ContactMonkey customers have a powerful tool at their fingertips to manage their Send Lists directly in ContactMonkey. This tool allows teams to utilize the information available to set up self-managed lists that can be easily changed as needed.
This article applies to all customers who currently leverage our Email product with our List Management add-on, as well as our customers who currently leverage our SMS product.
What Does List Management Do?
ContactMonkey allows the customer to sync their directory from external sources, and include any customized attributes that they would like to use to segment this directory (e.g., title, department, location). They can then use these attributes to create new custom lists in ContactMonkey, and send emails based on their customized lists.
Customers have multiple options to add/update lists to ContactMonkey, some being automated options, and others being more manual processes.
Contacts synced to either our Email or SMS product will be visible in both views as both products have a shared contact directory.
See the below video that helps explain this notion of a shared contact directory.
Shared Contact Directory - Watch Video
Why Choose List Management?
There are usually two use cases for customers who are utilizing List Management
- Some customers may want to have more direct control over their Google Groups or Distribution lists so that changes can be made more quickly. This allows users of ContactMonkey to make faster changes as situations require.
- List Management allows the customer to create new lists within ContactMonkey, based on their own choices and selections and data points
What Do I Need To Get Started
Users looking to set up List Management should discuss the add-on option with their Customer Success Manager. If you are an SMS customer, you will already have access to our List Management add-on.
What Are My Options For Connecting To List Management?
List Management Setup Options
ContactMonkey users should discuss internally where the “Source of truth” exists. For most of our users, this information can normally be obtained by their company's IT or HR/People Operations departments.
Here are the solutions ContactMonkey can work with:
Manual Process
Daily Automated Sync
List Management Data Field Options
Customers will then need to determine what data will need to be added to their synced data, such as physical addresses, countries, and departments, which can then be used to
- Generate dynamic lists
- Filter and group Campaign Data into Segmented Lists
- Make additional Mail Merge Fields available
ContactMonkey supports Field Mapping. Meaning, depending on how you choose to set up your lists (CSV, Azure sync, etc.) in ContactMonkey, the fields and field names in ContactMonkey will differ.
Please reference the Help Center articles above for creating lists via a CSV file, Azure sync, etc. to learn more about what the expected values (fields) are in ContactMonkey depending on how you have chosen to create and upload lists.
How To Leverage Advanced List Filtering To Segment Your Lists
Once you have decided on how to sync your contacts within the Directory in ContactMonkey (either in the List Management or SMS product), you will now also have access to Advanced List Filtering, which will allow you to build segmented and customized lists within ContactMonkey.
To access the new filtering methods:
- Click on Directory (either from the Email or SMS product)
- Click on the Filters button
- Start playing around with the different filtering options. You will be able to filter by any fields you synced from your CSV, Azure sync, etc. upload.
- You will be able to mix AND and OR logic within a single filter, as well as leverage new operators such as Equals, Does Not Equals, Contains, Does Not Contain
- Click Apply Filters to apply the filters you have entered
- See below example for a custom list I am trying to save using some of the above reference operators and logic.
- In the below example, I am specifying that the office location needs to be any of those countries OR (leveraging new logic) their department is Business Development, with an additional ruleset (see below FAQ on Advanced List Filtering for an explainer on what a Ruleset is) specifying that their Employee ID must contain the number 7.
- Click Save Filters as List to bring up the below pop-up that will prompt you to name the list as well as assign the list to a Team.
- Click Save to access this list for future email or SMS sending
Please reference the below explainer video on how to leverage our Advanced List Filtering.
Advanced List Filtering With List Management - Watch Video
Advanced List Filtering FAQs
- Why do some filtering options automatically only give me the option that says “is either of these”, while other filtering options allow me to select from more operators like “is equal to”, “contains”, etc.?
- Some column headers and values we consider to be a “set” where we want to make it easier for you to just select the value from the drop-down list when creating a filter. As an example, something like “Office Location” is considered to be a set, mainly because there aren’t a near infinite number of options to potentially select from with this data field. Whereas something like “Email Address” or “Email ID” is not considered a “set” because of how many potential options there could be for either of these fields. For more information on what specific fields are considered a data set, please reference the table at the bottom of the following Help Center articles (depending on how you have synced your contacts to ContactMonkey):
- What’s the difference between a rule and a ruleset?
- Rulesets functions like parentheses for a group of logic
- Rules are then added into a ruleset to filter a list
- An example of a rule would be: Country = Canada
- Multiple rules can be combined with a ruleset through AND or OR logic
- Only the same logic type can be used within a ruleset
- This means that ANDs + ORs cannot both be used within a single ruleset
- Only the same logic type can be used within a ruleset
- More rulesets can be added, and also will be separated by AND or OR logic
- See below example of how to use Rules and Rulesets:
Ruleset 1: (Country = Canada AND Department = Engineering)
OR
Ruleset 2: (Title contains Executive OR City = Toronto)
- Country = Canada AND Department = Engineering are examples of Rules within the first Ruleset. These Rules are separated by an AND operator.
- A second Ruleset is then added to take advantage of an OR operator for the Rules within this Ruleset.
Assigning Lists to Teams
Whether you are creating a new list using the filtering options (referencing the previous steps), or referencing already existing lists, if you are an Admin or an Owner, you will be able to assign a list to a Team.
Assigning a list to a Team gives that specific Team access to send an email or an SMS (if you leverage our SMS product) to that list.
Please follow the above steps mentioned in the How To Leverage Advanced List Filtering To Segment Your Lists section for how to assign a filtered list to a Team.
If you would like to assign an existing list to a Team, please see below instructions.
- Click into Directory followed by Lists
- Click into the specific list that you would like to assign to a Team
- Select a Team from the dropdown menu to assign the list to and click the Assign button
How To View And Set Up Segmented Stats
Please reference these two Help Center articles regarding Segmented Stats:
How To Use Merge Fields In My Email Sending
Please reference this Help Center article on how to leverage Merge Fields in your email sending.