In addition to the email address, ID, and any other user-defined fields, contact lists have a number of fields tracking information about the batches they're used with. These fields are added and updated automatically as batches are sent to the contact list.
Closed-ended fields
Contact list status
Each record in the contact list has a status field. This status is independent of the record's status in the survey data, which is separately tracked at the survey_status field.
All contact list records are given 'Active' status by default. When sending a batch, emails will only be sent to records with 'Active' status. The other statuses can be thought of as reasons why the record should not be included in email sends.
| Label | Status | Description |
| Active | A | Default status; the email address is eligible to be included in a batch. |
| Bounced | B | The email address has been flagged for having at least three emails bounced back from batch sends. |
| Removed | R | The recipient has clicked the unsubscribe link in a message they received. |
| Duplicate | D | The email address matches the email address of another record in the same contact list and has been marked as a "duplicate" using the dedupe emails tool. |
| Malformed | M |
The email address is not properly formatted and has been marked as "malformed" using the Validate email format tool. |
| Invalid domain | I |
The email address's domain was found to be invalid using the Verify email address tool and marked as "invalid". |
Batch delivery statuses
For every batch sent to the contact list, a field is added to the contact list with the format [batchname]_status. Each record in the list that was included in the batch is given a status for that batch.
The batch delivery statuses are listed below. Some of the statuses are temporary and may be updated after the server and email client continue to attempt to deliver the message.
| Label | Status | Description |
| Pending | pending | The batch email is waiting in the queue to be sent. |
| Sent | sent | The batch email was successfully sent to the corresponding email. Recipients classified as Sent may later be reclassified as Viewed if it was opened, or Bounced if there was a domain error or other issue. |
| Clicked | clicked | The batch email was successfully sent and was opened by the respondent. This status is used to display "view counts" in the Contacts page and is not used in reports. |
| Unsendable | unsendable | The email was unable to be received due to an invalid/malformed email. |
| Bounced | bounced |
The batch email was bounced/unable to be received. Often a reason may be listed for the bounce, such as "Bounced: User Unknown" or "Bounced: Domain Error" and the specific reason will be accompanied in the (batchname)_message field. |
| Bounced (Permanent): User Unknown | user_unknown | The recipient's address was not found/does not exist on the domain. |
| Bounced (Temporary): User Disabled | user_disabled | The recipient's address was found but is no longer functioning; e.g., "a. smith" has left the company. |
| Bounced (Permanent): Domain error | domain_error | The host domain was not found; e.g., "gmail.co" (missing the "m"). |
| Bounced (Temporary): User over quota | over_quota | The recipient's inbox is full and cannot receive new messages. |
| Bounced (Permanent): Spam | spam | The IntelliSurvey server sending the email has been flagged as spam. |
| Bounced (Temporary): Message too large | message_too_large | The message exceeds the email client's limit. |
| Bounced (Temporary): Reason Unknown | other | The bounce reason is not able to be determined. |
survey_status
This field tracks the record ID's status in the survey data. See Understanding respondent statuses for more information on survey statuses.
When sending batches, you may choose to exclude certain survey statuses, such as Terminated or Over Quota.
Open-ended fields
Email, record ID, bounce reason, and other user-defined contact list fields are treated as text fields by the system. In Frequency reports, these fields will present a link to open that field in Individual report.
| Label | Field | Description |
| Record ID | trans_id |
The unique record ID; will be used as the survey respondent ID if the recipient takes the survey. |
| Most recent email deduping timestamp | dedup_ts |
Timestamp indicating when the record was checked for a duplicate email address most recently. |
| Most recent email format checked timestamp | format_checked_ts |
Timestamp indicating when the record's email format was validated most recently. |
| Most recent email verification timestamp | email_verified_ts |
Timestamp indicating when the record's email address was verified most recently. |
| Number of emails sent | email_contact_count |
The number of messages that have been sent to the record; i.e., the number of batches that have included the record. |
Bounce reason
In addition to the batch delivery status, every batch sent to the list also adds an open-ended bounce reason field with the format [batchname]_bouncereason. This field is populated with any bounce error messages that may be received from the recipient's email client.
User-defined fields
When creating a contact list, any additional columns besides 'id' and 'email' are uploaded as user-defined fields. These fields can be used in messages for text piping, or in batch filters to control which records are included in a batch.
All user-defined fields are treated as open-ended fields by the system.
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