There are three ways to send an email
Airship’s simple search provides you with three different ways to send an email:
Include (tick the relevant groups within the include dropdown)
not include (leave these boxes empty)
exclude (tick the relevant groups within the exclude dropdown)
So how does this affect your email sends?
Include is the simplest of the three options, you tick the box and it includes all contacts in the selected unit. You can then decide whether to not include those units that aren’t relevant or whether to exclude them completely.
Exclude will exclude all contacts in the selected groups - as expected. This means that any contacts in both the included and the excluded group will not receive the email. i.e Tom is on the Sheffield and Leeds database, if you include Sheffield in your search field but exclude Leeds (as it may be a Sheffield specific message) then Tom won’t receive this email.
Below are some examples of when you should exclude:
Your units need their own messaging.
You could have different brands within your account, different price bands for your units, different events happening across your estate or different opening times to name a few.
Let's say you are sending a happy hour email to your entire database which is made up of four units.
Unit 1 and Unit 2 have a higher price band than Unit 3 & 4 and therefore you are sending two versions of the email reflecting the different happy hour times and offers available.
In a case like this you could exclude in two ways. You could exclude by previous broadcast, this would need to be added on your second email - learn more about this tool here. Or you could exclude the units you don’t want to target for example:
First send to Unit 1 & 2 excluding units 3 & 4
Second send to units 3 & 4
An event that is happening at only 1 venue
If the email is promoting a last minute event or there are limited numbers you might want to limit the number of people the email is going to, by excluding all other units you are ensuring it is only going to contacts on the chosen unit.
You send a lot of unit specific emails
In order to avoid spamming those contacts on multiple units you should exclude units If you are planning on sending out several unit emails in a short space of time. This also applies if you are sending out email variations for all units. As by excluding units you are making sure that someone doesn't end up getting 4 variations of the same email.