Contacts

A contact is one email address on one of your lists, together with its field values, its statuses and its history. The same address on two lists is two contacts, each with its own statuses.

Find contacts

Go to Contacts → View/Search Contacts to see the contacts in all your lists. To see one list only, go to Lists → Contact Lists and click the list's number in the Contacts column.

Above the table:

• Add New adds a contact. See Add a contact.
• Import Contacts opens the import wizard. See Import contacts.
• Bulk Actions applies an action to the contacts you've ticked. See Bulk actions.
• The search box finds contacts by email address or other details.
• The status filter shows All, or only contacts that are Active, Inactive, Confirmed, Unconfirmed, Soft Bounced, Hard Bounced, Unsubscribed, Suppressed or Spammed.

When you view a single list that has a contacts limit, a Contacts Limit button shows how many contacts it holds out of how many it may.

The contacts table

Column	What it shows
Contact	The contact's name and email address. Click either to open the contact panel.
Group	The group of the contact's list
List	The contact's list. Click it to see that list's contacts.
Created on	When the contact was added
Bounced	Soft Bounced or Hard Bounced, or a tick if the contact hasn't bounced
Unsubscribed	Unsubscribed, or a tick if the contact is still subscribed
Confirmed	Confirmed or Unconfirmed
Actions	The contact's menu

Choose the columns

When you view one list's contacts, the ≡ button (Re-order Columns) at the top right opens Prioritize Columns. Tick the columns to show, including Spammed, Suppressed, Active and the list's custom fields, drag them into the order you want, and save. The choice is saved for that list. You can also set it when you edit the list.

Contact actions

Each row's Actions menu offers:

Action	What it does
Contact Details	Opens a window with the contact's details and field values
Subscriber Timeline	Opens the contact's full timeline on its own page. See Contact Timeline.
Email History	Opens the contact's email history. See Email history.
Edit	Opens the contact's form. See Edit a contact.
Delete	Deletes the contact, after you confirm

The contact panel

Click a contact's name or email address in the Contact column to slide open its panel. At the top are the contact's status (Active or Inactive), name, company, job title and email address, and an Edit Contact button. Below are three sections:

Section	What it shows
Subscription Information	The Group and Contact List, and whether the contact is Unsubscribed, Bounced or Confirmed, when it was Created On and its Format
Subscriber Details	The contact's field values
Subscriber Timeline	Everything that has happened to the contact, newest first: when it was added, edited or moved, the emails it was sent, and its opens, clicks, bounces, complaints and unsubscribes. Click Load More to go further back.

The timeline is the quickest way to answer questions such as "why didn't this person get my email?" or "when did they sign up?". See Contact Timeline.

Add a contact

Go to Contacts → Add a Contact, click Add New on the contacts page, or choose Add a contact from a list's Actions menu.

Contact's Details

Field	What to enter
Contact List	Required. The list to add the contact to.
Email Address	Required. A valid email address. Invalid addresses are refused.
Format	HTML or Text: the version of your emails the contact receives. Contacts set to HTML receive both versions in the same message.
Confirmation Status	Confirmed or Unconfirmed. Only choose Confirmed if the person really did confirm they want your email.
Status	Active or Inactive. Inactive contacts don't receive email.
Bounced	Not Bounced, Soft Bounced or Hard Bounced. Leave it at Not Bounced for a new contact.
Unsubscribed	No or Yes. A contact set to Yes doesn't receive email from this list.

Custom fields

Below the contact's details are the fields assigned to the list, grouped under Custom Fields with the group's name, for example Custom Fields (Default). Each field shows as the right kind of input: a text box, a drop-down, checkboxes, a date picker and so on. Fields marked as required must be filled in.

Click Save & Exit, or Save & Add New to add another contact straight away.

If the address is already in the list, you'll see "The contact … already exists in the contact list …". An address can only be on a list once.

Import contacts

Go to Contacts → Import Contacts, click Import Contacts on the contacts page, or choose Import contacts from a list's Actions menu. The import is a three-step wizard on one page.

Only import people who opted in

Mumara's Acceptable Use Policy bans bought, rented and scraped lists. Importing people who didn't ask for your email leads to complaints and bounces, which can get your list blocked. See Compliance.

Step 1: Upload the file and set the options

Under File Upload, drag a CSV or TXT file onto the upload area, or click it to browse. The largest file you can upload is shown under the upload area.

Under Import Options:

Field	What to choose
Contact List	Required. The list to import into.
Format	HTML or Text for every imported contact.
Confirmation Status	Confirmed or Unconfirmed. Import as confirmed only if everyone in the file confirmed their subscription.
Contact Status	Active or Inactive. Import as active so the contacts can be mailed.
Includes header?	Yes if the first row of the file holds column names. That row is then skipped.
File Format	CSV for comma-separated files, Text for tab-separated files.
Duplicates	What to do when an address is already in the list: Skip, Update or Overwrite. See below.

Duplicates option	What happens to a contact that's already in the list
Skip	Left exactly as it is. Repeats of the same address within the file are skipped too.
Update	Updated in place: the file's values replace the values of the fields you map, and fields you don't map are left alone.
Overwrite	Updated in place and reset: all its field values are replaced by the file's, and its creation date becomes the import date unless you use Override Creation Date.

With Update and Overwrite, the contact keeps its history, such as past sends, opens and clicks, and the Format, Confirmation Status and Contact Status you chose above are applied to it too. Bounce, unsubscribe and spam statuses aren't changed by an import.

Click Continue.

Step 2: Map the fields

Under Map Columns, each field of the list is shown with a drop-down of your file's columns. Columns whose header matches a field name are matched automatically.

• Email Address is required. You can't continue without it.
• Each column can be mapped to one field only.
• For date fields, choose the date format your file uses, under Select the date format, so the dates are read correctly.
• Switch on Data Preview to see the first three rows of each column next to its name.

Override Creation Date lets you take each contact's creation date from a column in your file, instead of the import date. This is useful if you have triggers or drip campaigns that depend on when a contact was added.

Click Start Import.

Step 3: Follow the import

The import starts straight away and runs in the background: you can leave the page. Four cards count the rows as they're processed:

Card	What it counts
Total	Rows in the file
Imported	New contacts added
Duplicates	Addresses already in the list. It reads Updated or Overwritten when you chose that option.
Invalids	Rows without a valid email address

When the import finishes you'll see how many new contacts were imported out of the total, "according to your import rules". Click View Contacts to open the list. To stop an import part-way, click Cancel. Contacts imported before you cancel stay in the list.

To see the result of a list's last import later, choose Import History from the list's Actions menu.

Import tips

• Test with a small file first, to check the field mapping before a large import.
• Clean the file. Remove empty rows, and use one date format throughout.
• Save spreadsheets as CSV (comma-separated, UTF-8) before uploading.

Edit a contact

Choose Edit from the contact's Actions menu, or click Edit Contact in its panel. Change what you need and click Save.

You can change the contact's fields, format and statuses, but not its list. You can usually change the email address too, as long as the new address isn't already in the list. If the Email Address box is greyed out, email addresses can't be changed on your account: delete the contact and add the new address instead.

Bounced and unsubscribed contacts

Only set a hard-bounced contact back to Not Bounced if you're sure the address works, and only set an unsubscribed contact back to subscribed if the person asked to hear from you again. See Bounces and Complaints.

Email history

Choose Email History from the contact's Actions menu. The page shows:

• Contact Details: the email address, list, format and statuses
• Contact's Information: the contact's field values
• Event Log: a Campaigns table and a Triggers table listing each email sent to the contact, with the Name, whether it was Sent, the Date, whether it Bounced and its Status

For opens, clicks and everything else that happened to the contact, open its timeline.

Bulk actions

On the contacts page, tick the contacts you want and open Bulk Actions:

Action	What it does
Set as Soft Bounced / Set as Hard Bounced	Marks the contacts as bounced
Set as Not Bounced	Clears the bounce status
Set as Confirmed / Set as Unconfirmed	Sets the confirmation status
Set as Active / Set as inactive	Switches the contacts on or off
Delete	Deletes the contacts

To change every contact in one or more lists at once, use the bulk actions on the Contact Lists page instead.

Bulk Update Contacts

Contacts → Bulk Update Contacts applies one action to every contact whose address is in a file you upload, for example to unsubscribe a list of people who wrote in, or to delete addresses you've been told are invalid.

1. Go to Contacts → Bulk Update Contacts.

2. Under File Source, keep Upload a CSV file and choose your file. It should hold email addresses, one per line.

3. Under Contact List, tick the lists to update. Tick a group to select all of its lists. Only contacts in the ticked lists are changed.

4. Under Action, choose what to do:

   Action	What it does
   Delete selected contacts	Deletes the matching contacts
   Mark contacts as unsubscribed / Mark contacts as subscribed	Sets the subscription status
   Mark contacts as soft bounced / Mark contacts as hard bounced	Sets the bounce status
   Set contact status to active / Set contact status to inactive	Switches the contacts on or off
   Mark contacts as confirmed / Mark contacts as unconfirmed	Sets the confirmation status
   Set format to HTML / Set format to TEXT	Sets the format the contacts receive

5. Under Includes header?, choose Yes if the first row is a column name.

6. Click Submit.

The update runs in the background, and you can leave the page. While it runs, the page shows the Total records in file, the Total records in contact lists and the Records processed, with a Cancel link.

Unsubscribing everywhere

Mark contacts as unsubscribed changes the lists you tick. To stop all email to an address, including from lists you create later, add it to Email Suppression with Global selected. See Suppression.

Contact statuses

Status	Values	Effect
Status	Active, Inactive	Inactive contacts aren't mailed.
Confirmation Status	Confirmed, Unconfirmed	Unconfirmed contacts are left out when Skip unconfirmed is on for a campaign or trigger.
Unsubscribed	No, Yes	Unsubscribed contacts aren't mailed from this list.
Bounced	Not Bounced, Soft Bounced, Hard Bounced	Hard-bounced contacts aren't mailed. Soft-bounced contacts are.
Spammed	Set when the contact reports your email as spam	These contacts aren't mailed from this list again.
Suppressed	Set when the address matches a suppression list entry	Suppressed contacts aren't mailed.

Mumara ONE sets the bounce and spam statuses for you from the bounces and complaints it processes, and sets Unsubscribed when someone unsubscribes. See Bounces and Complaints.

How contacts arrive

Contacts can be added:

• by hand, with Contacts → Add a Contact
• by importing a file, with Contacts → Import Contacts
• through a web form on your website
• through the API, from your own application
• by a trigger or an automation that copies or moves contacts, or by copying or moving a segment

Triggers can react differently to each of the first four. See Triggers.

Contact limits

Your plan can limit how many contacts you store in total, and a list can have a contacts limit of its own. An import that would go over the limit is refused with a message saying how many contacts you tried to import and how many you have left: upload a smaller file, delete contacts you no longer need, or change your plan. See Plan & Usage and Mumara ONE pricing.

Delete contacts

• One contact: choose Delete from its Actions menu and confirm.
• Several contacts: tick them and choose Bulk Actions → Delete.
• From a file: use Contacts → Bulk Update Contacts with Delete selected contacts.
• By status across whole lists: use the list bulk actions, such as Delete hard-bounced contacts. See Contact Lists.

Deleting can't be undone

Deleted contacts and their field values are gone for good. If a person unsubscribed or complained, add their address to Email Suppression before deleting them, so a later import can't bring them back.

Good practice

• Collect consent, ideally with a web form that asks people to confirm their address.
• Keep field data tidy. Use drop-down fields for values that should be consistent, such as country or plan.
• Watch your bounces. A rising hard-bounce rate usually means an old or poorly collected list.
• Segment by engagement. Treat people who open and click differently from people who never do.
• Export before big changes, such as bulk deletes or overwrite imports.

Next steps

• Custom Fields: the fields contacts can hold
• Segments: target contacts by their data and activity
• Suppression: block addresses you must never mail
• Contact Timeline: everything that happened to one contact