Practical smart list recipes

Once you understand filters and AND/OR logic (see What smart lists are and how filters work), the fastest way to get value out of smart lists is to build a handful of standing ones that answer questions you ask yourself every week. Here are the ones most accounts end up using constantly.

#Hot leads that need attention today

Goal: Surface leads who are engaged and haven't been followed up with recently.

• Tag is hot-lead
• AND Last activity date is before 2 days ago
• AND DND (SMS or Email, whichever you'll use to reach them) is not enabled

Sort by last activity date, ascending, so the most-neglected hot lead sits at the top. This is the list to check first thing every morning if speed-to-lead matters to your close rate.

Tip: "Hot lead" only means something if the tag is applied consistently. If this list keeps missing people who are obviously hot, the gap is usually in tagging discipline, not the filter itself.

#No-reply follow-up (gone quiet)

Goal: Find contacts who were engaged, then stopped responding, so someone can re-engage them before they're lost entirely.

• Pipeline stage is Contacted (or whichever stage represents "we reached out")
• AND Last activity date is before 7 days ago
• AND Tag is not do-not-contact

This catches the classic "sent one message, never followed up" gap. Pair it with a bulk action (see Bulk email/SMS sends) to send a single re-engagement message to everyone on the list at once, rather than working through them one by one.

#Contacts missing email or phone

Goal: Find data quality gaps before they cause a failed campaign or an unreachable "customer."

• Email is empty
• OR Phone is empty

Group these two with OR, since either condition alone represents a problem worth fixing. If you want to focus specifically on paying customers (the highest-stakes gap), AND the group against Tag is customer:

• (Email is empty OR Phone is empty)
• AND Tag is customer

Screenshot coming soon

A smart list showing contacts with a missing email or phone filter applied

Run this monthly. It's one of the highest-leverage lists you can build, because a customer you can't reach is a support ticket and a churn risk waiting to happen.

#Segment by tag

Goal: A living view of a specific audience — for reporting, for a recurring campaign, or just to know its size at a glance.

• Tag is newsletter

That's the whole filter. Simple single-tag smart lists like this are worth building for any tag you check the size or membership of more than once — "how many VIP contacts do we have," "who's in the beta program" — rather than re-running an export every time someone asks.

#Segment by pipeline stage

Goal: See who's sitting in a specific stage of your sales process right now, independent of the pipeline board view.

• Pipeline is Sales Pipeline
• AND Stage is Proposal Sent
• AND Last activity date is before 5 days ago

This variant adds the staleness filter so you're not just looking at everyone in the stage — you're looking at who's been sitting there too long without movement, which is usually the more actionable question. Swap the stage value to build one of these per stage you want to actively monitor.

#Contacts you should never bulk-message

Goal: A safety-check list, not one you act on directly — used to confirm your bulk sends are excluding the right people.

• DND (Email or SMS) is enabled
• OR Tag is do-not-contact
• OR Tag is unsubscribed

Keep this list around and spot-check it before a large bulk send: cross-reference a few names against your send list to confirm none of them slipped through. The platform already excludes DND contacts automatically, but a second, visible check costs nothing and catches tag-based exclusions your bulk send filter might have missed.

#What "done" looks like

A good set of standing smart lists means you never have to build a filter from scratch to answer a routine question — "who needs follow-up," "who are we about to lose," "is our data clean" — because the list already exists, always current, one click away. Start with the recipes above, then adapt the values (tag names, stage names, day thresholds) to match your own account's vocabulary.

#Related articles

• What smart lists are and how filters work
• Build and save a smart list
• Bulk email/SMS sends and deleting or merging contacts safely

#Frequently asked questions

#Can I combine more than two OR conditions in one group?

Yes — group as many OR conditions as you need (for example, five different tags that all count as a match), then AND that whole group against other filters.

#Should I rebuild these recipes from scratch in my account, or is there a template to copy?

Rebuild them using your account's actual tag names, pipeline names, and stage names — the filter logic above is the pattern to follow, but the exact values will be specific to how your account is set up.

#How often should I revisit a saved smart list's filters?

Whenever the underlying process changes — a new pipeline stage is added, a tag is renamed, or your definition of "hot lead" shifts. A smart list built on stale assumptions quietly stops being useful long before anyone notices.