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How to manage your contacts
How to manage your contacts

Knowing how to properly manage your contacts can make or break your email campaigns.

Support Team avatar
Written by Support Team
Updated over a week ago

Please note that contacts are available only on Marketing plans.

Your contacts are arguably the most important part of your email marketing strategy. Without your subscribers, you wouldn't have an audience for your email campaigns. Knowing how to manage them properly can take some practice and requires the right set of tools. Elastic Email has those tools and the expert advice you need to manage your contacts effectively.

Segments vs Static Lists

"Lists" are static sets of contacts while "Segments" are sets of contacts that dynamically change based on the segment's query.

An example is when a .csv file is uploaded, it is added to a new or existing list. That particular set of contacts does not change and remains static under that list

A segment is completely dynamic and only ever contains the contacts that match the segments' Query. A simple example is the "Engaged Contacts" segment which is available by default on most accounts. This segment only ever contains contacts with an Engaged status (the contact has clicked or opened your email within the last 6 months).

This is what the query looks like Query: Status = 'Engaged'.

This is an extremely powerful tool that allows sophisticated segmenting of contacts based on a wide range of attributes.

This article will show you how to create a segment.

Statistics

The new contact screen combines a set of different statistics related to your contact engagement which may help you plan your future campaigns and makes contact management easier.

Summary

Your contacts summed up and divided into all contacts, contacts with deliverable statuses and contacts that were added today.

Contact growth

A graph presenting the changes in the number of your contacts. You can adjust the date range of the graph.

Recent growth

The most recent (last 30 days) changes to your contact number, including unsubscribes.

Audience performance

Engagement of your contacts broken down into the percentage of opens and clicks.

Contact Lists - Creating New List

  1. Go to your Contacts Screen. Click on "Create List".

  2. New List: Give your list a name.

  3. Allow Unsubscribe: When enabled this setting works with the {unsubscribelist} merge field to allow recipients to see which lists they are on.

TIP! If Allow Unsubscribe is enabled then your recipients can see the list name. Give the list a name that means something to both you and your contacts.

Contact History

The history tab will allow you to select and view segment counts on a graph as a function of time. Because segments are dynamic, they can change over time. The graph gives a visual representation of the segment changes over the last 30 days. This article will show you the details.

Web Form

Using a web form to gather subscribers is one of the ways to add contacts to the account.


This article will show you how to create a double opt-in webform

Randomized Label Tool

The "Randomized List" tool will create a specific number of random contacts from any list or segment.

The tool will allow you to specify the name of the new list being created and the number of random contacts to be added to it from the list or segment which is currently selected. There is an option to "exclude blocked contacts" if you only want Active and Engaged contacts on the new list.

Nth Selection Label Tool

The "Nth Selection" tool is very handy if you need to evenly break up an existing list or segment.

The tool will evenly distribute contacts to a specific number of different lists. The tool will allow you to specify the name of the 'List Series' and specify the number of lists to be created.


This article shows you how:

Statuses

"Show Contacts" will view the Label or List directly and display the first 20 pages of contacts.

The "Status" drop-down offers status filters that show only the contacts with the particular status(es) that is selected.

More information on contact statuses can be found here.

Other Tools

For any list or segment, you have the option to export contacts, copy contacts to other lists, or delete contacts from the account.

For lists specifically, there is an option to simply remove contacts from that list but not delete them from the account.

When viewing the contacts for a particular list or segment you can use the "Select All" option which will select all the contacts in that list or segment that also match the status filters currently applied and will provide a modal of options that are available for those contacts.

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