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Help · Audience

Lists

A list is a container. You put people on it, and they stay on it until somebody takes them off. Nothing else moves them: not a change in what they buy, not a change in what they want to hear from you.

That is what makes a list different from a segment. A segment is a question that keeps re-answering itself — write the rule, and who matches follows from the rule, this minute and every minute after. A list holds whoever was put there. Both live under Audience, one item apart, and they answer different needs: use a segment when the rule is the point, and a list when the people are.

Your lists

Under Audience, Lists shows every list you have, one row each, with how many people are on it, how many of them consented to email (and to texts, if your store sends them), and when somebody last joined. Create list starts a new one.

Search by name. Type more than one word and every one of them has to match, wherever each of them falls and in any order — searching Mother Morning finds a list called Mother's Day Morning 2026. Use Show to switch between your lists and the Archived ones. Both live in the address, so opening a list and coming back — with Back or the All lists breadcrumb — returns you to the view you left.

The columns are Name, People, and Last added.

Click a column's name to sort by it, and click it again to reverse the order — on mobile, choose from Sort by above the lists instead; lists not yet counted or never added to always sit at the end, and this browser remembers your last sort the next time you open the screen.

Paging. Under the table you choose how many to show at a time — 25, 50 or 100 per page — and step through with Previous and Next. The line beside them says where you are: Page 3 of 5. Type a number in the box to jump straight to a page. The page you are on is part of the address, so opening a list and coming back puts you back where you were, and the size you choose is remembered the next time you open this screen. Searching or changing a filter takes you back to the first page. Very occasionally we cannot count your lists quickly enough to say how many pages there are; when that happens the line says Page 3 and nothing more, rather than guessing.

Create list asks for a name and, if you want one, a description. The description is a note for your team — it is never shown to anyone on the list.

Viewers can read these screens. Creating, renaming, adding, removing and archiving are for owners, managers and marketers.

Adding a segment's people to a list

On a segment's own page, Add these people to a list puts everyone the segment matches onto a list you choose. It is how lists get filled. It is a copy of who matches right now, not a link, and nobody is emailed by it.

It is a copy, not a link. The dialog says so before you confirm: This adds the people who match right now. The list does not follow the segment afterward.

This is the one thing about lists worth reading twice. Once the copy is made, the two go their own ways:

If you want the list to catch up with the segment later, add the segment's people again. Anyone already on the list stays exactly as they were, with the day they first joined intact.

A segment can hold a great many people, so the adding happens in the background. You get a notice with a link to the list, and the list fills over the next few moments — a large one may take a few minutes. Nobody is emailed by it, and nobody's consent changes.

While a segment that uses the list is being sent to Meta, only a team member who can send to Meta can add a segment's people to it this way.

Importing people onto a list

You can import a file of people straight onto a list: open the list and choose Import — the button at the top of the page, or the same word in the Actions menu beside it — and everyone the file imports also lands here. It is the same import you would start from the Profiles screen, with the list filled in for you.

Everything the importer does applies — including that some people arrive ready to email and some wait until we know their address still works. The Import people page explains what each column means and how to get the waiting ones moving.

Putting somebody on a list does not subscribe them. Taking them off does not unsubscribe them. Nothing on these screens writes consent, and nothing on them can.

That is deliberate, and it is what makes lists useful. A person who has asked never to be emailed can sit on a list perfectly legitimately — a list of addresses to look at, a cohort you are keeping track of, a group you mean to deal with later. The list organizes; the consent rules decide what may be sent.

So the members table shows each person's consent as a fact to read, beside their name, and the dialog you get before removing anybody says the same thing in the moment it matters most: This takes them off this list only. Any other lists they are on are untouched, and their consent does not change — if they agreed to receive marketing email, they still do.

Mailing the people on a list

Pick the list under Send to in a campaign's first step, or under Exclude to keep its people out. A segment can ask about a list too, and the rule reads who is on the list now. Consent still decides who may be emailed.

To combine a list with other rules, build a segment whose rule says anyone who is on the list Newsletter, and send to that. The condition lives under Is on a list in the segment builder, and it can be combined with everything else there — anyone who is on the list Newsletter, who placed an order in the last 90 days, minus anyone who is on the list Wholesale.

The rule reads who is on the list now, every time it runs. Add somebody today and they are in it today; take them off and they are out. Deleting the list is the one thing that changes the rule's meaning rather than its members — every rule naming a deleted list stops matching anybody, and every is not on rule starts matching everybody — which is why a list cannot be deleted out from under a campaign that is armed and waiting to send.

And it remains true here that the list does not decide who may be emailed. Consent does, at send time, for every person.

The numbers

People is everyone on the list, whatever their consent. Consented to email is how many of them could be emailed when the list was counted, and, if your store sends text messages, consented to texts is how many could be texted — each a best count with its clock time beside it, never a promise about a send.

Every list carries them together, and they never appear apart:

2,140 people
1,830 consented to email · 240 consented to texts · as of 2:14 PM

People is everyone currently on the list, whatever their consent. A person you can never email is still a person on the list.

Consented to email is how many of them could be reached by email — they have an address, they said yes to email, their identity is confirmed, and they are not paused.

Consented to texts is the same for text messages — they have a mobile number we can text, they said yes to texts for that number, their identity is confirmed, and they are not paused. It appears only once your store sends text messages, and a list counted before then shows it after its next count.

Each is the best count available at the moment it was taken, which is why the clock time rides with them every time they are shown. Neither is a promise about a send.

The real check happens at send time, every time, for every person. Consent can change in the minutes after a count. So can a pause. And a small number of addresses and numbers are blocked permanently in a way no count can see, which is the one place these numbers can be generous. A later refusal is normal and shows up in the campaign's own record; the gap is shown rather than hidden.

One list's page

A list's page shows its numbers, the people on it with their consent and when they joined, and every segment and automation that uses it. If you gave the list a description, it is the line under the list's name. Refresh, Import and Export sit beside its name.

Who is on this list — the numbers above, counted when you arrive. If another count is running for your store at that moment, the page waits and asks again by itself, showing the last numbers it took in the meantime. Refresh at the top of the page counts again. If you press it while another count is running, or the list takes too long to count, the card says so plainly and keeps the last numbers it honestly had; the list itself is unaffected.

People on this list — Name, Email, Email consent (and Text consent, if your store sends text messages), and Added, which carries both the day somebody joined and how they came to be there — from a segment, say. A person who is Not confirmed yet wears that mark beside their name: being on a list does not confirm anybody, and they are still excluded from every send. Show narrows to just those who consented to email, and Show more pages through the rest. What you see is a page of a live list, not a manifest of a send.

Search narrows the people on the list by name or email. Type part of a first name, part of a surname, both with the space between, or any part of an address. Type more than one word and every one of them has to match, wherever each falls, so dana @example.com finds the Dana at that domain and the order does not matter. It searches only this list, and it works alongside Show, so you can look at just the people who consented to email whose name contains Dana. Searching for a % finds a % — nothing you type is treated as a wildcard.

Remove takes one person off, after the confirmation above.

Used in

Below the people, Used in names every segment whose rule asks about this list, and every automation that starts when someone joins it or adds or removes people from it — each with where it does. When nothing uses the list, the card says No segment or automation uses this.

The buttons at the top of the page

Three buttons sit beside the list's name: Refresh, Import and Export. When there is not room for the words beside a long name or in a narrow window, they show only their symbols; hover over one, or tab to it, and it says what it is. Beside them is the Actions menu, which holds the same three, Pause emails… and Resume emails…, and Delete last — so nothing is reachable only by recognizing a symbol, and the one act you cannot undo is not a slip away from the others.

Pausing a list

Pause emails… stops the emails you send from reaching the people on this list until you resume — for the off-season, say — and Resume emails… lets them hear from you again. Both ask first, and say how many people they cover whenever the list has a count. Nobody's consent changes either way. The Pause and resume page has the rest.

Changing the name

Press the name itself and type. Enter or clicking away saves it; Escape puts the old name back. If you already have a list with that name, the page says so beside it and the old name stands. It is the same way you rename a template or a form.

Deleting a list

Delete asks first, and what it says is the part that matters: only the list is deleted. Everybody on it stays in your store, nobody is unsubscribed, and nobody comes off any other list. The list disappears from your lists and can no longer be chosen anywhere; the record of who was on it is kept.

Deleting is refused while a campaign that is armed and waiting to send has an audience naming this list; you will be told which campaigns, and canceling or unscheduling them frees the list. While a segment that uses the list is synced to Meta, only a team member who can sync to Meta can delete or restore it. Switch Show to Archived to find a deleted list again, open it, and press Restore at the top of its page to bring it back. An archived list is read-only until you do: you can still see who was on it, but nothing can be added to it, its name cannot be changed, and it cannot be chosen anywhere.

Details shows when the list was created.

A person's own record

A profile carries a Lists block: the lists they are on now, with the day they joined and how they came to be there, and below that, Taken off — the ones they have come off, with the day.

Add to a list puts this one person on a list you choose, without going through a segment. It is the counterpart to Remove on a list's own page, and it changes nothing else about them: nobody is emailed, and their consent stays exactly as it was. If they are already on the list you pick, the app says so and nothing happens twice.

Removing somebody is recorded, not erased. That history is how "why did they get that email?" gets answered months later, and it is the reason nothing here quietly deletes a membership.