Creating a saved contact filter
If you find you regulary need to send mailings to a specific set of your contacts you may find it easier to create a saved filter on your contacts.
As an example, let's say you have a custom field called 'Sports Interest', a custom field called 'Gender' and a custom field called 'Age' in your contacts database and you often want to send a mailing to contacts who are "Male, over 35 and interested in fishing".
You could acheive this by creating a contact group, but you would have to ensure that new contacts are manually added into the group as appropriate. The best way to acheive the above example would be to create a saved contact filter which ensures the matching contacts are always pulled from your database in real time. Follow the steps below for creating a saved contact filter.
If you have setup multiple clients you should first make sure you are working with the correct client.
Next click on the Contacts tab and then on the Saved Filters link.
You will see a list of any saved filters you currently have. Click the Add New Filter Button.
On the Add Filter screen you need to give your filter a unique name. Make sure you put something specific which will allow you to easily refer back to it at a later date. For our example we have given our filter the name 'Male over 35, interest fishing'
Next you need to add the criteria for your filter. Click the green plus symbol to add a new criteria line then select the Field (ie; Age), the Operator (ie; Greater Than) and the Value (ie; 35). If you need to delete the criteria line just click the red cross next to it.
For more details on creating filters, please see this article about the segmentation filter.
You can add up to 8 criteria lines and select from any standard or custom fields.
When you have finished adding your filter criteria click the Save & Exit button to finish. You will now see your saved filter in the list where you can edit or delete if required.
You can now use your saved filter whenever you want to send an e-mail campaign or export your contacts. For example, on the send/schedule e-mail campaign page you will now be able to select 'Male over 35, interest fishing' from the saved filters drop down and your campaign will automatically be sent to those contacts that match.