The core of marketing automation is getting the right message to the right people at the right time. This page provides information about contacts in Campaign Studio, including how to add contacts to your instance and what you can view and do on each contact record.
Adding contacts to Campaign Studio
Quick Add
Quick Add is a short form with the fields you deem most important. To display fields in the Quick Add form, make them available on short forms in the custom fields configuration.
Add New
This form of manual addition displays all published contact fields when creating a new contact.
Form submission
Campaign Studio creates a new contact if you submit a form and no existing contacts in the instance have the unique identifier that you used on the form submission. Typically, Campaign Studio uses the email address as the unique identifier, but you can change the unique identifier.
If you submit a form using a unique identifier for an existing contact, Campaign Studio updates the existing contact record with any new information from the form.
Plugin
Campaign Studio has several plugins available. You can add contacts to Campaign Studio through plugins. For information about configuring your plugins, see Plugins.
API
With the flexible, API-first architecture of Campaign Studio, you can add new contacts through the API from virtually any source, as long as the source also has an open REST API.
To use the API:
Log in to Campaign Studio.
Click the Settings icon on the top right corner.
Click Configuration > API Settings.
Set API enabled to Yes.
Click the Settings icon and select API Credentials.
On the API Credentials page, add your application.
For more information, see the API documentation.
CSV import
Campaign Studio accepts CSV files up to 1 GB encoded in the UTF-8 format. When importing a CSV, you can import up to five files in parallel.
Note
If a user attempts to import more than five files at a time, the additional files enter a ‘delayed’ state. To resolve this, unpublish the files in delayed status import(s) and republish them after the import of one of the files is complete. It ensures that more than five files are not running at a time.
To import your CSV file:
Create custom fields in Campaign Studio to match the fields in your list.
Set up users with contact permissions to assign contact ownership.
To add the contacts to a segment, create the segment.
For the segment, you only need to have a title and set it to published.
Clean your data, ensuring:
No accents or special characters.
Capitalize names. This is important if you want to use tokens in Campaign Studio emails.
Check formatting in fields such as email addresses, phone numbers, and data values.
To import your CSV file:
Log in to Campaign Studio.
In the left navigation pane, click Contacts.
On the Contacts page, click Import next to +New.
Choose your UTF-8 encoded CSV file.
Adjust the value in Delimiter, Enclosure, and Escape, if necessary.
By default, Campaign Studio uses a comma, quotation mark, and forward slash.
(Optional) Select a contact owner, a contact segment, and desired tags.
Map the fields in your CSV file to the fields where you want to save your data in Campaign Studio.
Map Company name to the Company name field under Primary Company, not the contact’s Company field.
Note
If the column header in the CSV matches the Alias of any of your Campaign Studio fields, the system maps those columns and fields.
CSV contact imports support matching by Contact ID.
Users can choose to not overwrite fields if a value already exists in the field on a contact record.
Click Import.
At any time, you can review the import history to check what files uploaded, how long it took, and the number of contacts:
inserted: New contacts added
updated: Existing contacts where the data was merged
ignored rows: Rows that were not imported
You can also review the history to check when the import took place.
You can click the values in the Total Rows, Inserted, and Updated columns to view the contacts belonging to each category.
Exporting contact lists
Campaign Studio supports exporting contact lists in CSV and Excel formats.
Export to CSV - Sends a downloadable link containing the CSV file of the contact list to the email address on your Campaign Studio user profile. To export the file, you must have Administrator permissions or both View Own and View Others for Contact Permissions in Roles.
Note
This feature currently supports the export of a maximum of one million contacts.
Export to Excel - Exports contact lists to Excel directly from the system.
Contact records
Details
Information Tabs: With Campaign Studio, you can organize custom fields into the following:
Core
Social
Personal
Professional
To change which field must be displayed on which tabe, click Settings > Custom Fields and edit the individual field. Campaign Studio does not display the tabs with no fields assigned.
Sidebar: Sidebar displays key information, including the image, points, stage, contact owner, address, email, address, phone numbers, upcoming events (scheduled campaign events), associated companies, segments, and tags.
To change a contact’s primary company, click the yellow checkmark on the company you want to assign as the primary company. You can collapse the image by clicking the arrow in the top right corner of the image.
Image
Gravatar: By default, Campaign Studio pulls images from Gravatar. If there’s a Gravatar associated with the contact’s email address, Campaign Studio will add the Gravatar photo to the contact record.
Custom: To add a custom image file to a contact, edit the contact record and look for Preferred profile image under the image placeholder.
Engagements
The engagements and points graph shows the last 6 completed months with how many events are on the contact’s activity history, and the change in points for each month.
History
Event history tracks any engagements between Campaign Studio and a contact.
Note
A maximum of 25 records for each type of event are displayed on the first page of a contact record, and the remaining records are displayed on the next page. To find a certain event type, use the Include events by source and Exclude events by source filter. If you cannot find the event type even by using these filters, create a Support ticket.
Accessed from IP: IP addresses which the contact has opened or clicked emails, visited your tracked pages, etc. from.
Added through API: Contact was created through API.
Asset Downloaded: Lists which assets have been downloaded from your pages or website. Combining this information with other data can help with analyzing what led a contact to download the asset.
Campaign Action Triggered: Actions within campaigns which have already happened.
Campaign Event Scheduled: Actions within campaigns which take place in the future. Expand the details to see the event’s scheduled date and time. Click the clock icon to reschedule the event, or click X to cancel the event. A warning icon means an execution error on the first try caused the event to be rescheduled.
Campaign Membership Change: Changes to which campaign a contact is a part of.
Contact Created: This is the first event, showing the date and time the contact first entered your database (either as a known or anonymous contact).
Contact Created By Source: How the contact was created
Contact Identified: The date and time the contact was identified, moving the contact from an anonymous to a known contact.
Contact Identified By Source: How the contact became identified.
Do Not Contact: The date and time the contact unsubscribed from your messaging on a particular channel.
Dynamic Content sent: A dynamic content slot is pushed to a contact through a campaign action.
Email Failed: If an email is sent to an invalid or undeliverable email address, it will be recorded as an email failed event (with the internal name of the email shown).
Email Read: The date and time when a specific email was first read. If the contact opens the email multiple times, expanding details on the event type will display the additional opens.
Note
To avoid performance issues, a limit of up to 1,000 Email Read event details is displayed.
Email Replied: If a contact replies to an email sent through Campaign Studio, thecreply displays on the contact record with this event type. To see this, you must have the Contact Replies inbox configured in Settings > Configuration > Email Settings.
Email Sent: When a specific email is sent to a contact, the internal name of the email and the time & date of that send are listed.
Form Submitted: Along with showing the name and time and date of the form submission, expanding the details on this event type shows the data collected on the form and what page the form was submitted on (referrer).
Imported: Dates, times, and file names for all CSV imports that included a contact.
Integration Sync Notice: Information about connections with integrations.
Message Queue: If a contact’s frequency limits for a channel have been reached and a message on that channel triggers to send, a Message Queue event displays with the channel and the ID for the message being queued. Expanding details displays:
originally scheduled send date
rescheduled send date
current status
If the message is Pending, clicking the X button cancels it.
Page Hit: Time and date of page visits, and the URL if it’s a tracked page on your site or the internal name of a Campaign Studio landing page. You may view more information, if tracked, by expanding the details of this event type.
Point Gained: The ID number of either:
The global point action (in the Points section of Campaign Studio)
The campaign where the point action exists, along with the name of the global point action or the campaign, the number of points added or subtracted, and the time & date of the point change
Segment Membership Change: When contacts are added or removed from segments by any method, those changes display in the event history.
Stage Changed: If you are using Stages in Campaign Studio (not stages as a custom field), changes to those stages will display in the event history
Text Message Received: This event type is for SMS replies, if you are using
SMS and have SMS reply tracking configured. Outbound SMS display as Campaign
Event Scheduled or Campaign Action Triggered.
UTM Tags Recorded: If you’re using UTM tags and record them from a form submission, landing page hit, etc., they will be listed here. Expanding the details displays the recorded tags.
Video View Event: Details in this event type include the length of time a prospect watched the video, the percentage of the video watched, the page where the video displays (Referrer), and the URL of the video file.
Some plugins contain specific events. The events display and are searchable after the plugin is connected.
Notes
Users may have a CRM system where they store notes about users. Campaign Studio can also store notes about individual contacts.
Integrations
If the contact exists in other tools and is connected through plugin or API integration, you’ll see those here. This helps identify where a contact came from, or what other internal systems the contact exists in.
Audit log
When a field changes on a contact record, Campaign Studio tracks the change in the audit log along with who (or what) made those changes. Old values and new values both display, in case you must find old information about a contact.
Note
Campaign actions, form submit actions, and point triggers are considered system updates.
Places
The Places map shows a contact’s approximate locations, based on the IP address.
Contact options
Send email
This option enables users to send an individual email, either manually created with the builder or from a template email. The From Name and From Email Address default to the user sending the individual message.
Note
Template emails sent using this feature don’t display in reports.
Campaigns
This option enables users to manually add or remove contacts from campaigns. Click the Campaign ID to be directed to the Campaign page.
Merge
If you’ve identified duplicate contacts, you can merge them together by searching for the contact you’d like to merge with. This keeps the values of the record you’re merging into. If a field is empty on one record but populated on the other, Campaign Studio will populate the field in the merge.
Preferences
Channels: To manually unsubscribe or subscribe/re-subscribe a contact to a channel, set the individual’s frequency preferences (overriding the instance default), set a Vacation period (break from communications), or change the preferred channel (default for messages sent in campaigns using the Marketing Messages feature).
Categories: If you’re using categories, contacts can choose (on their preference center) which categories they receive messages for. This option enables users to manually update those preferences.
Segments: Users can manually add or remove contacts from segments.
Delete
This deletes contacts from your Campaign Studio instance only. It won’t delete the contact from any other systems, and the contact may then be re-added to Campaign Studio through an API integration or plugin if Campaign Studio is pulling contacts from those other systems.
To delete contacts in bulk, create a segment containing the contacts that you want to delete. Use this segment as the source for a campaign that only has the Delete contact action.
Contact list
Search
There are several operators and commands to help you find contacts which meet a certain criteria. To see the full list in your instance, click the question mark next to the Filter box.
Note
Contacts can be searched by a custom field. Use the following format for your search:
<Field alias>:<The value you want to search for>
For example, to search for a contact whose first name is Jane, use:
firstname:jane
The search must use the field alias and the value. Labels for either one do not return results.
Batch actions
To make updates to several contacts at once, select those contacts then click the green arrow at the top of the checkbox column.
Changing the view
If you’d like to see your contacts in the card view, click the C button while you’re looking at the contact list. To go back to the table or list view, press the T key.
Anonymous contacts
Anonymous contacts do not count towards your instance limit. However, you can track their behavior. If they become known contacts, Campaign Studio syncs their contact records.
What you see: Switching to the anonymous contacts view displays the IP addresses for visitors to pages tracked with your Campaign Studio tracking code. If you have an IP lookup service configured in Settings > System Settings > Miscellaneous Settings, you will also see an approximate location of these contacts. Campaign Studio uses MaxMind Geolite2 City by default. The location is based on the contact’s Internet Service Provider, and may not be the exact location of the contact.
Individual contacts: Click an IP address to display a contact record, similar to known contacts. If there’s any information on an anonymous contact, you can see it here. This data can include:
Pages the contact has visited
Forms submitted
Scoring
Data from forms (which don’t include the unique identifier, since that would make the contact known), etc.
Note
In Settings > Configuration > Tracking Settings, you can enable the Do Not Track 404 error for anonymous contacts option to not track page hits on any 404 error page tracked by the tracking code. This option helps prevent bots tracking.
Data for anonymous contacts is not available for segmentation or reporting. Once the contact is known, the data is available. This applies to non-campaign based dynamic web content filters.
Live mode
Enabling live mode shows contacts as they enter the system, without requiring a page refresh.