Add new top-of-funnel subscribers to general list or special ToF list?

Hi @LB3000,

Welcome to the Community! Thanks for this awesome question regarding your top-of-funnel marketing strategy. You bring up some great points here:
 

1. Is it better to collect subscribers in a separate list, or the master list?
In the case of Lists, more is not always more. The general best practice would be to collect all email subscribers into one master list, and use Segments to group users together based on shared Profile information. In your particular case, you can build a segment for users who joined the list after submitting your ToF form, and then use a segment-triggered flow to send them personalized messages. You can read more about List best practices here:

2. Can I prevent subscribers from one Sign-up Form from receiving a welcome discount code?

If you don’t want the users who received the PDF download to also receive the discount promotion, then you can add a conditional split to the top of this flow that would exclude those who submitted the ToF Sign-Up Form from receiving the message with the discount. It would look a little something like this:

Here, only the users who filled out the ToF from (as noted by $consent_form_id metric) would receive the PDF download. All other subscribers would go down the path that includes the standard discount. And this is done using one master List. 

After the first email goes out with the relevant sign-up incentive, you can then send both types of subscribers the remaining emails in your Welcome Series. There’s another great thread on this here:

3. Is it better to send 1 email or a multi-email flow?
I find that performance of a multi-email flow almost always exceeds the performance of a single email flow. In either case, whether you have a customer signing up for a PDF download, or for a discount code incentive, you want to keep your brand top-of-mind while they are in that buying headspace. Sending additional emails also gives you the opportunity to collect more information about the subscriber, send them additional details about your brand, and overall serve them relevant content based on their website activity. While there is no magic number for how many emails you should include in a flow, I would encourage you to experiment with 2-3 messages in your Welcome Series that communicate additional benefits, and measure the results to determine what your audience is most receptive to. 

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Hope this helps! 

-- Ashley Ismailovski