Adobe Campaign Classic Typology Rules: Controlling Pressure and Fatigue

Every marketing team says it wants to avoid over-mailing customers. Few have anything in the platform that actually stops it. In Campaign Classic, the tool for that job is Adobe Campaign typology rules, and they do more than fatigue management. They also check message quality and filter out recipients who should never be targeted.

Here I write about the four rule types, how typologies tie them to deliveries, how pressure arbitration works in practice, and how I would design rules for a hypothetical retailer. Pressure and capacity rules depend on the Campaign Optimization module, which the typology overview says can be included or an add-on depending on your offering. Check your licence before planning around them.

Typologies and Adobe Campaign typology rules

A typology rule is a single check. A typology is a set of rules. A delivery references one typology, and during analysis Campaign applies every rule in that typology to the delivery.

Both live in the explorer under Administration > Campaign management > Typology management. Campaign ships with built-in rules and typologies, and the default typology already holds the standard control rules. Open it before you create anything, because you will build on it.

The one-typology-per-delivery limit shapes how you design. You cannot attach a “fatigue” typology and a “quality” typology to the same delivery. Each typology has to contain every rule a delivery needs. In practice that means a small number of typologies, each a full set of rules for one type of message.

The four types of Adobe Campaign typology rules

Control rules check the message itself. The standard ones include checks that each tracking URL has a label, that there is an unsubscribe link in each content, that the validity period is long enough, and that the proof target does not exceed 100 recipients. They are listed in the control rules documentation.

Filtering rules exclude part of the target based on a query. The standard ones exclude addresses and domains on the exclusion lists. You create your own for anything that should always be excluded, such as staff test accounts or minors.

Pressure rules limit how many messages a recipient receives over a period, and decide which deliveries win when there are too many. These need Campaign Optimization.

Capacity rules limit volume to protect downstream processing, for example the number of calls a call centre can handle after a campaign. They also need Campaign Optimization.

Most instances I have worked on use control and filtering rules properly and pressure rules partially. Capacity rules are rare outside call centre or direct mail work.

Control rules: the quality gate

Control rules have an alert level. A Warning shows in the analysis log but lets the delivery go. An Error stops it: at the end of the analysis, the confirm button is not available. This is the analysis step I walk through in my email delivery guide.

You can write your own control rules in JavaScript on the Code tab. Adobe’s example warns when an SMS delivery targets more than 100 people. The same idea works for email. A rule like this catches the classic mistake of a test delivery sent to the whole base:

// Control rule, alert level: Warning
if (delivery.FCP == false && delivery.properties.toDeliver > 500000) {
  logWarning("Large send: " + delivery.properties.toDeliver +
             " recipients. Check the target before confirming.");
}

delivery.FCP is true for proofs, so the check applies to real sends only. Pick a number that is unusual for your base. I set custom rules to Warning first, and only raise them to Error once the team trusts them, because an Error rule that fires wrongly blocks real sends.

Filtering rules: always-on exclusions

Filtering rules run a query against a targeting dimension and exclude matching recipients. The filtering rules documentation uses the example of excluding underage subscribers.

I use them for exclusions that must apply to every send of a type, regardless of who builds the target:

• Staff and agency test accounts.
• Recipients in a legal hold or complaint process, if the data model carries that.
• Recipients in regions the brand does not market to.

Filtering rules can also be grouped in a filtering-only typology and added on the Exclusions tab of the target, alongside the main typology. That is useful when the same exclusion applies across many typologies.

Pressure rules: how arbitration works

A pressure rule has a threshold, the maximum number of messages per recipient over a period, and uses delivery weights to decide which deliveries win.

The pressure rules documentation explains the mechanics:

• The threshold can be constant or depend on the recipient, with an expression such as Iif(@status = 1, 4, 2) giving customers more messages than prospects.
• Each delivery has a weight, 5 by default. The rule can set or calculate weights, and the delivery can override the weight on its Typology tab.
• The period is a rolling number of days, optionally grouped by calendar week or month.
• Only deliveries already sent count towards the threshold, unless the rule takes the deliveries in the provisional calendar into account.
• If a recipient would go over the threshold, Campaign excludes them from the lower-weight deliveries. With equal weights, the earliest scheduled delivery wins.

The Forecasting and Campaign jobs technical workflows recalculate arbitration every night. If those are not running, pressure calculations drift. I check them as part of routine monitoring.

Execution order, conditions and calculation frequency

Three settings on the rule’s General tab decide how typology rules behave once you have several of them, and they are easy to overlook.

Execution order. When a typology holds several rules, Campaign applies the lower ordered rules first. I put filtering rules before pressure rules, so recipients who would be excluded anyway do not count in arbitration. It also makes the analysis log easier to read, because exclusions appear in a logical sequence.

Application conditions. Except for control rules, you can restrict a rule to certain deliveries or recipients with the Edit the rule application conditions link. Adobe’s example limits a capacity rule to deliveries with “offer” in their label. I use conditions sparingly. A rule that applies only when the label matches a pattern breaks the day someone names a delivery differently. Where possible, I prefer a separate typology over a clever condition.

Calculation frequency. Arbitration is re-run every night, but the Frequency field lets you keep calculated targeting for longer when the underlying data does not change daily. The Re-apply the rule at the start of personalization option forces the rule to run again during personalisation. For fatigue rules, I leave the frequency at its default, because the whole point is to react to what was sent yesterday.

None of these appear in the analysis log as settings, so document them in the rule’s description. The next person to open the rule will need to know why it behaves the way it does.

Worked example: Campaign typology rules for a retailer

The hypothetical brief: a fashion retailer sends a weekly newsletter, two or three promotions a week and transactional emails such as order confirmations. Customers have complained about too much email. Leadership wants “no more than three marketing emails a week” for customers, fewer for prospects, and promotions to win over the newsletter when there is a conflict. Nothing may ever block a transactional email.

My design:

Filtering rule “Exclude staff accounts”: a query on the recipient email domain for the company and agency domains.

Control rule “Large send warning”: the code above, set to Warning.

Pressure rule “Marketing email fatigue”:

• Period: 7 days.
• Threshold: depends on the recipient, Iif(@status = 1, 3, 2), assuming the standard status field marks customers.
• Weight: promotions 7, newsletter 5. I set these on the delivery templates’ Typology tab so nobody has to remember.
• Take the provisional calendar into account, so arbitration covers the sends already planned for the week.

Typologies:

• Marketing email: default control rules, the large send warning, staff exclusion and the fatigue rule. Used by the newsletter and promotion templates.
• Transactional email: default control rules and the staff exclusion only. No pressure rule, so order confirmations are never excluded by arbitration.

Before switching it on, I would run a simulation to see how many recipients each planned delivery would lose. Simulations show the effect of rules on scheduled deliveries without sending anything, as described in the campaign simulations documentation. If the newsletter loses most of its audience, the business needs to see that before the rule goes live, not after.

Then I set the typology in each delivery template, which the apply rules page notes is how a typology applies automatically to new deliveries. My post on delivery templates covers that side.

Fatigue management without Campaign Optimization

If your licence does not include pressure rules, you can still do a reasonable job with filters. A predefined filter “Received a marketing email in the last 2 days”, built on the delivery logs, can be added to every marketing target. It does not arbitrate between deliveries by weight, but it does stop the worst cases.

The limitation is that filters only see what has been sent. Two sends prepared on the same morning do not see each other. If that happens often, it is a case for the module.

Mistakes I see most often with Campaign typology rules

• Pressure rules on transactional typologies. Arbitration should never remove an order confirmation.
• Error-level custom rules before testing. Start at Warning.
• Every delivery left on the default typology. Fatigue rules on a typology nobody uses do nothing.
• Forgetting the technical workflows. Arbitration depends on them.
• No simulation before a threshold change. Small changes can remove large audiences.

Frequently asked questions

Can a delivery use more than one typology?

No. A delivery references one typology, so each typology needs the full set of rules for that type of message. You can also add filtering typologies on the target’s Exclusions tab.

Where do I see who was excluded by a typology rule?

In the delivery’s analysis log and in the exclusion counts. Recipients removed by pressure rules show as excluded by arbitration.

Should newsletters have a lower weight than promotions?

That is a business decision. I usually see promotions weighted higher because they drive revenue, but a brand with a strong newsletter may choose the opposite. Write the decision down so everyone applies it the same way.

Do Adobe Campaign typology rules apply to proofs?

Rules run during proof analysis too, which is why custom control rules check delivery.FCP when they should only apply to real sends.

Typology rules are the closest Campaign Classic gets to a written contact policy, and I find that agreeing the policy with the business is harder than configuring it. My next post moves from rules to results: deliverability, bounces and how quarantine works.

Last updated on 26 October 2026