A Contact is an individual record that has been added to your account. Each record has a unique identifier (either an email address or a custom ID). Contacts can sometimes be added to your account as the result of that individual subscribing to some or all of your organization's messages. Because each record has a unique identifier, each individual contact will have one database record, irrespective of how many types of messages they've subscribed to.
Contacts aren't necessarily members of your organization; they could be people who, for example, have subscribed to your monthly newsletter in order to stay informed of your organization's activities.
Contacts and Message Categories
As contacts subscribe to your organization's messages, they are added to Message Categories in your account.
- All account messages must be in a Message Category.
- After contacts are subscribed, they can be unsubscribed either voluntarily or by an admin or account user.
Access a Contact's subscriptions
You can manage individual contact subscriptions on their individual Subscribe/Unsubscribe page.
To access a contact's subscriptions:
- Access the Admin interface.
- Navigate to Contacts > List.
- Click a row to select a contact. The row is highlighted and the More menu above the list is now enabled.
TIP: If you have a lot of contacts, click the magnifying glass at the top right of the page to use the search feature.
- Click More > Subscriptions.
On the selected contact's individual Subscribe/Unsubscribe page, you can see which message categories the contact belongs to. Note the identifying email address above the page title.
TIP: Click a blue column header to sort on that column; click again to reverse the sort order.
Manage a Contact's subscriptions
Use this page to manage which message categories the contact is subscribed to and/or unsubscribed from.
TIP: Click the lock icon in the upper right to access the contact's Modify Suppression Status page. Click the calendar icon to return to this page.
To unsubscribe the contact:
- Choose a message category and click its Unsubscribe option; click OK at the confirmation prompt.
The page refreshes and:
- The date and time display in the Unsubscribe Date column.
- Re-Subscribe displays in the Action column.
- The contact has been unsubscribed and will not receive messages from the message category.
To re-subscribe the contact:
- Click Re-Subscribe and click OK at the confirmation prompt.
The page refreshes and:
- A new column, Subscribe Date, appears and displays the date and time.
- The Action column updates to display Unsubscribe.
- The contact has been re-subscribed and will again receive messages from the message category.
NOTE: The Subscribe Date column displays only if one of the subscriptions is a re-subscribe.
View subscription history
The subscribe, unsubscribe, and re-subscribe activities for each message category are tracked; you can view this history on this page.
NOTE: There will be historical data only if there has been subscription activity for the contact after the initial subscribe.
To view the subscription-activity history:
- Click the book icon in the History column of a message category.
- Review the history data in the pop-up dialog.
- Click the X to close the dialog.