Manage contacts - Online Help | Zoho Campaigns

Manage contacts

We have updated how Topics work in Zoho Campaigns. Hence, the Contacts section has also undergone changes. Please click here for the updated help document.

Contacts are the most important part of any marketing business. In Zoho Campaigns, the All Contacts section under the Contacts module helps you build, organize, and maintain a high-quality contact database for your marketing activities.

Contacts are useful not only for sending email campaigns but also for building relationships in the long run. You must ensure you're managing your contacts properly. If you grow your contacts organically, chances are that you'll be building long-lasting relationships with them.

In Zoho Campaigns, you can create and manage contacts in multiple ways with ease—you can create, import them via file and cloud, or sync them by integrating with other apps. Not only that, you can also create custom fields to include additional information about your contacts such as their birthdays. If you want an offline database of these contacts, you can export them from Zoho Campaigns.

Managing your contacts is an ongoing process. You need to actively monitor the contacts based on their engagement behavior with your campaigns. By keeping all contact information in one place, you can ensure consistency, accuracy, and better coordination across your marketing efforts.

You can import contacts from various sources such as excel sheets, CSV files and Google spreadsheets and manage them by maintaining the contacts under mailing lists. You can view the contact history to check the number of sent campaigns for a specific contact and the history of that contact pertaining to different lists.

Add Contact

You can add contact and associate it to a mailing list, manually. Apart from basic details, you can also store additional information.
To add contact:
  1. From the Navigation Toolbar to the left, click Contacts and select All Contacts.
  2. Choose Add Contacts, and then click Contact from the drop-down menu.
  3. Enter the basic details required in the given box.
  4. You can also add Custom Fields, More Details and Account Information by clicking related links.

    add single contact

  5. Associate the contacts to a mailing list by selecting the lists.
  6. Give the source of contact.
  7. Click Add.
Notes
Note:
Notes Notes
  1. Email address is a mandatory field.
  2. Association of contacts to a mailing list is mandatory.

Add Multiple Contacts

This is a quick option where you can add a maximum of 20 contacts and associate to a list.
To add multiple contacts:
  1. From the Navigation Toolbar to the left, click Contacts and select All Contacts -> Add.
  2. Choose Add Contacts, and then click Multiple Contacts from the drop-down menu.
  3. Enter email addresses in each box. Alternately, if you want to add only email addresses, switch to Email address only box. Press Enter key to separate the email addresses from each other.
  4. Associate contacts to a mailing list by selecting the lists.
  5. You can also create a new mailing list by clicking the link Add Mailing List to add the contacts to new mailing list.
  6. Click Add.
Notes
Note:
Notes Notes
  1. You can add contacts to the maximum of 20 email addresses.
  2. If you want to import high volume of contacts i.e. more than 20 contacts, we recommend you to make use of Import Contacts option.

Filter Contacts Based on Criteria

In All Contacts, you can view the list of contacts present in your organization. You can also sort contacts by filtering them based on certain criteria. We’ll take a look at the different ways to view contacts based on filtering system.
To filter contacts based on criteria:
  1. From the Navigation Toolbar to the left, click Contacts and select All Contacts.
  2. In the All Contacts page, you can find the Filter By option present on top-left corner of the screen.
  3. Choose an option from the available ones by selecting the checkbox. Select subsequent options based on the selected checkbox.
  4. Click Apply.

Delete Contacts

To delete contacts:
  1. From the Navigation Toolbar to the left, click Contacts and select All Contacts.
  2. At top left click on the All Contacts view and change it to another view such as Marketing Contacts.
  3. Select the contacts you wish to delete using the checkboxes present to left of each contact.
  4. Click the More Actions button that appears at top and choose Delete.



  5. This will prompt a message to confirm that you want to delete the contacts.
  6. Click Go Ahead.
Note:
 Right now, it is not possible to delete the Contacts from All Contacts view as this view will contain various types of contacts such as Marketing, Non-Marketing etc.

You can also delete all contacts from a specific view.
Notes
  1. In the All Contacts page, filter out and view the contacts of your choice.
  2. Click Select all contacts matching the current view.

  3. Click the Delete icon to delete the selected contacts.
If there are too many contacts to be deleted, the deletion process will take some time and you cannot delete any contact from that view until the deletion gets over.

Sort Contacts

To sort contacts:
  1. From the Navigation Toolbar to the left, choose Contacts and select All Contacts.
  2. Click on Sort icon present next to Contact Email.

    sort contacts icon

  3. Choose how you want to sort (ascending or descending) the contacts.

    sorting options

Move unsubscribed contacts to active list

You can retrieve/reactivate contacts that were moved to unsubscribed contacts by you. To reactivate contacts that were marked as unsubscribed contacts:
  1. From the Navigation Toolbar to the left, click Contacts and select All Contacts.
  2. Select the drop down at the top-left and choose Unsubscribed Contacts.
  3. In the "Filter by" drop down, choose Users to filter contacts that were marked as unsubscribed contacts by the users.



  4. Click  Apply.
  5. This will list down the contacts marked as unsubscribed contacts by different users.
  6. Select the email addresses that you wish to move back to your mailing lists.
  7. Click on Reactivate Contacts icon present on left-corner of the screen. 
  8. Select the mailing list into which you want to move the contacts.
  9. Click Save.

Export Contacts

You can export contacts in any format so that it provides a backup for your database. Apart from this, if you’ve sent a campaign to a mailing list, you can easily track the active contacts.
To export the contacts:
  1. From the Navigation Toolbar to the left, click Contacts and select All Contacts.
  2. Click More and select Export Contacts in the top-right corner of the screen.

    export contacts option
  3. In Export Contacts page, do the following:
    1. Export – Choose the type of contacts to be exported.
    2. Added by – select the users whose contacts you’d like to export.
    3. Filter by Date – Select a time to export contacts based on activity
    4. Arrange by – Opt on how you want to arrange the contacts.
    5. Select fields to be exported – Select the checkbox fields to include additional information.
    6. File Name – Give a name to the file to be exported.
    7. Click the format (CSV, TSV, XLS, JSON, etc.); you want to export the file.
  4. Click Export.

Import as Unsubscribed contacts

To import as unsubscribed contacts
  1. From the Navigation Toolbar to the left, click Contacts and select All Contacts.
  2. Click More and select Import to Unsubscribed Contacts in the top-right corner of the screen.
  3. Click Go-Ahead in the Unsubscribed Contacts popup.
  4. Choose a .csv or an excel file by clicking and dragging the file to the specified space.
  5. Click Next.
    import to do not mail

  6. Once you've uploaded your file, it is time to map the column headers to the fields in the mailing list. If you find a field to be irrelevant, you can skip it.
  7. Check the transfer active contacts to Unsubscribed Contacts checkbox.
  8. Click Import.
Notes
Note:
You can also add individual contacts to the Unsubscribed Contacts. There can be scenarios, when your contacts have personally contacted you asking to stop sending emails rather than unsubscribing. In such scenarios, you can move those specific contacts instead of importing. You can add a maximum of 20 contacts at a time. To mark the contacts as unsubscribed:
Notes
  1. In the All Contacts page, check the box corresponding to the contact whom you want to mark as unsubscribed contacts.
  2. Click the Mark as Unsubscribed icon.
  3. In the popup that follows, confirm the action.

Import History

The Import overview page contains all of your imported contacts' details. You can view a generated report on your contacts after the import is complete. Zoho Campaigns makes it easy to view the entire history of imported contacts in a single step.
To view the import history:
  1. From the Navigation Toolbar to the left, click Contacts and select All Contacts.
  2. Click More and select Import Overview in the top-right corner.
  3. In the Import Overview page, you can view the number of newly added contacts, duplicate contacts, and ignored contacts. Just click one of the numbers to view the related contact details.

    import overview

Export contacts from Import overview

You can export specific category of contacts that you have imported. E.g. If you have imported 200 contacts out of which 100 are newly added and 100 are not added(ignored due to some reasons). You want to export only the newly added 100 contacts.

To export such contacts:
  1. From the Navigation Toolbar to the left, click Contacts and select All Contacts.
  2. Click More and select Import Overview in the top-right corner.
  3. In the Import Overview page, you can view the number of newly added contacts, duplicate contacts, and ignored contacts. Click one of the numbers to view the related contact details.
  4. Click Export.

    export ignored contacts popup