Version Notice: This article covers features in our r9/IS Pro platform. If you're looking for information on this topic related to r8, see Contact lists.
Use the Contact Lists applet to upload and manage lists of respondents that can be sent messages using the Email Batches applet.
The Contact Lists applet is found in the Audiences applet group in the navigation menu.
Overview
The Contact Lists applet displays a summary of all contact lists that have been uploaded to the survey. Click on a list's name (in blue) to view its contents.
Multiple contact lists can be uploaded to a survey. Contact lists can only be used by the survey they are uploaded to.
Contact lists also function as databases that track email send activity such as bounce rates, delivery status, and more. See Contact list data for more information.
To remove records from a contact list, open the contact list's View page and click the Remove from List button.
Adding a new contact list
Click the New List button to upload a new contact list.
The Duplicate Records setting lets you choose whether to automatically remove records that have the same email address as another record. This prevents recipients from receiving multiple survey invites. It is recommended to keep the default setting of Automatically remove in most cases.
The table below summarizes when duplicates are allowed in contact lists.
| Contact list field | Duplicates allowed within a single contact list? | Duplicates allowed across all of a survey's contact lists? |
| Email addresses | Only if Allow duplicate emails to be uploaded is selected when uploading | Yes, always |
| IDs | No | No |
Contact list formatting
Contact lists must contain an 'email' header, with email addresses listed one per line.
You may also include an 'id' column. This will be used as the respondent's record ID for the survey. If you include an 'id' column, make sure all IDs are unique, both within the contact list and across other contact lists previously uploaded to the survey.
If the contact list is uploaded without an 'id' column, the software will generate 16-digit IDs with randomized alphanumeric characters.
Tip! Additional columns can be included in the contact list. These fields (along with 'id' and 'email') can be piped into the message or used to filter email batches. See Messages for an example of text piping and Email Batches for an example of filtering.
Viewing a contact list
To view a contact list, double-click on its row in the summary list, or single-click on the contact list's Name in blue text.
The contact list data can be filtered, much like a response report. Click the Filters button to open the Report Builder, and select the records and fields as desired.
Hover your mouse over the bottom of the list to reveal a horizontal scroll bar to view additional columns.
Updating an existing contact list
To add new records or update existing records in a contact list, click the Add records to the contact list button.
Records with IDs that already exist in the contact list will be overwritten with the new data being uploaded. Any fields not included in the update will be kept as-is.
The platform will inform you how many new records will be added and how many pre-existing records will be updated. Be sure to review this for accuracy before applying the update.
Exporting a contact list
Contact lists can be exported as Excel files by either the Export button on the Contact Lists main screen, or via the
Download button on each list's View page.
The export tool provides options to choose which fields and records to include from the contact list. These features function similarly to the Report Builder for survey data.
Validating contact lists
To run quality checks on the contact list's email addresses, single-click a list to select it, then select the desired option from the Validate dropdown menu.
- Dedupe Emails – Check for duplicate email addresses. The first record in the list is considered the "original"; all others are considered duplicates. You can choose to delete the duplicates from the contact list, or keep them and change their status to 'D - duplicate'.
- Validate Email Format – Check for email formatting issues (spaces, missing '@' symbol, etc.) and change the record's status to 'M - Malformed'.
- Verify Email Address – Check for invalid email address domains. The domain is the portion of the email address after the '@' symbol. Any domains that are invalid or do not exist will have their status changed to 'I - Invalid domain'.
Records must have a status of 'A - Active' to be included in a batch. Any emails flagged by these validation tools cannot be included in batches.
Frequency reports
Much like the Frequency applet for survey data, the Frequency report provides counts for the closed-ended data in the contact list. Select the records and fields to include, then click Apply.
The closed-ended contact list fields include status, survey_status, and the batch delivery status fields. For more information, see Contact list data.
Note: Contact list data is separate from survey data. The Frequency reports found in the Contacts applet only include contact list fields.
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