When adding a contact and choosing a list, I click the box for Permission to Email and yet, I then have to go find that contact and click it again before it appears in that list. Very tedious. It's even worse if they're further along in the alphabet, requiring multiple clicks just to get to their listing. Isn't there a better way?
Hi Scott, Thank you for posting. I apologize that this is causing so many steps. Would you mind providing a little more details on exactly the steps you are taking? When you are setting the Permission to Send, are you then clicking on the plus sign below that to add them to a list? It sounds like this particular step may be missing, causing you to have to then go back and then assign the list. If this is the cause, the key here is to make sure to set the permission to send and then assign the list each time you are adding a new contact. Thanks again for your post.
Hello, Thank you for your feedback. I'm sorry that you are finding the new system unfavorable. Was there anything specific that seems to be giving you trouble when adding a contact to a list? A key to adding new contacts in this new system is to remember to set the Permission to Send each time and then this will allow you to add the contact to your desired list. Please feel free to let us know if there is anything else that seems to be giving you trouble.
It is confusing that the Add to Email Lists button is grayed out when you select a contact in a list, and that contact has no permission set. Can you make this button active for all contacts, and then include a way to set permission before selecting a list?
HI Lana,
Thanks for sharing this idea. Once a contact is in your account without permission to send, you have to update each individual contact or re-import the list with permission. The "Add to lists" button will remain grayed out as long as you have selected a contact without permission to not give the false-expectation that it will be added.
Thanks again for sharing this, please continue to vote on this and other topics you would like to see implemented in the future.
Thank you for posting. Is the page providing you with an error after you check off the permission to send box? Are you able to click on Import? What could be happening is that the button to add to list might have been missed during this process, which would mean that contact is being added to the account but they were not assigned to a list. When checking off the box for Permission to Send, you will then need to click on the grey plus sign below and assign the list that they will be going to and then click Import.
The disclaimer box re permission to email could appear when I enter the email address. That box should have a "I have read this and agree to its terms" button. Then you would save us two steps every time we enter a new contact!!
Thanks Peter! If you are adding contacts one at a time you will have to give permission to mail to each one since you can now have contacts in the account that you don't mail to but I understand how this process could be made quicker for you!
The old system would tell you if a contact has previously opted out. This one doesn't so when I'm entering a group I don't know which ones made it on the list and which did not.
This is doesn't make sense. Everything about your program makes sense EXCEPT for the easiest task. Now that I've added 5 emails I can't figure out how to make them Active. Even if I had to wait to get permission it should be easy to mark them once I do (they won't have given me their emails if they didn't give me permission).
Hi Sharon, I'm sorry to hear of this difficulty. When you add the contacts you have the option to check that you have permission to email them. You do not have to check this option but you must check that you have permission when you want to add them to a list. The list option only appears after you've checked permission. These steps are now part of the system so you can keep contacts in the account that you don't email or contacts with other details.
Thanks for posting. Are you wanting to see this information when you import new contacts? If so, the error on import will tell you how many contacts were unsubscribed.
why now do i have to check that I have permission every time I add a contact. It is my list, of course I have permission. You are making things harder, not easier.
The new Add A New Contact page is less useful for us, to say the least. We just found out that contacts we added may not have been put on a list because we did not know to check the permission button. Huge waste of time. And the default fields are worthless to us. We don't care about Job Title or Company. We need City, State, Zip and those are buried somewhere under an "Add" button. We don't use tags or Notes. At the very least make checking the permission button a requirement for the contact to save and make the fields that appear on this page customizable.
Thanks for this feedback. The reason for the permission button is so that you can keep contacts in the account that you don't want to mail to. There is a popup asking if you will be mailing to them if you don't check off that you have permission to email them. What information are you looking to import with your contacts? Have you tried out the "Add Names and Emails" option?
I have been working with Constant Contact for about 5-8 years (not sure how long but a long time) and I hate this new contact section. I can't delete a list and I have no idea how to set permission for a whole list instead of individually. No way am I going thru 1500 contacts individually to set permissions.
What is the "No permissions set" list based on? I'm going through each name individually to reset permissions, which is a waste of time. (It was very helpful to see whether a contact was self-added or added by our staff; the new interface doesn't seem to have this information.)
I have members that are expecting to receive their newsletters and other information but haven't checked their permission and now think I have dropped them. I have sent the permission letter multiple time but they still don't understand. How can I get them their news?
Hi Carol-
Do you have an example of one of these contacts? The permission status can be changed when you re-import the contacts. This is something you select while adding contacts to indicate that you can email them. You can have contacts in the account you can't email. once a contact has unsubscribed you are not able to email them again. Could this be what is happening?
You can see if there are contacts that need their permissions adjusted. If you have the category of "No Permissions Set" on the left, under All, Active and Unsubscribed, then there are contacts to be adjusted. If it is not there, then all contacts with email addresses have had their permissions set.
Once contacts are in a list without permissions you would have to add permission one at a time but an easy workaround would be to export the list and re-import into a new list checking that you have permission during this process.
When I add new contacts, the activity page shows me the "issues" of contacts who could not be added to the list. I need to know which e-mails these were. In the previous version, I could view them. This allows me to send an internal report so that we keep these people off of all of our e-mail contact lists. Please restore this feature. Thanks!
There are way too many steps in the new system to add a Contact. It is a nuisance to have to check the Permission box every time. And it is nuisance to have to type or choose the email list every time. You are making me waste time doing all these extra steps with your new system.
The adding of a new contact list has just become much more cumbersome than it was before. I do not see how this makes the work of sending out an email easier.
No permission indicates you have the contact but haven't gotten their permission to email them. It sounds like the contacts may have been imported and this wasn't checked off. If you have a file of these contacts a quick way to update them all is to reimport.
You can see who a contact was added by if you would like by changing the header information.
Removing Permission Status
If contacts ask that you remove them from your list, you'll need to make sure that they are unsubscribed properly and not just removed. This keeps you in line with current anti-spam laws.
After logging into Constant Contact, click Contacts.
Search or browse for the contact you want to remove.
Click on the contact.
Click the email address you want to edit.
Click "Permission to Send" as it appears above the save button. THERE IS NO "PERMISSION TO SEND OR SAVE BUTTONS
Choose "Unsubscribed" from the drop-down.
Click Save.
I really prefer the old way for updating/adding contacts. this one seems very convoluted and I am always wondering if contacts were added/updated or not. the other way was less confusing and very cut and dry. I really wish you would go back to that. Sharyn Rodeheaver
These new changes are really a major MISTAKE.
Please explain what the date added of the unsubscribe is of any use at all????? Who sat around and put this together. Obviously no one that uses it. The sorting needs to be the most recent opt out and unsubscribe. I must now manually find them and sort thru to find who and when I've lost a customer. STOP CHANGING THIS IF IT DOES NOT IMPROVE SOMETHING
finally discovered how to add a contact to the unsubscribe list in the 'new & improved' website. The old website was intuitive when adding individual contacts to the list - the new one not so.
Why is the unsubscribe option so difficult to find? Previously it was fairly straightforward, now I have to open the contact, and at that point it should be easy, but instead, I have to click Permission to Email, then click permission to email again (a small little text link), and then unsubscribe. I had to talk to a rep on chat to be able to do this.
It's not user friendly. I had to call you to find out how to add someone to the Do not mail list which no longer exist. I never had to call to find out how to use the Contact section. It was idiot proof and self evident. The new interface is very very bad. It took me 4 steps to do what I was able to do before in one! And those 4 steps were not obvious. Please change back. This is not an improvement!
I'm disappointed about how you are adding contacts. I just wrote my whole explanation in this box and then when I was attempting to finish by adding to your subject line above, "to briefly describe line above," it wiped everything I just reported. Poor design!
What I tried to say before it wiped it out, is when I added a contact I didn't check the permission box, because I didn't see it. It should have prompted me that my contact wasn't saving with a pop-up box if I didn't check the box, but it didn't give me that option and it caused a client to be upset that I didn't email as promised.
Thanks for posting. The permission checkbox should be checked automatically for you. Can you let me know exactly which method you are using to add contacts to the account?
Here's how this looks when you are adding a single contact as well as when you are adding a bunch of email addresses at once.
(limited subjects for brief feedback - frustrating!)
We need to be able to delete a contact while on the contact's page, especially since there's no back button. One gets lost in a never-ending series of re-loads to get the job done.
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