Sitecore List Manager for Dummies

In continuing our series of exploring Sitecore 9 functionality, we wanted to do a deep dive into the new and improved Sitecore List Manager.See below for a Q&A with Angela Gustafson, 2-time Sitecore Digital Strategist MVP.Let’s start from the beginning, what is Sitecore List Manager?Sitecore List Manager allows you to create lists of recipients, (which could be captured with the new Sitecore Form Module), for your Sitecore Email Experience Manager campaigns.You can create segments using the Rule Set Editor to filter contacts within the lists so that it only includes a specific segment of users. Overall, it allows you to create a message to target a specific segment of customers with relevant information.There are two different types of lists within the List Manager:

• Contact Lists – which is a standard list of contacts. A contact can be a part of one or more contact lists.
  • List Source: Any existing contact list
• Segmented Lists – which is a list that is filtered of one or more selected contact lists. However, the contacts within this segmented list are not actually “members” of that list – they only show up within the list if they are in the list “source” (the selected contact lists) and meet the conditions that you as a user define.
  • List Source: All the Sitecore contacts & existing contact list

Creating a list is similar to setting up personalization rules since you’re able to use Sitecore out-of-the-box editor to choose how to segment your traffic. 

What is different from previous versions of Sitecore List Manager? The Sitecore list manager includes 50 new segmentation rules based on:

• Campaigns
• Channel
• Contact
• Date
• Device
• GeoIP
• Marketing Automation
• Outcomes
• Visit

What are the challenges with using Sitecore List Manager: Since Sitecore List Manager is tied to EXM, you will need to ensure you are on Sitecore version 9.01 where EXM is built into the core product (more on this in future posts).  As with Sitecore’s previous upgrade conversions, there is not an easy path to migrate previous lists into the New List Manager.What’s next?We’ll be talking more about Sitecore 9 and Email Experience Manager in a future post, but we’d like to highlight that even though the List Manager really empowers to user to segment their email distribution list, it’s still important to have an EXM and Marketing automation strategy in place before moving forward.