Is there benefit to creating smart list for a smart campaign as a local asset, vs putting the criteria straight into the Smart List section of the smart campaign?

[Anonymous]

Are there benefits to defining the smart list for a campaign with one of these methods over the other?

1) Creating a Smart List as a local asset and defining your criteria there. Then, setting the smart list of the smart campaign to be "Member of Smart List ___" or "Added to Smart List ____'" or something similar.
2) Defining your criteria straight in the Smart List section of your smart campaign.

Thanks!
Amelia

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I think it's somewhat a matter of personal preference, but I find I use a mixture of global and local smart lists. 

I only use global smart lists for frequently used filters. Things like: delivery parameters, primary customer segments, etc. I use these in most of my programs as a top level filter for my smart campaigns. Then, at the program level, I'll ususally have smart lists that define specific mailing groups for a particular campaign, especially if I'm doing a staggered send throughout the week. 

I find through primarily using local smart lists, I can keep things better organized, so that when I need to find campaign-specific stuff, it's in the program with all the creative assets. 

Hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

Thanks Jeff! So it sounds like you don't really ever put the criteria straight into the Smart List section of a smart campaign, is that right?

[Anonymous]

I used to, but found it got a little too messy. If I had delivery filters, customer segments, and any special filters all in one screen, it was hard to distinguish what was what, and if issues occured, how to troubleshoot. Plus, if you're using any advanced filter logic, adding and removing filters directly on the smart campaign can really start to screw things up.  

That said I do usually have a few small filters on the smart campaign itself, but those are typically just there to throttle send sizes for a particular campaign, such as a "State is" or "random sample is".  But everything else related to the list segmentation is kept within the appropriate smart list(s). 

[Anonymous]

Awesome, thanks!

[Anonymous]

I agree with Jeff. We also sometimes need multiple smart-lists to create our distribution (otherwise gets very messy) and I find the ability to label and visualize such segments much easier on the brain. 

[Jep_Castelein2]

As an aside: also consider using a Segmentation for your common Smart Lists. If you have the same newsletter list over and over again, creating a Segmentation may be more efficient than having the system calculate the Smart List every time you run a Smart Campaign (in other words: your Smart Campaigns will run faster).