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Stiwari
Stiwari
Level 2
March 13, 2026
Solved

Global rule capping

  • March 13, 2026
  • 4 replies
  • 153 views

Hi AJO Community,

I'm trying to confirm the exact behaviour of channel-level frequency capping within a multi-step journey, specifically when the Global Rule Set is involved. I'd appreciate any official confirmation or real-world validation of what I've outlined below.

Our Setup:

We have a Global Rule Set (channel domain) with two active email rules:

Daily Email Limit: 1 email per day

Weekly Email Limit: 3 emails per week

Our journey is a Read Segment (batch) with the following structure:

Email 1 → 10-Day Wait → Email 2

My Understanding of the Behaviour:

When a profile enters the journey and hits the daily or weekly cap at Email 1, the message is skipped but the profile continues moving through the journey canvas — it is not ejected. The exclusion is recorded at the message delivery level with reason code ExcludedForControlRules (050002).

After the 10-day wait, both the daily and weekly caps will have fully reset (daily resets at midnight UTC, weekly resets Saturday at 23:59:59 UTC). So assuming no other journey or campaign consumes the profile's email quota on the day Email 2 fires, the profile should receive Email 2.

My Questions:

Is my understanding correct that a profile suppressed at Email 1 by the Global Rule Set continues through the journey and can potentially receive Email 2 after a sufficient wait period?

Is there any official documentation that explicitly confirms the profile continues traversing the journey canvas when suppressed at a message node by channel-level capping? The docs confirm exclusion is at the message/delivery level, but don't explicitly describe the journey traversal behaviour post-suppression.

In the scenario above, the profile receives Email 2 without ever having received Email 1. Is there a recommended pattern in AJO to gate Email 2 delivery based on whether Email 1 was actually delivered — for example, using a condition node checking the ExcludedForControlRules exclusion reason from the message feedback dataset?

AJO does not retry suppressed messages — is the only recovery path creating a separate audience of suppressed profiles and enrolling them into a new journey after the cap window resets?

Any guidance from the community or Adobe team would be greatly appreciated.

    Best answer by SatheeskannaK

    ​@Stiwari 

    • If necessary, explicitly gate the second message in the journey. The recommended approach is to place a condition node after Email 1 to verify its delivery status using the batch audience and branch them in the journey.
    • Control rules behavior:
      • AJO does not automatically retry messages that were suppressed by control rules.
      • Control rules are essentially the final decision point before delivery is sent.
      • The platform will not automatically queue or retry a message even after the suppression window has reset.
    • In this case, a few things to note:
      • A profile continues in the journey after control rule suppression.
      • Suppression is logged as ExcludedForControlRules.
      • The journey will not automatically retry the suppressed message.
      • A profile could potentially receive Email 2 without Email 1.
      • An explicit condition is recommended to enforce the sequence (Email 1 before Email 2).

    4 replies

    SatheeskannaK
    Community Advisor
    SatheeskannaKCommunity AdvisorAccepted solution
    Community Advisor
    March 16, 2026

    ​@Stiwari 

    • If necessary, explicitly gate the second message in the journey. The recommended approach is to place a condition node after Email 1 to verify its delivery status using the batch audience and branch them in the journey.
    • Control rules behavior:
      • AJO does not automatically retry messages that were suppressed by control rules.
      • Control rules are essentially the final decision point before delivery is sent.
      • The platform will not automatically queue or retry a message even after the suppression window has reset.
    • In this case, a few things to note:
      • A profile continues in the journey after control rule suppression.
      • Suppression is logged as ExcludedForControlRules.
      • The journey will not automatically retry the suppressed message.
      • A profile could potentially receive Email 2 without Email 1.
      • An explicit condition is recommended to enforce the sequence (Email 1 before Email 2).
    Thanks, Sathees
      Stiwari
      StiwariAuthor
      Level 2
      March 16, 2026

      Thank you so much ​@SatheeskannaK . Really appreciate it. 

        Stiwari
        StiwariAuthor
        Level 2
        August 27, 2026

        Hi ​@SatheeskannaK ,

        Hope you are doing well. I have a follow up question around this issue. We are still facing the same issue and trying to understand the exact reasoning and what exactly happens in excluded for control rule. 

        We have been noticing a huge chunk of clients excluded for this reason still. 

        I have one additional question regarding profiles who may not have entered the journey at all.

        Our concern is not primarily with profiles that entered the journey, reached Email 1, and were suppressed. We would like to determine, from the original Read Segment audience:

        1. Which profiles entered the journey and received at least one message?
        2. Which profiles entered the journey but did not receive any message, for example because Email 1 was excluded by a capping rule?
        3. Which profiles were part of the evaluated Read Segment audience but never entered the journey and therefore received nothing?

        What is the recommended way to reconcile these three groups in AJO?

        Specifically, is there a journey entry or step event that can be queried and compared with the original audience membership and the message feedback dataset? If so, could you please confirm the relevant datasets, event types, and fields that should be used to identify:

        • Journey entry
        • Message delivery or exclusion
        • Profiles that qualified for the source audience but never entered the journey

        Our goal is to identify the complete population that received nothing, including profiles who never entered the journey, rather than only profiles who entered and were suppressed at Email 1.

        Thank you again for your guidance. 

        Best Regards,
        Shreyash


         

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