Therefore the more filter options you specify in your filter the longer the entire sending will take and it will take time for even those subscribers that are not sent to as each subscriber is checked to see if they match the filter individually.
