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
- Email sender (for multi-sender email campaigns)
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. Click "Fields" on the left and then "Create field".
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", and then hit "Save".
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 (above the contact listing) 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".
4) E-goi will begin your contact export and should email you the result when done. You can also click View operation status. If the export has been finished, just hit the Results button (right-hand side) to download your exported file.
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 supress and disable the email channel (which means they won't count towards your plan's email quota) for 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.
Keeping your list healthy
Fewer and fewer opens in your emails will inevitably ruin your deliverability, which is why you should always filter out those contacts who never open your mailings.
1) Head to the "Contacts" menu and hit "Contacts" in the list you want to clean up.
2) A page will come up listing all contacts. What you do next depends on how unengaged your mailing list is. Let's find out!
Weeding out contacts who never opened your emails in the last 6 months
If your contact database grows daily or weekly with new subscribers, this is how you should go about cleaning it to keep it as engaged as possible.
1) Go to "What do you want to search for?" in your contact listing, click "All fields", select "Date of the last open" and choose "dynamic". Right next to it, select "less or equal to" and type in "180" (this is because a 6-month has about 180 days). Then choose "Before" and "Today's date". Lastly hit "Apply".
After a couple seconds, the listing will be whittled down to only those contacts who opened one or more of your emails in the last 6 months (a quick glance at the lower right corner of the listing will tell you how many they are). Say hello to your engaged contacts! These are the ones who truly love you to bits.
2) Let's create a segment for them. Just click "Save as" (upper right corner of the listing), enter a name for this segment (eg. "engaged contacts") and save it.
3) Now you need to fetch all those contacts who don't love you - meaning those with with no opens in the last 6 months. Easy-peasy! Simply invert the segment you've just created in the previou step. This is quite simple to do. Keep the exact same segmentation criteria but make sure it starts with "Don't match" (instead of "match") and hit "Apply".
4) The listing will then display only the contacts which never opened emails from you over the last 6 months. Hit "Save as" (upper right corner of the page), provide this segment with a name (eg. "unengaged contacts") and save it.
Done! Click "Reset search" to go back to the full contact listing.
You can now use either segment in your mailings. When you're about to deploy a campaign (in the deployment page), just go to the "Segment" option and choose your desired segment. E-goi will then send out your campaign to that segment instead of the whole list.
This allows you to get much stronger engagement from your messages, as you'll only be mailing your biggest fans. But what about those non-openers? Don't sweat, just transfer them to a win-back mailing strategy. For example, if you send emails daily, try to reduce your mailing frequency for unengaged contacts (dial it down to a weekly or monthly send). Also consider running a "haven't heard from you" campaign asking non-openers to click a link in your email to confirm they're still interested in receiving news from you.
Using an automation to filter and win back non-openers
The really cool thing about list cleaning in E-goi is that you can easily automate the whole thing:
1) Follow the previous steps to create a segment with your unengaged contacts (ie. non-openers in the last 6 months).
2) Hit the "Engage" menu, hover the mouse pointer over "Automation", and hit "Create". Pick the contact list you'll be cleaning up and select a "Custom" automation.
3) Set it to be triggered when the contact "subscribes or is added to the list" and select the mailing list where this will occur.
4) Click the "Condition" button (left-hand panel) and drag it into your workflow, right below the "Suscription" trigger. Type in a name for it (eg. "non-openers in the last 6 months"), select the non-openers segment you've created in the first step and save the condition.
5) You'll see that the condition branches out into "Yes" (for contacts matching the non-openers segment) and "No" (for those contacts not matching that segment). Now simply drag into "Yes" what you want E-goi to do with your unengaged contacts (you can, say, tag them, move them to different list, send them a win-back campaign, etc.). Then drag a "Go to" action into "No" and choose the same condition you've set in the previous step.
That's all there is to it! This action series will be triggered each time a new contact becomes part of your "unengaged contacts" segment.
Purging all contacts who never opened an email from you
If you've sent out emails using E-goi to a sketchy, poorly engaged list, each new mailing to those people will wreck your sending reputation. Please stop! Don't mail anything else until you've scrubbed the list clean of non-openers. This is what you should do:
1) Go to "What do you want to search for?" in the contact listing, click "All fields", choose "Opens" (under "Statistics"), select "equal to", type in "0" and leave the "All campaigns" option untouched.
2) Now hit "Add another condition", click "All fields", choose "Subscription date", select "less than" and use the calendar to enter the date of your last send to this mailing list. Then hit "Apply".
After a couple of seconds, you'll see all contacts which have gotten into the list before the date you've chosen and which never opened an email from you (a quick glance at the lower right corner of the listing will tell you how many they are).
3) Now let's purge them! Simply click "Actions for this segment" (lower left corner of the page) and a window will come up. Click "Subscription status", change it to "Inactive" and hit "Save changes".
And presto! All non-openers in your list will be made inactive and won't be sent E-goi campaigns anymore.
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).
Using the suppression list
The suppression list is how E-goi automatically prevents you from re-importing bad contacts which would ruin your deliverability:
- Invalid or dead email addresses (bounces)
- Email addresses reporting you for spam
- Contacts requesting they never receive anything from you at all (account-wide or from a specific list of yours).
Whenever any of the above happens (or if you do an automated list clean-up), E-goi will disable the bad contact's email channel and add their email address to the suppression list. If you later try to import them into any of your lists, E-goi will simply skip them.
Contacts in your suppression list will never be re-added by import. But they will be added if they subscribe to any of your lists using a sign-up form or if you insert them manually.
Manually adding contacts to your suppression list
1) Click the Contacts menu and hit Suppression list.
2) The suppression list will come up. Click Add contacts for suppression, enter the contact's info (it can be an email address or a phone/mobile number) and save your changes.
If you already have a do-not-mail list from another marketing tool and you want to use it in E-goi, just copy all email addresses or phone numbers from that list and follow the steps above to paste them (make sure they are one per line), so you can add them to your E-goi suppression list in a single go.
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!