Knowing how to properly manage your contacts can make or break your email campaigns.
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. VMA Emailer has those tools and the expert advice you need to manage your contacts effectively.
Contact Delivery and Optimization Tools
The tools that you have access to are determined by whether you have chosen to enable or disable Contact Delivery and Optimization Tools on your account. Enabling these Tools unlocks a wide range of features on the account.
When Contact Delivery and Optimization Tools has disabled the tools on the Contact Screen are limited to the overview graph, adding contacts, showing all contacts, viewing contacts by status, viewing limited general contact info, and creating web forms.
When they are enabled the full capabilities are unlocked.
Adding Contacts
There are several ways in which contacts can be added to the account.
- Send them an email via SMTP Relay or HTTP API. Even if the account is set up to be used only via the SMTP Relay or HTTP API, and Advanced Tools is disabled, every contact that is sent to is added to the account and can be viewed here.
2. Upload a CSV file of your contacts directly to the account. This method is the best way to add contacts to your account in bulk. This video will show you how:
3. Use the Quick Add tool to add contacts to the account one at a time.
4. Build a web form. Contacts that use the web form will automatically be added to the account.
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 video shows you how to create a simple segment:
Segments 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.
Web Form
Using a web form to gather subscribers is one of the ways to add contacts to the account.
This tutorial will show you how:
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 that 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.
As an example, let's say you have a List named "List A" with 100,000 contacts in it and you would like to break that up into 10 Labels of 10,000 contacts each. You would use the Nth Selection tool.
This video 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.
