List permissions are useful if you want to limit who can send to a group of contacts.
ACME is a B2B brand that maintains a list of high-value customers. They keep these customers in a list called VIPs.
ACME only wants the VIPs to receive certain communications sent specifically from their Marketing Director. Since the Marketing Director is also the account owner, they can set the send permission on the VIP list to include only themselves.
Suppose another user tries to send a campaign to any contact in the VIP list. In that case, we remove the VIP contacts before sending, and the VIP contacts won't receive the campaign.
Restrict sending to any contacts
You can restrict a user from sending to any of your contacts with the Contacts user permission.
Learn more in Restrict and grant user access permissions.
How list-level restriction works
By default, all users with the Sender permission can send to your lists. However, when a list has permissions assigned, only the chosen users can send to the contacts it contains.
Other users can't send to these contacts, even if they appear in other lists, segments, or marketing preferences that they can send to.
Let's say we have the setup below:
Here are some user configurations and who they can send to:
User | Can send to |
Account owner or managed users with the Can manage account permission | 
|
User with sending permission for List A | 
|
User with sending permission for List B | 
|
User with no specific list sending permissions | 
|
Create a new list with sending permissions
Go to Audience > Lists > NEW LIST.
Enter a name, add to a folder, and enter a description.
For Who can send to this list, select CHOOSE USERS.
You only see this option if you are the account owner or a user with the Can manage account permission.On the side panel, select the users you want to permit to send campaigns to the list or remove any users who shouldn’t have permission.
Select SAVE.
Add sending permissions to an existing list
Go to Audience > Lists.
For the list you want to add permissions to, select Properties.
For Permitted senders, select Select users.
You only see this option if you are the account owner or a user with the Can manage account permission.
On the side panel, select the users you want to permit to send campaigns to the list or remove any users who shouldn’t have permission.
Select SAVE.
How list permissions affect your email reports
If you have implemented list sending permissions, any contacts not sent a campaign are included in the count of Excluded contacts in your email reports, in the Campaign details section.
The count of excluded contacts also includes contacts who are members of lists, segments, or marketing preferences specifically excluded from the campaign send.
Learn more in the section Exclude contacts from a send.
This happens when a user sends a campaign to a group of contacts (lists, segments, or marketing preference groups) which contains contacts who are part of a list that the user in question does not have permission to send to. The restriction applies even when the user is sending to different lists or segments which contain the restricted contacts.
Resend to excluded contacts
If you want to resend a campaign to the excluded contacts, you can create a segment to identify them, and then either
a user with permission to send to the restricted contacts can resend the campaign
or
you can remove the restrictions from your lists and any user with sending permissions can resend the campaign.
To create the segment, you need to identify contacts who are present in the lists or segments initially sent to, and not intentionally excluded, but who did not receive the campaign. You also need to factor any intentionally excluded contacts into your segment.