More Search Options/Advanced Search for Contacts

[Marisa_M]

Contacts needed a re-design, but I am not sure why you have removed the Advanced Search feature?!

Isn't keeping your contacts list up-to-date a very important part of managing a mailing list, which will increase your open rate? Why yes, it is!  So I don't understand why you would remove the advanced search so that i can no longer look for people who fit a certain criteria so I can remove them when updating our lists.  For example, the only way I can remove people who are no longer members of our organization (and therefore should not receive our emails) was to upload a new list of all current members and tag them with today's date, then do an advanced find for people who did not have the tag and remove them. Now, I can no longer do that!  So there's essentially no way for me to update my lists to remove emails.  PLEASE FIX THIS!

😫Every time something is upgraded, another function breaks or is deprecated. Not good. 

[Frankie_P]

Hi @Marisa_M thanks for sharing this feedback with us! although our advanced search feature was not carried over to the updated contact management dashboard, we are in the process of creating feature to help fit our users' needs. For instance in your case, have you tried using our contact segmentation feature? This tool allows you to create a segment of contacts based on specific criteria. Does this tool fit your needs?

[Marisa_M]

Hi @Frankie_P,

Thanks for the response but no, that does not help me.  It's good for other things but not for cleaning up my lists.  Yes, I can get it to tell me the names of the people who need to be removed, but from that screen there isn't a way to do a bulk delete AND I can't even click on the names to edit them from that screen!! So I would have to export the list, open in excel, back out of the segments and go to the contacts section, then search for each person manually to remove them.  Way too many steps.

IF you could make the "segments" lists editable and able to perform bulk deletes from that screen, then yes that would solve my issues.

I don't understand why, when CC updates something and adds new features, they remove functionality.  Why can't CC just add new features and leave the old ones?!  I'm talking about tables, HTML insert capability, tabs/indentation, and now contact advanced finds. Just venting.

Thanks.

[Frankie_P]

Hi @Marisa_M thanks for following up with these details! Having the ability to delete contacts or edit contacts through a segment are both feature requests we are tracking in their own threads. At this time you can move your segment into a list and delete the contacts through that new list directly in your account. With that said we have also opened up your idea so other users can weigh in on this advanced feature request as well.

[Caitlin_M]

HI @Marisa_M. With our current search feature, what criteria is missing that you used in the previous contact design? You mentioned tags in your original post but wanted to see what else you would like to search for your contacts by.

[Marisa_M]

Hi Caitlin,

Forget about what I used to do becuase that was terrible also.  It was a workaround I created because the old search was lacking.

What I *need* to be able to search by are:

• Date contact was added
• Date contact was modified
• Date contact unsubscribed
• Tags - or lack thereof
• Contact added source
• List(s)

[Caitlin_M]

Thank you for those details with the additional search criteria @Marisa_M. I have forwarded them to our Product teams. I'll open the idea back up for voting and tracking.

[EricS6848]

I don't like the new design. We often need to create new lists based on different criteria and I need to look through everyone to select individuals for the new list. Unfortunately I always have to start at the top and go through page by page whereas before I could select a smaller segment based on their last name. I loved the search criteria you deleted because you said it was "confusing." I wish you would bring that back. If someone doesn't want to use it, what is the harm in having it available for everyone else.

[MaureenW651]

I am also VERY frustrated and annoyed by the loss of the advance search feature. And for what I we need segmenting appears to be a joke. We need to remove contacts from a master list who have already received current emails. When trying to segment. I do not see a way to add an entire segment to a new or existing list. And the contacts do not appear to be clickable when in the segment 'list'.

Am I missing something? Is there a workaround without clicking on every contact in the list to see if they have received recent emails? Over 500 on that list and thus very time consuming.

I would greatly appreciate information on a better/quicker way to do this. Thanks.

Oh, yea, I know that all caps mean that I am shouting.

[TheMovementCentre]

Hello there! I think an area of improvement would be to reduce the Contact Search feature's level of sensitivity. When I search for an email or name and unintentionally include a space at the beginning or end, the lack of results causes an inability to find the expected results. That can, and has, resulted in multiple chats and calls to the Constant Contact support team. I imagine it can also cause blame and frustration to be directed where it doesn't belong. Perhaps it's time to move past searches that actually include spaces. I can't imagine the time (and time is money!) that would be spent on calls for this simple search function issue. Hopefully we'll see a more intuitive search in the future. Thank you!