Bulk operations on contacts

Bulk operations on contacts

Before we dive into the bulk operations, it is necessary to know that you can bulk update the contacts more than what is displayed on a single page.
 
By default, the maximum number of records that can be displayed on a single page is 200. But there can be a situation where you'll need to update thousands of contacts in one go. It would be cumbersome to select 200 contacts each time and perform the bulk update. To eliminate the time required from your side, we've provided an option to select all contacts. To make use of this option:
  1. From the Navigation Toolbar to the left, click Contacts and select View Contacts.
  2. Select all the contacts in the page by ticking the checkbox next to the Contact Email column.
  3. Click on the Select All Contacts option that appears beside the number of contacts selected.


  4. You can do the desired bulk update to all the contacts now.

  5. Depending on the number of contacts you have in your Zoho Marketing Automation account, it can take time for the bulk update to finish. You'll be notified via email and in-app notification once the update is completed.

  6. In case you want to deselect all the selected contacts, click on Deselect All option.

You can perform the following bulk operations on a selected group of contacts:

To add/remove contacts from lists


  1. From the Navigation Toolbar choose Contacts and then go to View Contacts. By default, all the contacts will be displayed.
  2. Select the contacts you want to add to or remove from lists.
  3. Click Add/Remove contacts button at far right.
  4. If you want to add contacts to a list, choose Add to list option and if you want to remove contacts from a list, choose Remove from list option.
  5. Select a list or multiple lists from the pop-up that appears.
  6. Click Proceed.

 


To Mass update contact fields


  1. From the Navigation Toolbar choose Contacts and then go to View Contacts. By default, all the contacts will be displayed.
  2. Select the contacts whose data field you want to update.
  3. Choose Mass Update after clicking on the More Actions icon  at far right.



  4. Choose the field you want to update and enter the data.
  5. Click Proceed.


To export contacts

  1. From the Navigation Toolbar choose Contacts and then go to View Contacts. By default, all the contacts will be displayed.
  2. Select the contacts you want to export.
  3. In case you want to export contacts of a particular list, you can do so in the Lists module.
  4. Click on Export Contacts after clicking on the More Actions icon  at far right.
  5. Select the data fields you want to export.
  6. Enter the name of the file you would like to export the contacts to and choose the file extension by clicking on the .CSV dropdown.
  7. Choose one of the following options for password confirmation:
  • Yes, I'll use:  All the files that are exported will be protected using Zoho Marketing Automation's default password, which is the combination of the first four characters of user's email address and the last four digits of user's Zoho user ID. Opening these files will require users to enter the default password.

 

  • No, I'll skip: When this option is chosen, you can export contact data to a file without having them password protected. Opening these files will not require users to enter a password.
        7. Click Export.

  

To change contacts' subscription type


  1. From the Navigation Toolbar choose Contacts and then go to View Contacts. By default, all the contacts will be displayed.
  2. Select the contacts whose subscription type you want to change.
  3. In case you want to change the subscription type of contacts of a particular list, you can do so in the Lists module.
  4. Click on Change subscription type icon.
  5. Choose the Subscription type for the contacts.
  6. Click Proceed.



To delete contacts

  1. From the Navigation Toolbar choose Contacts and then go to View Contacts. By default, all the contacts will be displayed.
  2. Select the contacts you want to delete.
  3. If you wish to delete the contacts from a specific list, you can do in the Lists module.
  4. Click on Delete icon.



  5. Confirm by clicking Delete Contacts button in the pop-up that appears.

    In this pop-up, you'll see that you can still manually re-add the contacts. Here's how it works:
    If you are bulk deleting the contacts, they will get deleted from your Zoho Marketing Automation account. But they won't be permanently deleted. Data related to these deleted contacts will still be available from our end. So, if you manually re-add these contacts either individually or via import, as soon as these get added to Zoho Marketing Automation, their data will be automatically populated.

    For example, say you've deleted a contact for whom the First Name and Date of Birth were filled. If you manually re-add this contact without filling data in these two fields, those fields will get auto populated with data that was present at the time of deletion.

    Learn more about the limitation for deleting marketing contacts in Zoho Marketing Automation.

 To Assign/Remove tags


  1. From the Navigation Toolbar choose Contacts and then go to View Contacts. By default, all the contacts will be displayed.
  2. Select the contacts you want to update the tags for.
  3. If you want to update the tags for the contacts in a specific list, you can do so in the Lists module.
  4. Click on Tag icon  at far right.
  5. If you want to assign tags to contacts, choose Assign tags option and if you want to remove tags from contacts, choose Remove tags option.
  6. From the list of tags, Select the tags you want to assign or remove.
  7. Click Proceed.

 


You can also add new tags by clicking Add New Tag link.