How does constant contact handle duplicate, bounced and unsubscribed emails?

[ApplianceJunk]

Hi,

What happens if I upload two email list from two different websites I own and they have duplicate email address?

How happens to bounced emails?

When people unsubscribe will I still have access to there email address? Can I export unsubscribed emails?

Thanks,

[Jarrad_M CTCT Employee]

Hi John,

Constant Contact automatically checks for duplicates when you import into a list. If you are adding all contacts into a master list, any duplicate email addresses would be added once.

If you are segmenting your lists, the contacts would be added to each list you upload them to. If you were to send an email to multiple lists and a contact is on more than one list, the contact would only receive one email.

When you send an email any of your bounces will be placed into the bounce category in your report. You can easily remove bounces by check marking the bounce category and clicking remove.

Any contact that unsubscribes from your email is placed into your Do Not Mail list automatically. These contacts can no longer be sent emails, but you do have access to the list and can export it as both a .csv file or .txt file.

I hope this helps,

[ApplianceJunk]

Sounds good,

Another question on this subject...

Say I have the 5,001-10,000 email package and I have already uploaded a email list of say 7,000 email.

This email list I got from my database of forum members. Say down the road I want to update the list so I go to MySQL and download another list of email address.

This time I have 8,000 but only 1,000 of them are going to be new email address.

As i understand it I can upload the 8,000 to my CC list that already has 7,000 email and it will remove all the duplicates leaving me with a total of 8,000 in my CC list, but being my limit is 10,000 is CC going to let me upload them before the duplicates are removed?

Hope that make sense, lol..

[Jarrad_M CTCT Employee]

Duplicates do not count towards your billing. From your example, you have a file that has 7000 contacts in it. You upload that list to Constant Contact. Later, you add 1000 more contacts to that file which now totals 8000 contacts. Rather than all 8000 contacts being uploaded, only the new contacts are added. You would not go over the 10,000 contact limit.

I hope this helps,

[Jarrad_M CTCT Employee]

I'm going to move this post to our Contacts board.

[PARNICKJ]

I have people that are on more than one of my lists, that say they get duplicate emails.

Can that be true and if so, how can I make sure they don't get those duplicates?

[Jarrad_M CTCT Employee]

Hi,

If you send an email to all lists at the same time, a contact will only receive one email. However, if you send to the lists separately, a contact will receive more than one email if they are on more than one list.

It's rare, but If a contact is receiving more than one email, it usually has to do with their servers being older or it is sending us a bounce message when the email was actually received. Check out this FAQ for more info on this We can usually troubleshoot this issue by reading the message header of both emails.

If you'd like to discuss this further, send me a private message with your telephone number.

Thanks,

[RobynS53634]

Is there a way to find out if people are on more than one list?  Any reports that can be output - we send similar emails to segmented lists by profession and are getting comments that clients are getting more than one email - they could be a client and an attorney (for example) - how can I dedup the lists to make sure that they are only on one list?

[Jarrad_M CTCT Employee]

Hi,

What you can do is export your contacts and select the "Show List" field as a field to export. To export:

1. Go to Contacts > Export.
2. Select the information you wish to export.
3. Click Export as CSV to view your contact list in a spreadsheet. Click Export as Text to view the list in a plain text file.

I hope this helps,

[Robert__Lucidpointe Valued Contributor]

Hi Robyn,

If you have lists with relatively few contacts and just a few duplicates, you can probably spot the dupes and make the corrections manually with ease.

If you have large files with a lot of changes to required  (we have one client, for example, that has a segment based on the number of times a subscriber has opened newsletters in the past - so it changes with each mailing), dedupe and re-categorize in excel, and upload "new" segment files (e.g.. "Attorneys updated Aug 2011") .  You will have a "clean" list, and putting the date in the list name is a helpful reminder for scheduling the next de-duping exercise.

Hope this helps.  Please let me know if there are questions on anything I have written.

Regards,

Robert