Spoke allows you to remove contacts from your texting list after you've uploaded it. In addition to offering automated protections against sending duplicate texts, Spoke has a Suppressions feature allowing you to remove phone numbers from your campaigns even after they have launched.
Automated List Validation: Duplicates, Opt-Outs, Landlines
When you upload a list of contacts to a campaign, Spoke automatically removes landlines and duplicate phone numbers (as well as opt-outs and first names containing profanity).
Image showing Spoke scrubbing a contact list to remove landlines, opt-outs, and duplicates.
As a result, if the same phone number appears more than once in your contact list, Spoke will make sure it’s only texted once in that campaign.
Spoke reports how many landlines and duplicates were removed from your contact list in the “Contacts” section. Click on “Contacts” after your upload has completed to see this report.
Image showing the Contacts section after a list has been uploaded, with a report of how many landlines were removed during upload.
Should additional numbers be removed from your contact list, i.e. because they were opted out or suppressed, the “Contacts” report will reflect these changes as well. Even after you start a campaign, you can click on its “Contacts” section to compare the total number of contacts you uploaded with the current number in your campaign.
Image showing the Contacts section of a campaign that has been started. The report will update if contacts have been removed from your campaign since you initially uploaded the list.
Suppressions
Every campaign also has a “Suppressions” feature where you can remove specific phone numbers from your campaign. Unlike contact upload, which can only happen before you start the campaign, you can remove phone numbers from your campaign even after you’ve started texting in it.
Image showing the “Suppressions” section of a campaign.
There are two ways to suppress contacts from your campaign:
Upload a list of phone numbers
Suppress overlaps with other campaigns, i.e. remove contacts you’ve also imported into other campaigns
We’ll cover each of these methods in turn.
Upload a suppressions list
The “Upload a List” feature allows you to upload a CSV file or copy and paste a list of phone numbers to be removed from your campaign. There is no limit to how many lists you can upload.
Click “Upload a List” to add a list of phone numbers to suppress.
Step 1: Click “Upload a List”
To get started, click the “Upload A List” button. This will open a popup window.
Image showing the popup where you add suppressions to your campaign and select the method you want to use to import them.
Step 2: Name your list
In the popup, give your suppressions list a name. This will help you identify why you uploaded these numbers.
Image showing where to give your suppressions list a name.
Step 3: Select an import method
Next, click on the dropdown for “Select an import method”. Choose “Text Entry” if you just want to copy and paste numbers into Spoke. Choose “CSV Upload” if you want to upload your numbers from a CSV file.
Image showing where to select whether to paste in your list or import it as a CSV.
Option 1: Paste a Text Entry
Selecting “Text Entry” as your contact import method gives you access to a field where you can drop the phone numbers you want to suppress. Your numbers don’t need to be formatted a certain way.
Image showing the field where you copy and paste a list of numbers to suppress.
Click “Upload Numbers” to import the contacts.
Option 2: Upload a CSV File
Selecting “CSV Upload” gives you a “Pick File” button you can use to select a CSV file from your computer. In order for Spoke to read your spreadsheet, make sure the phone numbers you want to suppress are in a column called “cell” (case-insensitive). Make sure to save the list as a CSV file.
Image showing the “Pick File” button.
Once you’ve selected your file, Spoke will show you the name of the file you selected and how many rows it contains.
Image showing how many rows were uploaded with the CSV file and the “Upload Numbers” button.
Click “Upload Numbers” to suppress the contacts.
Step 4: View suppressions
After your suppressions have been uploaded, you’ll be able to see the name of your list, who added the suppressions and when, and the total number of contacts suppressed.
Image showing the report shown after you’ve successfully suppressed a list of contacts.
Note that Spoke will not suppress contacts you have already texted, only contacts you have yet to text.
Suppress contacts overlapping with other campaigns
The “Suppress Overlaps from Previous Campaigns” feature tells you if any of the contacts in your campaign have already been uploaded into other campaigns. You can then remove these overlapping contacts – either all of them, or just a targeted group – from your current campaign.
To access this feature, click on the “Suppress Overlaps from Previous Campaigns” panel.
Image showing where to click to open the “Suppress Overlaps” feature.
By default, this section will show you every campaign on your team with overlapping contacts, even campaigns you haven’t started or have archived. There are several ways to filter your view to only bring up specific campaigns using the bar at the top of the section, which we cover below. You can also change how many campaigns are shown at a time using the “Rows per page” dropdown.
Image showing where to change how many campaign rows are displayed at a time.
Note: If the “Last Messaged” column says “No Activity”, it means that the texts in that campaign have not yet been sent.
Suppress all overlaps with other campaigns
Let’s say you wanted to ensure that your campaign contact list was free of any overlaps with another campaign. To suppress every contact overlapping with another campaign, click the green “Suppress All Overlaps with Previous Campaigns” button.
Image showing how to suppress all contacts overlapping with the contact list of your campaign.
Tip: The "Suppress All Overlaps with Previous Campaigns" button will suppress all overlaps that are brought up by your search terms. By default, it will suppress every overlap. If you use the campaign status and date picker dropdown filters, or search for a campaign, it will suppress only the overlaps you have chosen to view.
After you’ve suppressed all overlaps, you’ll see all the campaigns with overlapping contacts displayed in a table. The table will report the number of overlaps with each campaign that have been suppressed from your current campaign.
Image showing an example of the report after suppressing all overlaps with a campaign.
If more campaigns are added to your Spoke after you have run the suppression, and you’d like to suppress those overlaps too, you can always repeat the action by going through the same steps.
Suppress all overlaps with a specific campaign
Let’s say you only want to suppress just the overlaps with a specific campaign – because you texted those same contacts earlier in the day, for example. To suppress all overlaps from specific campaigns, you can use the “Suppress All” button next to that campaign’s row.
Image showing the “Suppress All” button for a specific campaign.
After you click “Suppress All” and the suppressions have completed, you’ll see the campaign listed at the top of the “Suppressions” section and how many of the contacts were successfully suppressed. Note that you can only suppress contacts who have yet to be texted in the campaign you’re editing.
Image showing the results of suppressing all overlaps with another campaign.
Apply filters to suppress just some overlaps with a campaign
Let’s say you only want to suppress a subset of contacts overlapping with other campaigns, i.e. people who have been tagged as non-supporters or who replied to you in another campaign. To just suppress certain overlaps with active or archived campaigns, you can use the “apply filters” feature.
Step 1: Click “Apply Filters”
Click the “Apply Filters” button next to a campaign to get started.
Note: If you don’t see an “Apply Filters” button, it means the campaign is in draft status; there would be no conversation data saved in it, so you wouldn’t be able to filter to specific tags or answers.
Image showing the “Apply Filters” button for a campaign with overlaps.
Clicking “Apply Filters” will open up a pop-up window.
Step 2: Choose how you want to filter overlaps
The popup window is where you’ll apply the filters to remove certain overlaps. By default, the filter will be set to suppress every contact in the campaign with overlaps.
Click on “All contacts from this campaign” to access a dropdown list with additional filtering options.
Image showing where to click to access a list with different filtering options for your overlap suppressions.
In addition to “All contacts from this campaign”, the dropdown list gives you the options to filter out overlaps matching certain criteria:
“Contacts matching ALL applied filters”
“Contacts matching ANY applied filters”
“Contacts where the initial message was filtered”
If you select “matching ALL” or “matching ANY”, you’ll choose the filters you want to apply in a further step. If you select “where the initial message was filtered”, you’ll suppress only those contacts who did not receive your initial message due to carrier filtering.
Image showing the dropdown list with filtering options. Select the method you want from the list.
Step 3: Select filters
To apply specific filters, you’ll need to have selected “contacts matching ALL” or “contacts matching ANY” applied filters. This will give you a screen where you can apply filters, including:
Contact Status, i.e. “Needs Texter Response” or “Needs First Message” or “Active Conversation” or “First Message Sent” or “Closed”
Tags, i.e. conversations where a specific tag has been applied
Question + Answer, i.e. if you have grouped your scripts as questions and saved answer data, you can filter to just contacts who gave specific answers to a question
Image showing options available to filter overlaps: conversation status, tags, or answers to questions.
Filtering by contact status
Click on “Any Status” to open a dropdown list. You can unselect any contact statuses you don’t want to suppress. Just make sure not to remove all contact statuses, as you’ll otherwise have no messages to suppress.
Contacts you never texted: If you wanted to suppress just the contacts you never ended up texting in that campaign, you could select “Needs First Message”, for example.
To just suppress people who weren’t actually texted in a campaign, select “Needs First Message”.
Contacts who never responded: If you wanted to suppress just the people who never responded to you in that campaign, you could select “First Message Sent”.
To just suppress people who never responded to you in a campaign, select “First Message Sent”.
Contacts who did respond: Or if you wanted to suppress everyone who did respond to you, you could select “Needs Texter Response”, “Active Conversation”, and “Closed”:
To just suppress people who responded to you in a campaign, select “Needs Texter Response”, “Active Conversation”, and “Closed”.
Filtering by tags
If you applied tags to conversations in a campaign, you can suppress contacts with those tags. Simply click on “Tags” to open a dropdown list.
Click on “Tags” to select the tags you want to suppress.
From the dropdown list, you’ll be able to select all tags you want to suppress.
Image showing the dropdown list where you can select tags to suppress.
You can select as many tags as you like from the list just by clicking on them, or unselect tags by clicking on them again.
Filtering by answers to questions
If you’re filtering contacts from a campaign where you grouped your scripts as the answers to questions, you can suppress contacts by the answers you recorded.
To get started, click on the “Question” field to open a dropdown list of all questions available in the campaign.
Click on “Question” to open a dropdown list of the questions you used to organize your scripts and data collection.
Next, select the question that prompts the answers you want to suppress.
Image of an example dropdown list of questions from a campaign.
Next, click the “Answer” field to access a dropdown list of the answers attached to that question.
Image showing where to click to access a dropdown list of answers to a question.
From the dropdown list, select the answers you want to suppress. You can select as many answers as you like - click to select, and click again to unselect an answer.
Image showing an example dropdown list where you can select answers to a question.
Step 4: Save suppressions
Once you have selected all the filters you want to apply, hit “Save Suppressions” to remove the contacts with the applied filters from your campaign.
Step 5: View suppressions
After Spoke has processed your suppression, you can view the result at the top of the Suppressions section.
Image showing a report of contacts suppressed according to filters.
Update suppressions based on filters
Campaigns change with time - as texters record data about conversations, the number of contacts with a specific conversation status, tag, or answers may increase. To ensure that any overlaps meeting your suppressions filters are also removed from your campaign, you can run a suppression again.
To re-run a suppression, i.e. to remove additional contacts meeting the filters you already applied to overlaps in a campaign, hit the “Update Suppressions” button above the list of suppressions you’ve performed.
Image showing where to find the “Update Suppressions” button.
The report will update to show the results of your re-run as a separate line.
Image showing the results of a suppressions re-run: in this case, one additional contact meeting the initial filtering criteria has been removed.
Tips for using the “Suppress Overlaps” feature
If your Spoke contains a lot of campaigns with overlap, you may wish to narrow down which campaigns are shown to you in the “Suppress Overlaps with Previous Campaigns” section.
Searching for campaigns
To narrow your view to a specific campaign, you can use the search bar at the top of the section to search for that campaign. You can search for a campaign by name or by its ID number.
Image showing an example of searching for a specific campaign by name.
Image showing an example of searching for a specific campaign by its ID.
Filtering by campaign status
To view only campaigns with a certain status, such as archived, draft, or active campaigns, click on the “Campaign Status” menu in the navigation bar at the top of the section.
Image showing where you can filter to view all or just some campaigns.
This will open a dropdown where you can select which campaign statuses to view.
Image showing the dropdown list of campaign statuses; click on a status to unselect it.
You can unselect or select the statuses you want to view. Note that you must select at least one status in order to show campaigns.
Filtering by campaign age
You can also choose whether to view campaigns created in the last 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, or over all time using the date range picker at the top of the section.
Image showing how to narrow your view of campaigns by age.
If you’re not seeing recently created campaigns or have recently made changes to campaigns, you can also click the “REFRESH” button next to the “Last computed at” date and time to bring those campaigns and changes to view.