Recipients

The Recipients step of the campaign composer decides who receives a campaign. You choose recipients one of three ways: a saved Audiences entry, a set of contact Tags, or a one-off Filter, and a live preview on the right shows the contacts that match.

Three ways to choose recipients

A segmented control at the top of the step switches between three tabs. Only the tab that is active when you leave the step defines the campaign's audience; the others are not combined.

• Audiences: pick one saved audience. Each card shows the audience name, a type tag of Dynamic or Point-in-time, a source tag of Contact list or Filter, and its last recorded recipient count. The search box filters the saved audiences by name.
• Tags: select one or more contact tags as pills. A Match toggle controls whether a contact needs any tag (carries at least one of the selected tags) or all tags (carries every selected tag). The default is any tag. If you have no contact tags yet, tag contacts in the Contacts module first.
• Filter: build a one-off segment for this campaign using the same condition builder as a saved audience (see Segments). This filter lives on the campaign; it is not saved as a reusable audience.

Building a filter

The filter builder is a list of conditions joined under one match mode. The Match selector at the top is either all conditions (AND, every condition must match) or any condition (OR, at least one must match). Click Add condition to add a row; each row's trash icon removes it.

Each row's first picker is grouped into Contact fields and Activity. Choosing a field offers an operator and a value; choosing an activity offers a behavioral rule instead.

Contact fields cover Email, First name, Last name, Lifecycle stage, City, Province / State, Country, Company, Job title, Source, and Created at, plus your account's own custom contact fields. Operators are equals, does not equal, contains, is one of, is after, is before, is empty, and is not empty; the available set narrows to fit the field type. The is one of value accepts a comma-separated list (for example value1, value2).

Activity conditions match what a contact has done. Each takes a verb (did, did not, or did at least N times) and a timeframe (any time, or the last 7, 30, 90, or 180 days, or the last year). The signals are event activity (Registered for an event, Attended an event, Viewed an event), email activity (Opened an email, Clicked an email, Email bounced), web activity (Viewed a page, Submitted a form), and Engagement tier (cold, warm, hot, champion). Event and email rules can target a specific event or campaign, or leave it as any event / any campaign.

A Show JSON toggle below the conditions reveals the exact filter definition the campaign will store, for reference when you need to confirm what was built.

Previewing matching contacts

The right panel, titled Matching contacts, lists the contacts the current selection resolves to with a count beside the heading (for example 1,240 recipients). It refreshes as you change the selection, with a short debounce so dragging through the filter does not re-query on every keystroke. Each row shows the contact's name (or email if no name), avatar initials, and company.

A search box filters the previewed contacts by name, email, or company. The footer sets how many rows show per page, 25, 50, 100, or 200, with previous and next page controls. Until a tab has a usable selection, the panel shows a prompt such as “Add a condition to preview matching contacts.”

Preview count vs who actually receives the email

The Matching contacts preview shows everyone the audience resolves to. At send time, the consent gate is applied per recipient: a contact whose email opt-in is not true, or who has no email address, is skipped rather than mailed. A contact who opts out between the time the audience is resolved and the time their message sends is recorded with status “suppressed.” If the suppression check itself cannot be verified for a batch, that batch is held back rather than sent, so a system error never sends around consent instead of respecting it. The delivered count for a campaign can therefore be lower than the preview count.

A campaign's email type is set with the Email type field in the Setup step. As Composer notes, every campaign send honours unsubscribe and suppression today regardless of which Email type you choose.

When the recipient list is decided

A Filter or a Dynamic saved audience is re-evaluated when the campaign sends, so contacts who match by then are included even if they did not match while you were editing. A Point-in-time saved audience sends to its frozen snapshot of members and ignores later changes. The Tags tab resolves the contacts carrying those tags at send time.

How the selection is saved

The active tab's selection auto-saves to the campaign a short moment after it becomes usable; there is no separate save button on this step. Saving writes only the active source: choosing a saved audience clears any stored tags or list, and vice versa, so a campaign always carries exactly one audience definition. Recipients can be changed while the campaign is a draft or still scheduled; once it starts sending the composer becomes read-only.