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Audience

  • Agents who want to follow up with a group of people based on what they said
  • Operators building an audience for an SMS campaign
  • Anyone who wants to find people without building a chain of filters

Prerequisites

  • Access to Lists in your workspace (under Work in the sidebar)
  • Some SMS conversations in your inbox for a list to draw on

What are Lists?

A list describes a group of people in one sentence, such as “people thinking about selling in the next six months” or “buyers who asked about schools”. Voqo finds the people whose conversations match and keeps the list up to date as they text in. A list from a sentence is also a view in your inbox. Every list you create on Lists from a sentence appears as a pill in the Unified Inbox, and every inbox view appears on Lists. Renaming, changing or deleting it in one place changes it in both. A list can also come from the map. An area list holds the people at the addresses in a place you pick on the Area Heat Map: suburbs, streets and areas you draw. Area lists show on Lists with a map icon. They are not inbox views, so they don’t appear in the Unified Inbox.

Manage an area list

Click an area list on Lists to open it. It shows the people in it, each with a link to their contact. On a phone, each person is one row with their name, then their mobile and suburb. A person marked Unconfirmed has an unconfirmed address match for every address in the list. Each area list card shows its part names as chips, how many people are in it, and how many of them have a mobile. It has these actions:
  • Start SMS campaign: opens a new campaign with the list as its audience. It stays off when nobody in the list has a mobile.
  • Edit parts: opens the map with the list drawn, so you can add or remove suburbs, streets and areas.
  • Refresh: counts the people again. A count older than a day looks faded.
  • Rename and Delete: deleting a list never deletes its saved areas.
Anyone in your workspace can create, edit and delete area lists. You can also choose an area list in the List filter on Contacts (grouped under Area lists, with inbox views under Inbox views; the default is Any list), and in the audience of an SMS campaign. Everyone in your workspace can see and use the workspace’s lists.

Create a list

  1. Open Lists and type a sentence in the box at the top of the page, or click into it and pick one of the suggestions.
  2. Voqo turns the sentence into filters, such as a date range or a contact status, plus at most one condition about what people said, such as Asked about price. They show as chips, with a suggested name. For people who haven’t replied, say so: “people who didn’t reply to my message” becomes the filter Show: Waiting on them, which keeps everyone your team sent the latest message or made the latest call to. When they reply, they leave the list.
  3. Check the chips and the name, then press Enter or click Create list.
The list opens straight away. While it checks your conversations it shows Checking and the steps it’s working through, with a count such as Checking 120 of 473 conversations and how many people match so far. People appear as they match. A list with no condition about what people said is just a saved set of filters, so it’s ready at once.

Your lists at a glance

Each list on Lists is a card with its name, whether it’s Live or Checking, its sentence and chips, and how many people are in it. The card also shows the first few people and the words that put the first one in the list. Click a card to open the list.

Lists stay up to date

A new list first reads the conversations from the last 30 days. After that, each new message a contact sends is checked as it arrives, and the person joins the list if it matches. You don’t need to rebuild or refresh a list.

Why someone is in a list

Open a list to see its people. Each person shows their own words that matched, in quotes. Select a person to see the quote, their contact details and their recent messages, with links to open the conversation in the inbox or their contact record. In their recent messages, the words that matched are highlighted in the message they came from. Use the ↑ and ↓ keys to move between people.

Not a match

If someone doesn’t belong in a list, select them and click Not a match. They leave the list, and Undo appears for a few seconds in case you change your mind. They stay out of that list even when they send more messages. Not a match only changes the list; the conversation stays in your inbox as before.

Rename, change or delete a list

Click ⋯ on a list’s card on Lists, or next to Use in SMS campaign on an open list:
  • Open (on a card) opens the list.
  • Edit changes the sentence. Voqo turns it into new chips, and the list checks your conversations again.
  • Rename changes the list’s name. Its people stay the same.
  • Delete removes the list and its inbox view for everyone in the workspace, after you confirm. Conversations and contacts are not changed.
Members who can only view the inbox don’t see ⋯.

Use a list on the Contacts page

On Contacts, open Filter and choose a list under List. Pick Any list for no list filter, or a view under Inbox views or an area list under Area lists. The table shows only that list’s people, and a List: chip shows which list is applied. Click × on the chip to go back to all contacts.

Use a list as an SMS campaign audience

When you choose the audience for an SMS campaign, open the Lists tab in Select contacts and pick a list. You can also click Use in SMS campaign on a list to start a campaign with that list already picked.
  • Before you confirm, Voqo shows how many people will be used from the list. The audience is fixed when you confirm: people who join the list later aren’t added to the campaign.
  • People in the list who don’t have a saved contact aren’t texted. Voqo tells you how many there are before you confirm.
  • Your usual opt-out and re-message rules still apply to the people in the list.

Limits

  • Each workspace can have up to 20 lists.
  • Up to 10 of them can have a condition about what people said.
  • These limits are shared with your inbox views, because a list and an inbox view are the same thing.

Troubleshooting

A new list shows Checking

A list shows Checking after it’s created, while it reads your conversations. The time depends on how many conversations you have; the list shows how many it has checked so far. People appear as they match, and the count updates when the check finishes. You can keep working in the meantime.

A list says No one matches this list yet

This is normal, especially for a new list, and isn’t an error. No one in your recent conversations matches it so far. The list stays live and shows what it’s looking for: people are added automatically when a message they send matches.

Someone I expected isn’t in a list

A list reads SMS conversations. Check that the person has texted with your team and that the list’s filters, such as its date range, include them. Open the list and check its chips to see what Voqo understood. If you are still stuck, contact support with your workspace name and the list’s name.