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Advanced Audiences

Creating audiences can be confusing, especially when using AND/OR logic and inclusion and exclusion conditions. In this document we'll explain the logic and how it works in each case.



AND logic


With AND logic our system includes contacts who fulfil all the selected conditions. When using the AND logic, all the conditions must be met by the contact for it to be added.



Example 1: E logic with inclusion conditions.


Let's say you're creating an audience and using the AND logic with the following inclusion conditions:


The system will search for and include contacts that fulfil all 3 conditions.


A contact that does not fulfil any of the three conditions will not be included, i.e. it is enough that the contact does not fulfil one of the three conditions for it not to be included.



Example 2: AND logic with exclusion conditions


Now let's think about creating an audience using AND logic and exclusion conditions:


The system will search for and include only those contacts that do not have all the conditions you have selected.


For example, if a contact has the Newsletter and Ebook tag but does not have the Customer tag, they WILL NOT be excluded. This is because the condition "Tag does not contain Customer" has failed.


It may be easier to think of the AND logic in exclusion conditions with "NOR". For example, a contact does not include the Newsletter tag, nor does it include the Ebook tag, nor does it include the Customer tag.



Example 3: AND logic with inclusion and exclusion conditions


As a third example, let's say you're creating an audience that uses a mixture of positive and negative conditions with AND logic.


The system will include contacts that have the Newsletter and Customer tags and do not have the Ebook tag. If a contact has all 3 tags it won't be included because it doesn't fulfil the ‘Tag does not contain Ebook’ condition.




OR logic


With OR conditions, our system will evaluate each condition individually. This means that contacts only need to fulfil one of the included conditions to be added to the audience. The conditions in this case are not dependent on each other.



Example 1: OR logic with inclusion conditions.


Let's say you're creating an audience and using OR logic with the following inclusion conditions:


The system will search for and include contacts in your audience as follows:


  1. We will first check if there are any contacts with the Newsletter tag. If contacts with the Newsletter tag are found, they will be included in your audience.


  1. Then we'll check if there are any contacts with the Ebook tag. If there are, they will be included in your audience.


  1. Finally, we'll check if there are any contacts with the Customer tag and if there are, they'll be added.


Since these conditions are independent of each other, the system will include contacts that fulfil only one of the 3 conditions. For example, if the contact contains the Newsletter tag and does not contain the Ebook and Customer tags, it will still be included.




Example 2: OR logic with exclusion conditions.


Now let's hypothesise how to create an audience using OR logic and exclusion conditions


The system will search for and include contacts in your audience as follows:


  1. First we'll check if there are any contacts that do NOT have the Newsletter tag. If there are, they will be included in the audience.


  1. Then we'll check if there are any contacts that don't have the Ebook tag. If there are, they will be included in the audience.


  1. Finally, we'll check if there are any contacts that don't have the Client tag and if there are, they'll also be added.


Once again, the contact only needs to fulfil one of the conditions to be included in the audience. It doesn't matter if they don't fulfil all the conditions, they will be included in the audience anyway.


This means that a contact who doesn't have the Newsletter tag but does have the Ebook and Customer tags will be included in the audience as they fulfil the ‘tag does not contain Newsletter’ condition.


If you want to exclude contacts that don't have the Newsletter tag, the Ebook tag or the Customer tag, we recommend that you use AND logic instead of OR.



Example 3: OR logic with inclusion and exclusion conditions


As a third example, let's imagine that you create an audience with a mixture of inclusion and exclusion conditions.



The system will search for and include contacts in your audience as follows:


  1. First we'll check if there are any contacts that contain the Newsletter tag. If there are, they will be included in the audience.


  1. Then we'll check if there are any contacts with the Ebook tag. If there are any, they will be included in the audience.


  1. Finally, we'll check if there are any contacts that don't have the Client tag and if there are, they'll also be added.


If a contact has the Newsletter tag and the Customer tag, they will be included in your audience as they fulfil the "Tag contains Newsletter" condition.



Updated on: 08/07/2025

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