Topics of this article
- Introduction
- Before you start
- Step-by-step
- Frequently asked questions
It is easy to create a contact list in your E-goi account. You can add custom fields and segment your contacts to boost your engagement and conversion rates.
What is a contact list?
In the digital marketing universe, effectively managing your contact list is crucial to achieving success in a digital marketing strategy.
E-goi offers powerful tools for creating, importing, organizing, and maintaining contact lists, helping you segment your target audience and maximize the results of your marketing actions. Learn in this article how to make the most of these features.
Before you start
Requirements
Make sure you have an E-goi account and know your goal when creating a contact list: whether it is to improve your relationship with customers, promote products or services, or inform about news and events.
If you already have contacts to add to the list, it is essential that they have been obtained consented in accordance with GDPR and best practices.
Unique fields
Unique fields are fields which won't accept duplicate data. They're perfect to prevent duped contacts, as E-goi won't let you add contacts whose data in a unique field is the same as another contact's.
For example, the "email" field is usually unique to prevent repeated emails from getting in your list when you import contacts, manually add them or use a sign-up form in your site.
Any field in your contact list can be converted into a unique field:
1) Say you've already created a field named "Customer code" which you want to be made unique so it can only include different codes.
2) Go to the "Lists" menu, head over to the list containing that field and hit "Options".
3) You'll be taken to the list settings page. Scroll down to "Unique fields", click "Add", choose the field to be set as unique and save your changes.
4) From then on, E-goi will check for duplicated content in that field any time you add someone to your contact list.
Consent field
GDPR requires storing the type of consent that contacts give you to receive communications.
E-goi's subscription forms follow these rules. But if you add or import contacts obtained in other ways (e.g. by signing up at your physical store, on a website, at an event, etc.), you can specify the consent they provided you.
- Standard: This is the pre-defined option for contacts you have in E-goi. If a contact has confirmed the subscription (double opt-in), their consent follows all the rules and is therefore "standard" consent.
- Contractual: For individuals who, even without explicit consent, require receiving communications within the context of a contract they have entered into (e.g. an insurance company notifying clients at the time of renewal).
- Legal obligation: Similar to the previous option, but with a wider scope. An example is internal communication from a company to its employees (notices about tasks, meetings, etc.).
- Vital interests: If it is necessary to process an individual's data to safeguard their health or safety (e.g. a hospital sending communications to patients).
- Public interest: For individuals who, as citizens, should be notified by government institutions (tax notices, legal notices, etc.).
- Legitimate interest: For situations where processing an individual's data aligns with their legitimate interest, even if explicit authorization has not been given. For example, a company notifying all customers about an attempted fraud. Or a restaurant launching a smartphone app and asking customers for their mobile contacts so they can benefit from it. The most important thing here is that the legitimate interest is genuine and never harms the rights and freedoms of individuals. This article from the European Commission explains.
- Any type: When you do not yet know the type of consent given by the contact.
- No type: When the contact has not yet given any consent.
- Refused: When the person refuses to give consent to receive communications.
To specify a contact's consent:
1) Edit the contact and change "Consent" to the desired type.
2) If you want to assign consent to multiple contacts, segments, or the entire list, go to the "Lists" menu and click on "Options" for the list. On the options page, go to "Consent", make your selection, and save the options.
Step-by-step
Create a contact list
Your E-goi account comes complete with a preset contact list (just head over to the "Lists" menu to view it). You can easily upload your contacts to it and grow it using the list's sign-up form!
If you'd like to create a new list instead, just:
1) Hit the "Contacts" menu and click "View all" (on the left-sided menu).
2) Hit the "Create list" button. Enter a title for it (the internal title is meant for you only - no one else can see it -, whereas the public title is visible to your contacts when signing up or opting out), choose which message type you'll be sending, pick you contacts' main language (you can add extra languages later), select your business area (so you can compare your performance against the industry average) and then create your list.
3) Now simply add your contacts manually or import them all in a single go. You can also create data fields in the list.
Add extra fields to the list
When adding a contact to your list in E-goi, you can use the following fields:
- First name
- Last name
- Mobile
- Phone
- Birthdate
If you need extra fields (eg. city, customer code, favourite items, etc.), you can easily create them:
1) Go to the "Contacts" menu, head over to the list you want to add fields to and hit "Options".
2) You'll be taken to the list settings page. Scroll down to "Extra fields" and click "Add".
3) Type in the name of the field and select its type (whether it'll be a text, date, number, list of entries, etc.). For example, to add a city field, just name it "City", set it as "Text", hit "Add" and then click "Save" (bottom of the options page).
4) Any extra field you've created will become available when you add, import or edit a contact. And yes, you can also add it to your forms.
Export contact list
1) Head over to the "Contacts" menu and hit "Contacts" of the list you want to export.
2) A page displaying all contacts in that list will show up. Simply click the "Export" button (bottom right corner) and choose your file format. The file will then be downloaded to your computer.
3) If you want to export only a segment of the list, Just follow the steps above, making sure to load your desired segment before hitting "Export"
Deleting a contact list
1) Hit the "Contacts" menu and click "View all" (on the left-sided menu). You'll be shown a page with all your contact lists.
2) Click the blue options button to the right of the list you want to remove, choose "Delete" and confirm you want to go ahead and erase it. Done!
However, please note that if you've recently sent a campaign to the list you want to remove, it won't get deleted. You can only delete it about 30 days after that campaign has been sent out. This is to make sure that the contacts you mailed have enough time to unsubscribe or edit their subscription (they can't do so if the list is deleted).
Search contacts in lists
1) Click the "Contacts" menu and hit the "Search for contacts across all lists" button (on the right-handed side).
2) Choose how you want E-goi to run the search (by looking for the contact's email address, mobile number or some other info), enter what specifically to search for and hit "Search".
3) A couple seconds later, we'll show you the list the contact is in (in case it has been found), its subscription status and a button to open the contact's full profile.
Using the automated contact clean-up
If your contact list is quite old (say, people haven't heard from you in more than one year) or is a bit sketchy, many of those email addresses are probably dead or have no one using them.
Messages sent to those folks will bounce back, ruining your deliverability (hitting lots of bounces may actually suspend your E-goi account).
E-goi's clean-up will remove anyone who didn't open your emails in the last 6 months and who:
- has an invalid or mistyped email address (as per the rules set out in RFC2822)
- has an email with list bombing history
- has an email with spamming history
- tends to mark all emails as spam
- has been tagged as as hard-bouncing contact
- may pose a deliverability risk to your email sends
1) Click the Contacts menu and hit View all to see all your lists.
2) The lists page will come up. Click the options button for a specific list and select "Clean up bad contacts". Choose which type of contacts you've got in the list.
3) Hit the Clean up list button. It should take a couple minutes at most (it's usually much, much faster). We'll email you the result when done!
If spammy email addresses still get into your list after you did the clean-up, you're probably using an E-goi API integration or a subscription form which got list bombed and has no double opt-in validation. Be sure to enable double opt-in in either your form or your API calls.
Using the contact list’s callback
If you use your own external CRM to manage your customers and you've got some coding-fu, our callback is an easy, no-frills way to sync them with E-goi.
Whenever a contact subscribes to your list, edits their subscription or opts out, E-goi will pass this to a URL you've set. You can then parse it as you please
Let's say you'd like unsubscribers in your E-goi list to be removed from your CRM as well:
1) Set up a URL in your site to act as callback. It should be able to handle XML input and save requests (eg. https://www.example.com/CallbackEgoi.aspx ).
2) Log into your E-goi account, head over to the "Lists" menu and click "Options" of the contact list you want to set a callback for.
3) You should see the list settings page. Hit "Notifications" (left-hand side of the page) and scroll down to "API callback". Enter the URL you've set up in step 1, tick the unsubscription actions you want E-goi to notify your callback URL and save your changes.
4) From then on, every time someone opts out from your list, your callback URL will be sent an XML file with the contact's info. Simply use it to manually or automatically delete the contact in your CRM.
Example of data returned by the callback:
Move contacts to another list
1) Hit the "Contacts" menu and click the "Contacts" button from the list where your contacts are.
2) A page with all contacts in that list will come up. Tick those you'd like to move.
3) Hit "Actions" (bottom of the page) and click "Move". Select the list you want to move your selected contacts to and confirm this.
4) Within 24 hours, E-goi will have transferred your contacts to the destination list. Keep in mind that once you have moved your contacts, you can't move them back to the original list or to any other list where those same contacts were moved from!
Specify the notifications I receive about the contact list
By default, E-goi will send you a notification email whenever someone subscribes to your mailing list or a contact does something important (opts out, recommends your mailings, etc.).
If you'd like to disable these notifications or choose to have someone else receiving them, simply:
1) Go to the "Contacts" menu, head to the list whose settings you want to modify and hit "Options".
2) On the options page, go to the "Notifications" section, disable the actions you don't want E-goi to tell you about and save your changes. You can also select which E-goi users will be notified (if you'd like to notify a different email address, just add it as an E-goi user).
Frequently Asked Questions
How many contact lists can I create?
It depends on your E-goi plan.
1) Click the top right button of your account and then select Plans and top-ups.
2) And there you go! All the information about your plan, including the number of lists you can create, is on that page.
3) If you exceed your limit and need more lists, you can either upgrade to a higher-level account or delete one of your lists.
We recommend you have a single mailing list with all your contacts and use segments and tags to target them. This is far more flexible and effective in the long run, as you're free to slice and dice your list using as many segments or tags as needed!