Messaging
Choose who receives a campaign with audience filters
Learn every audience filter in Leadnote campaigns, how the live preview counts recipients, and which leads are always left out of a send.
The audience step decides which leads receive a campaign. You set filters, and a live preview tells you how many leads will receive the message and why others are left out. If you set no filters, every reachable lead is included.
The same filter panel is used in the New campaign wizard and in the Filter and select leads drawer on the Bulk Email, Bulk SMS and WhatsApp pages. On those pages choose Apply selection to confirm and Clear filters to start again.
The filters
Filters are grouped into four sections. A lead must match every filter you fill in.
Lead details
| Filter | What it matches |
|---|---|
| List | Leads in any of the lists you pick. The default is All lists. |
| Lead stage | Leads in any of the stages you pick. |
| Potential | High, Medium, Low or Not relevant. |
| Assigned to | Leads assigned to any of the users you pick. |
| Captured by | Leads captured by any of the users you pick. |
| Customer group | Leads in that customer group. |
| Interested in | Leads with that product group. |
| Tags | Leads with any of the tags you type, separated by commas. |
| Company, Designation | Leads whose value contains your text. |
| Notes contain | Leads whose notes contain your text. |
Location: Country, State and City. Type the whole value. Capitals do not matter.
Dates
- Follow-up date from and Follow-up date to.
- Lead captured from and Lead captured to.
The last day you pick is included.
Deal and status
- Deal size: Any deal size, Equal to, Greater than, Less than, or Between two amounts.
- Lead subscription status: Any, Subscribed or Unsubscribed. Choose Unsubscribed to see who opted out of that channel.
- Leads: follow up not set and Leads: not assigned to any user are tick boxes for leads that lack a follow-up date or an owner.
Read the preview
Under the filters the preview shows four numbers for the channel you are sending on:
| Number | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Will receive | Leads that can actually be messaged. This is the recipient count. |
| Match the filter | All leads that fit your filters. |
| No email address / No mobile number | Matching leads with nothing to send to. |
| Unsubscribed | Matching leads who opted out of this channel. |
Below that you see the active filters as chips and a sample of up to five recipients with their list. With no filters the preview says every lead with an email address (or mobile number) is included. If nothing qualifies, a warning says "No leads found for this selection" and you cannot move on.
In the wizard the audience step comes before the channel step. A note above the filters says which channel the counts are for, and it starts with Email. After you choose SMS or WhatsApp, go back and check the counts for that channel.
Who is always left out
- Deleted and archived leads. They are never included.
- Leads without an address. Email needs an email address. SMS and WhatsApp need a mobile number.
- Unsubscribed leads. A lead who used an unsubscribe link, or was marked unsubscribed for that channel, is skipped. See sending limits and consent.
- Suppressed addresses. Addresses on your suppression list, such as hard bounces, spam complaints and ones you added by hand, are blocked when the message is queued. They do not reduce the Will receive number, but they show in the results as Suppressed / skipped.
- Leads the sender cannot see. An audience only contains leads that the person sending can access under list based access rights and team visibility. A Manager with a narrower view gets a smaller audience than the Account Owner. A scheduled campaign uses the access of the person who scheduled it. See lead visibility rules.
Check the numbers before sending
The Review step repeats the recipient count and shows how many leads matched but were skipped, with a split into missing addresses and unsubscribed leads. It also shows your daily limit and how many you have already sent today. If the audience would exceed the daily limit for the channel, the send button is disabled. Narrow the audience. See sending limits and consent.
The numbers on the finished campaign can differ a little from the preview. Leads who were added, edited or unsubscribed between the preview and the send change the result, and suppressed addresses are only found at send time.
Tips
- Preview with the channel you will use. A lead with an email address but no mobile number counts for email and not for SMS.
- Use Tags for segments you will reuse, for example expo-2026, so the same filter works next time.
- Send a test message to yourself before sending to a large audience. See create and send a campaign.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the Will receive number lower than Match the filter?
Match the filter counts every lead that fits your filters. Will receive removes leads that have no email address or mobile number for the channel, and leads who unsubscribed. Both reasons are counted in the preview.
Do filters combine with AND or OR?
Different filters combine, so a lead must satisfy all of them. Inside one multi-choice filter, such as Tags or List, a lead needs to match any of the values you picked.
Will archived or deleted leads receive my campaign?
No. Archived and deleted leads are never included.