Contact lists are targeted subgroups of your database that contain contact information data that is gathered and compiled from your parent database.

With contact lists, you can:

• Create multiple contact lists per database.
• Add and remove contacts in various ways.
• Send emails to one or more contact lists by building queries.
• Build subscription-management controls for opt-in, opt-out, and update web forms.
• Report on contact list email results

You can use a contact list to group (or tag) contacts. Although the contact list is associated with a parent database and consists of contacts within the parent database, the contact list is not updated when values in fields or behaviors for the contact change. Instead, contacts are added through various means.

Note: Contacts remain in your contact list until you manually remove them. For example, when Contact A is added to your contact list, the contact record remains there until you remove it. However, if a contact opts out of an email, the contact is removed from the parent database, but the contact record is still in your contact list.

Keep better tabs on what you're sending to contacts and their responses to your emails. Every email is associated with the contact in the parent database, so every action a contact takes in response to the email is recorded in one place, allowing a more strategic approach to marketing.

Having a large number of contact lists does affect performance, but there is no fixed number of lists that causes performance issues to occur. The best practice is to lay out a folder strategy that scales with contact lists if you are considering an approach that includes hundreds to thousands of lists over time.

Create a contact list

A database must exist before you can create a contact list. Contact lists can be created from two places within Acoustic Campaign: the Data tab and the Contact List tab of any eligible Database Summary page.

1. Browse to Contact Lists and then Create.
2. Click Browse to choose the parent database from which you want to create the contact. Note: Only regular, single opt-in, and double opt-in databases can be used to create a contact list.
3. Choose the database from which you want to create your contact list and click Select.
4. Give your contact list a name in the Contact List Name field.
5. Click Browse to indicate the location where you want to save your contact list.

   Campaign contact lists can be stored in private, shared, or any other folders you create.

6. Click Select to confirm.

Click OK when you are finished to create the list. The dialog box closes, and the contact list is added.

You can also populate a contact list by using a database query or by selecting contacts from the parent database.

Add contacts using a database query

1. Create a contact list.
2. Go to View Data.
3. Select the Contact Lists tab.
4. Select the name of the contact list you want to populate. The Contact List Summary page opens.
5. In the upper-right corner of the Contact List Summary page, click Add Contacts.
6. In the Add Contacts dialog box, click Query Parent Database.
7. Enter the criteria for the query on the Criteria and Behavior Criteria tabs. Click Add after each new criteria selected.
8. Click Add Contacts. All the contacts in the parent database that match the criteria you entered are added to your contact list.

   A data job runs in the background to populate the contact list. When the data job is complete, click the list name to see the results.

The following new query options/operators do not have substitutes in the classic query.

• • Program behavior
  • Web form behavior
  • Website behavior
  • Is (Not) in contact list
  • Is (Not) in query

Add contacts by selecting from the parent database

1. Create a contact list.
2. Go to View Data.
3. Select the Contact Lists tab.
4. Select the name of the contact list you want to populate.
5. Click Add Contacts located in the upper-right corner of the Contact List Summary page.
6. Click Select from Parent Database.
7. Select the check box next to a search filter.
8. Select a search criterion from the Search where: list.
9. Select the contacts you want to add from the search results.

Click Add Contacts to update your contact list. The selected contacts are added to your contact list.

Note: Using the Select from Parent Database method only finds the first 100 contacts who match the search criteria, any additional contacts will not be added. If you know that you want to add more than 100 contacts to your contact list, use the Query Parent Database option instead.

Remove contacts

You can remove a contact from a contact list if a person no longer needs to be on the list.

Note: Deleted contacts cannot be restored.

1. Go to Contact Lists.
2. Select the contact list name that contains the contact you want to remove. The Contact List Summary page opens.
3. Click the Search tab to see a list of contacts in the list.
4. Select the check box next to the name or names of the contacts you want to remove from the list.
5. Click Remove Contacts, and then select Remove Selected. The contact is removed immediately.

Remove contacts from a contact list using a query

You can remove a contact from a contact list by using a query to search for the contact to remove.

1. Go to Contact Lists.
2. Select the contact list name that contains the contact you want to remove. The Contact List Summary page opens.
3. Click the Search tab to see a list of contacts in the list.
4. Click Remove Contacts and choose Remove Using a Query. The Remove Contacts from Contact List dialog box opens.
5. Enter your query criteria and select Remove Contacts.

All the contacts that meet your query criteria are removed from the contact list.

Purge a contact list against a contact list

You can purge a contact list against a contact list and all the history of the contacts in contact insight is retained because the purge is made against the contact list (static representation of the database) and not against the database itself. This creates another copy of the database with exact same fields without the values which would have been removed by the purge function.

1. In Acoustic Campaign, select Data.
2. Select a database and then in the Fields tab click Purge.

When progressing with the purge, the first contact list available for selection is the one which has the total number of contacts and the second one is the list of contacts who will be purged from the first one. After the process is submitted in the first contact list you will see the remainder of contacts; the contact list that had the contacts to be purged and an additional third one which has the same size as the second contact list which had the contacts used in purging.

Performing the purge of a contact list against a contact list ensures that you won't lose any history of the contacts in contact insight.

Mass delete contacts in a contact list

You can delete contacts in mass from a contact list.

Note: This procedure removes all contacts from your list and Campaign is unable to restore the deleted contacts.

1. Go to Contact Lists and then select View.
2. Click the correct contact list.
3. Click Remove Contacts.
4. Choose the second option Remove Using a Query from the drop-down.
5. Enter the criteria Email is not empty in the pop-up query window.
6. Click Remove Contacts.

Preference center options

You can create multiple contact lists, which allows you to control subscription management.

You can set up separate contact lists for your newsletter, coupon, and other notification preferences, and tie them to your web forms preference center and subscription management, which allows users to choose which lists they belong to and which they want to opt out of. No more custom columns or disparate lists.

Also learn about managing and editing web forms.

Use contact lists for subscription groups in web forms

You can use the subscription management option in the Web Forms Preferences section, which allows contacts to choose which emails to opt out of and which to continue receiving.

To see Contact lists for Subscription groups in web forms, you must do the following:

1. Go to View Data.
2. Click the name of the list you want to change. The Contact List Summary page opens.
3. Click Settings and select the Enable for Web Form check box.
4. Click Save.
5. Next, go to Landing Pages.
6. Click the name of the site you want to work in. Click Manage Site.
7. In the menu on the left side of the page, select the name of your web form.
8. In the Standard Web Form Properties section, scroll down to Contact Lists. For Standard Forms, you will see two columns to the left of the Contact List Name column: Subscribe on Opt In and Show On Form.
9. In the Show on Form section, select the check box next to the contact list(s) you want to be part of the Subscription Group
10. Save.

Now, when you add the Subscription Group item under Advanced Field Groups to your web form, you should see the Contact Lists.

Set contact list send parameters

Just like with queries, you can set send parameters for links associated with a contact list.

Your domain and VMTA settings are part of your organization settings, so if you don't see the addresses you are expecting, contact your Org admin.

You can set the following parameters:

• Full domain: populate the URLs for links found in emails sent to a contact list. This setting allows you to brand email links.
• VMTA: use as the sending IP address for a contact list. For example, clients with multiple VMTAs may decide to send one list off of one VMTA and a second list sending off of a different VMTA. VMTAs are email servers that use different IP addresses for different classes of email. For example, transaction response emails might use a different IP address than regular emails.

1. In Campaign, go to Data.
2. Click the Contact list tab and select the contact list you want to use.
3. Click Settings.
4. Contact lists settings do the following:
   1. In the Full domain list, select the IP address you want to use for the links in emails to this contact list. Your organization's default setting displays at the top of the list. If your organization has only one address set up, the list will not be available.
   2. In the VMTA name list, select the VMTA you want to use as the sending IP address for emails to this contact list. Your organization's default VMTA displays at the top of the list. If your organization only has one VMTA set up, the list will not be available.

Send to multiple contact lists

It is possible to send to multiple contact lists at one time. You can build a query that contains the criteria Contact is in contact list and select the first list. Continue creating criteria with Or statements.

Alternatively, you could create a new contact list, adding contacts by querying the parent database.

Automated contact list clean up

Acoustic Campaign is introducing a new cleanup feature that will delete contact lists automatically. This is ideal for users with a large number of contact lists in their organization who struggle with performance issues.

What to expect

This feature is only available by request through Acoustic Support.

• Any contact list with a last modified date and a last sent date beyond the number of days configured will be deleted on a recurring basis, if the only associations to those contact lists are message templates and sent messages.
• Additional associations like programs, landing pages, automated message groups, etc. will prevent a contact list from being deleted. All associated message templates and sent emails will remain in Campaign.
• This is a per-database setting. Support can configure each database to maintain contact lists for a variable number of days based on your needs.
• After the contact list is deleted, new events (clicks, opens, etc.) will not be available through the RawRecipientData Export XML API or through the Exchange integration; however, all metrics generated before the contact list deletion will remain available through the API.

In your Support request include the pod, database ID, and number of days to keep contact lists.