Combine both recipient management approaches

You don’t need to choose just one approach. A hybrid strategy uses multiple recipient lists for clearly distinct email streams while applying contact group filtering within a given list for more granular targeting.

When to choose this approach:

• You have one main subscriber base, but need to send differentiated content to sub-segments.
• Some content should go to everyone, while other content targets specific groups – and you want to avoid sending both versions to the same person.

Example: Tiered sports club subscribers

A sports club has one main recipient list for all email subscribers. Everyone on the list receives general updates like match schedules and club news.

However, the club also has a “Fans” tier – dedicated supporters who get exclusive content such as behind-the-scenes access and early ticket sales.

Here’s how they set it up:

1. Developers add a custom contact field called FanClubMember (a boolean field). See the Add a custom field to the Contact profile guide for details.
2. A contact group called Fans is created with the condition: “Contact field FanClubMember is equal to 1”
3. For general club emails (match schedules, news): send to the recipient list with the Fans group set under Exclude recipients from contact groups. This way, fans don’t receive the general version – they receive the targeted version instead.
4. For fans-only emails (exclusive content, early ticket access): send to the same recipient list with Send only to recipients from contact groups set to Fans.