Create custom contact fields
First, it is necessary to properly structure your contact database. By going to the configuration menu at the top right of the application, you will find the custom fields menu. Here, you will see the list of all contact and company fields.
So create a new field or edit existing fields according to your business. You may, for example, want to modify the industries available for your contacts according to your business sector.
When you create a field, there are several settings to take into account.
- The label is the name you give to the field; it will be visible from the interface.
- The alias is the technical name; if you do not provide one, it will be generated automatically from the label. This will be useful when you use the API, for example.
- In the object, you choose whether it is a contact field or a company field.
- The group allows you to categorize the field.
- You then choose the field’s data type. This is a very important step. Do you want to store a yes/no value, in which case a boolean field is preferred? Do you want a text field for free input, or a drop-down list field where the values are strict and therefore very easy to segment?
- In the settings on the right sidebar, you can choose in which order the field will be displayed on the contact record, as well as whether the field is required to create a contact. Be careful, this can cause issues on some of your forms because, by definition, it will no longer be possible to create a contact without this field.
Two other important settings; publicly updatable allows the field to be updated by the tracking script and by the API. Finally, you can create a field that acts as a unique key in addition to the email address. Be careful, because this implies that all contacts with the same value will be merged.
Also note that these are the fields you will find as variables in token form in the email editor in order to personalize the content of emails according to the contact to whom the email is addressed.
Import contacts with a .csv
Now that you have structured your database, all that remains is to import your first contact list. For this, a file in .csv format is used. If you are not familiar with the subtleties of .csv, which often generates encoding issues, especially with Microsoft Excel, I invite you to upload your spreadsheet file to Google Drive, open it, organize it, then export it in .csv format. Google formats .csv files very well, unlike our friend Excel.
Go to the main menu under contacts, then click on the drop-down menu at the top right to go to the import section.
Choose your .csv file and leave the default configuration. If you are not using international formatting with commas but with semicolons, change the separator here.
You will then arrive on a mapping page. Here, you will match the columns of your .csv file with the contact fields in your marketing automation application. You also have the option here to choose a segment into which you can import the contacts, useful for non-dynamic segments. Watch the tutorial on segments to learn more.
Once your mapping is done, all you have to do is click on an import button at the top right. You have two options:
- Import in the browser: this is done directly from the interface. You cannot leave the window during the import. Prefer this option for small imports.
- Background import: the import operation will run in the background, you do not see the status of the import but you can continue to use the application. You will receive an alert once the file has been imported. Prefer this option when you are importing several thousand contacts or when you have a database of several tens of thousands of contacts.
Overview of a contact
You can view a contact’s information at any time. Go to contacts and click on the contact of your choice. On its page, you will find a great deal of information.
You can first display all demographic information and data associated with the contact by clicking on the small detail tab. Here you will find their last name, first name, email, and all the custom fields you have created.
If you scroll further down the contact profile, you can display their behavioral history. This history can be filtered by category. You will find all submitted forms, visited pages, associated campaign events, or all activity around emails sent and opened.
Edit a contact
With the “edit contact” button, you can directly modify the contact’s information.
Finally, you can merge contacts in the event of duplicates. Duplicates are created if a contact uses different email addresses or if you create the contact yourself from the interface with an email address that already exists; in this case, it is duplicated. This will therefore remain a very marginal case.
Modify a contact’s campaigns and segments
By clicking on the drop-down menu at the top right, you can modify the contact’s campaigns as well as their preferences. Preferences include the preferred contact channels, which can also be modified by the contact themselves on the unsubscribe page; feel free to view the specific tutorial on this subject. You can also manually modify the contact’s segments.
Send an individual email
Last option on the contact overview page, you can directly send them an email by clicking on send email. You can choose the sender, write your email, or import the content and formatting of an existing email. All that remains is to send it.
Conclusion
One last piece of advice: do not neglect the structure of your contact database with the creation of custom contact and company fields, as well as the possible values for these fields. Since everything starts with the contact and the quality of their information, the more carefully this step is carried out, the easier segmentation and automation will become!
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