The Contacts list is where you manage those who have subscribed to your organization's messages. Contacts aren't necessarily members of your organization; they could be people who have subscribed to your newsletter to stay informed of your organization's activities, for example.

This page has two lists, Subscribed and Suppressed, that display contacts alphabetically (by email address), as well as their names and Custom ID (if your organization uses one). You can add, edit, and delete contacts, and perform other administrative actions to keep your contacts organized.

To manage your contacts:

1. Access the Admin interface.
2. Navigate to Contacts > List.

TIP: On list pages, click a column header to sort on that column. Click the columns count below the list to add and remove columns in the current view.

NOTE: If the Custom ID field has not been enabled in your account, the Custom ID column will not display in the Contacts list.

Let's take a look at how to create and manage your subscribed contacts.

Watch the video

Create a Contact

1. Click the plus sign to the right of the page title.

2. On the Standard Fields tab, specify the contact's basic details. Use the Custom ID field to assign them a unique identifier, if applicable to your organization.

NOTE: If the Custom ID field has been enabled in your account, it will be required when creating a contact.

3. On the Custom Fields tab, fill out any Custom fields applicable to this contact. Custom fields are created on the Contacts > Tools > Custom Fields page.
   

   See Custom Fields & Custom Date Fields and Personalization Keywords to learn more.

4. On the Enhanced Fields tab, fill out any Enhanced fields applicable to this contact. Enhanced fields are created on the Contacts > Tools > Enhanced Personalization page.
   

   See Enhanced Personalization Fields to learn more.

5. Click Create to save the new contact record.

Use the Preview Panel

Select a contact to view additional details about them in the Preview Panel. (Click the contact again to deselect and close the Preview Panel.)

In the Preview Panel, you can:

• View and edit the contact's First Name, Last Name, Email, and Company fields (indicated by a dashed underline) by clicking the field and specifying a different value.

• Click the # groups link (under the contact's email address) to manage the contact's group memberships. Refer to Manage a Contact's group membership section in this article for more information on adding and removing group memberships.
• See an up-to-the-minute snapshot of the contact's Engagement statistics.

TIP: At the bottom of the Panel, click View Details to see more information about a contact on the History page.

NOTE: The Cancel and Save buttons will only appear at the bottom of the Preview Panel if you make changes in the panel.

Edit a Contact

On the Subscribed and Suppressed list pages, you can edit the respective contacts. The edit dialog is the same for all contacts.

1. Select a contact and click Edit.

2. On the Standard Fields, Custom Fields, and Enhanced Fields tabs, you can edit and add basic contact details as well as organization-specific information.

See Custom Fields & Custom Date Fields, Personalization Keywords, and Enhanced Personalization Fields to learn more about custom and enhanced fields.

3. Click Save to apply your changes.

View Contact History

On either the Subscribed or Suppressed list page, select a contact and click History to access their History page.

A contact's History page displays details about their activity. You can click the tabs to see information about the contact's engagement, like their received messages, survey participation, and event registrations.

See Manage Contact History for information about this page.

Manage a Contact's group membership

You can add your subscribed contacts to groups so they receive the messages that are sent to those groups.

To learn more about working with groups and why they're important to your marketing efforts, see Manage Groups.

NOTE: You can add suppressed contacts to a group, but they won't receive messages to that group (they will if unsuppressed, though). For the purposes of this article, we're going to focus on subscribed contacts.

To manage a contact's group membership:

1. Select them in the list and click Groups.

2. The right side of the dialog indicates how many groups the contact belongs to, while the left side lists the groups they can be added to or removed from. Check/uncheck these boxes to manage the contact's group membership.

NOTE: If the contact does not belong to any groups, the right pane will not display. Click a group check box to add the contact and the right pane will appear.

3. Click Save at the bottom of the dialog to apply your changes.

TIP: Click the magnifying glass icon to expand a Search field. Enter alphanumeric characters to query all groups. The list will automatically update with each typed character and display all records (visible and hidden) that contain a match. Click the X to clear the search field to restore the original list.

Click Clear selections to remove all of the contact's group memberships.

Click View selections/View all to toggle the view between displaying all groups and just those the contact belongs to.

Perform management actions

Select a contact to enable the More menu at the top right.

Click this menu to:

• Suppress the contact, meaning they'll no longer receive any communications from your organization. Refer to Manage Suppressed Contacts below to learn more.

NOTE: Suppressed contacts will remain in any groups they belong to when they're suppressed, and they can be added to additional groups - this ensures their group associations remain intact if they're unsuppressed. However, they will NOT be listed on the group's Group Contacts page.

• Manage the contact's subscriptions. In the dialog, you can see which automated messages the contact is receiving, and use the check boxes to manage those subscriptions. Scroll down and click Save to apply any changes. Refer to the Manage Contact subscriptions section below to learn more.
• Click Compliance to manage the contact's compliance options. For information on using these options, refer to the Manage compliance options section below.
• Click Delete to remove the contact record.

Manage compliance options

Under data protection legislation, you must comply with requests regarding an individual's personal data.

See Manage Compliance (Thrive Marketing Enterprise) for more information.

Manage suppressed Contacts

This list shows all contacts whose email addresses have been suppressed. A suppressed contact will no longer receive email messages from your organization. The suppression can be the result of an administrative action (e.g., too many unread emails) or at the request of the contact (e.g., they have voluntarily unsubscribed). The list indicates the reason for the suppression and when the contact was suppressed.

To access the list of suppressed contacts:

1. Click the down arrow to the right of the page title and select Suppressed.

2. Select a contact to enable to the management options.

NOTE: The functionality of the Preview Panel and the Edit and History options is identical to what it is for Subscribed contacts. Refer to those sections for information.

To learn more about suppression, including the Suppression Types, see Suppress vs Unsubscribe.

Unsuppress a Contact

1. Select a contact and click Unsuppress.
2. Click Unsuppress in the dialog to confirm the action.

TIP: Return to the Subscribed list and confirm that the contact is listed.

Search for Contacts

At the top right, you can use the search feature to quickly find contacts:

1. Click the magnifying glass icon to expand a search field.
2. Enter alphanumeric and/or special characters to query the Email, Custom ID, and both Name fields of all records.

NOTE: The search field is not case-dependent. Typing "net" will yield "net" and "Net."

The list will automatically update with each typed character and display all records (visible and hidden) that contain a match. Click the X to clear the search field to restore the original list.

Perform bulk Contact actions

Selecting multiple contacts in the list enables a few bulk actions in the Preview Panel. This allows you to simultaneously perform the following management actions on multiple contacts:

• Add the selected contacts to a group.
• Manage suppression for the selected contacts (suppress them if you're on the Subscribed list and unsuppress them if you're on the Suppressed list.
• Delete the selected contacts.

Select multiple Contacts

The button used to multi-select rows is device-dependent. To select more than one row, hold the Ctrl (Windows) or command (Mac) key and select each of the other rows you want to manage. To select a continuous list on PC and Mac, click one row, then hold the Shift key and click the last row.

TIP: After multi-selecting BUT before acting on the selected contacts, you can add and deselect contacts via the check boxes to their left.

Manage Contact subscriptions

In addition to being able to add and suppress individual contacts, you can save time by performing a single upload action on a batch of contacts.

For detailed information on these batch actions, see Upload Contacts.

To upload a batch file of contacts for your subscribed list:

1. Click the upload icon above the list to access the "upload" page.
2. Follow the instructions in Upload Contacts.
3. Return to the Contacts > Subscribed list and verify that the contacts are listed.

To upload a batch file of contacts for your suppressed list:

1. Click the down arrow to the right of the page title and select Suppressed.
2. Click the upload icon above the list to access the Upload Suppression Lists page.
3. Follow the instructions in Upload Contacts.
4. Return to the Contacts > Suppressed list and verify that the contacts are listed.

For more information on suppression, see Suppress vs Unsubscribe.

Export Contacts lists

The Subscribed and Suppressed list pages have an export option (a downward pointing arrow) that will export a .csv file of the current list of contacts. Navigate to where you want to store the file, give it a memorable name, and click Save.

Confirmation messages will display when the export has started and when it has completed.

The exported list will include:

• Any Standard, Custom, and Enhanced fields that have been configured for the account and
• Only the records that populate the current list.

NOTE: The current list is the contacts in the original list or any subset of that list that has resulted from a search.