How do I add a contact without an email address

[DonnaH986]

Hello. While this feature is not available, we ask for additional comments and votes be left on the open idea for uploading contacts without email addresses, not here on our support boards. Our Product team regularly reviews our Feedback boards more than our Get Help area. Though we do not have a time estimate of if a feature like this will be available in the product, any updates will be posted there, not on this post. Voting and commenting on that post allows you to be notified of replies.

[Donna_P.]

Updated July 2019:

The information below is out of date and no longer an available feature.

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Hi @DonnaH986,

That's a great question!   You can add a contact with just a name by uploading a file of contacts.  It cannot be added manually, but as long as it is in a file it will upload.

If you have any further questions please feel free to reach out to us here. We are always happy to assist you in any way we can!

[Corbel]

We used to be able to add contacts without an email address and no longer can. Why was this functionality removed? We like to keep all our contacts in one place (Constant Contact) and sometimes don't yet have their email. Can't use a dummy email because if it's a duplicate it replaces all the info for the other contact without even confirming (HUGE flaw). Or we may need to delete an email address from a contact -- e.g. we heard they've switched companies but don't yet have their new email. We used to be able to delete the existing email but can't anymore. PLEASE restore this functionality!!

[Desi_B]

Hello. While this feature is not available, we ask for additional comments and votes be left on the open idea for uploading contacts without email addresses, not here on our support boards. Our Product team regularly reviews our Feedback boards more than our Get Help area. Though we do not have a time estimate of if a feature like this will be available in the product, any updates will be posted there, not on this post. Voting and commenting on that post allows you to be notified of replies.

[DanaN460]

We have been trying out Constant Contact for our church congregation.  The removal of this "functionality" (adding a contact without an email address) is the reason why we will no longer use Constant Contact,

Our congregation includes some members who do not use email.  A Phone Tree tag in Constant Contact has been helpful for communicating with those members, but now it is no longer possible to add additional contacts to that list.  Moreover, occasionally a member will ask us to delete an email associated with their contact data -- for example when a spouse passes away.  Now, however, an email address cannot be deleted from a contact.  Nor can such a contact for a couple be deleted and replaced with new contact data for the surviving spouse who does not have an email address.

For these reasons, we will discontinue using Constant Contact.

[Tiago_R]

Hello @DanaN460,

Thank you for bringing over your concerns to us. We definitely understand how this functionality can benefit and assist you with your contact management to keep all your contacts together. We are definitely sad to see you go for this reason. I will be passing along this feedback to the correct department so that they can review the information. I do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused for you. Feel free to reach back out to us if you need assistance with anything else. Have a wonderful day! 

[BrianM6436]

Stop Responding The same way and FIX it!

[BrianM6436]

Yes I am about to do the same!

[TNHolCom]

Has there been a solution implemented to allow us to store contact informaiton, without an email?

[BrianM6436]

I doubt it and it is super annoying!

[Top.of.the.Hill]

your recommendation used to work. I just tried today and it no longer works.  It forces you to add the person to a list, and since they do not have an email address, the load fails.

[Aaron_H]

Hello @Top.of.the.Hill,

I'm sorry for the inconvenience with that.  There was a time that this workaround was viable, however system updates have closed that option. Although we're not planning to delete any contacts that do not have an email address from your account, you will see that we will be enforcing the email address requirement when you edit these contacts, or attempt to add new ones through any means going forward.

We can see an overwhelming majority of customers adding contacts to the system with the purpose of sending email campaigns, and unfortunately mixing in contacts without email addresses were causing quite a bit confusion.  I can absolutely add you to the list of people requesting that we bring that feature back, however currently there is no method that should be allowing contacts to be added if they do not have an email address.

[Top.of.the.Hill]

ok...well two things Aaron

1.  I will be looking for a replacement solution. I think you guys were really quite stupid to make this change as it makes our ongoing usage of the system completely utenable
2. please confirm that I will receive a refund for monies paid in advance once I find a solution.  Need that confirmation ASAP

Really, really stupid.

[Aaron_H]

Hello @Top.of.the.Hill,

I'm sorry for the inconvenience caused by these changes.  I'll be happy to pass along your feedback to our design team, so that they're aware that this is something that some people are wanting back.  I do see in that feature request that the team is asking for information on why people are wanting this feature, so that we can make sure that we're meeting your needs.  If you can share with us here why you're needing to add contacts with no email address, I'll be happy to pass that on to our design team.  I see that you also emailed us, so if you prefer you can email us those reasons at social_support(at)constantcontact(dot)com.

As for the second request, I'm afraid that we do not handle any billing changes through the community, and I can not guarantee any refunds based off of a change to contact data unrelated to any of your email marketing campaigns.  You would need to contact our billing team directly at any of the contact numbers found here.

[Top.of.the.Hill]

1.  We are a neighborhood association and typically just one person in the association will sign up for the family.  However, we need to track the other members of the family who have not provided an email address in order to accurately count the number of people in the association.

2.  there are many elderly folks in the association and they do not have email addresses.  However, we need to track them as well.

3.  I will contact billing, but in my experience, a good company takes ownership of a customer's problem and does not make them do the work.  

[Aaron_H]

Hello @Top.of.the.Hill,

Thank you for the feedback, I'm passing that along to our design team now.  It does look like what you're looking for is essentially a CRM tool.  Our email marketing system can integrate with a number of CRMs, to share the email-able contacts back and forth between them, but it admittedly does not have the features necessary to truly replace any of them, and was not intended for counting or tracking anything other than the email side of your organization, and information relevant to those emails.  I can absolutely see how those tools are useful and even needed by you, and I'm sorry it's simply not a product we currently provide.

[Top.of.the.Hill]

I think you have it wrong. This is a product that you DID provide.  In fact, it used to be very easy.  And then you made it harder, and now you made it impossible.

So please don't say this is a product that you don't provide.  The truth is that you changed your mind and left us all out to dry.  

[DottieR5]

I am having the same problem. I used to be able to add all of my contacts into one database whether we had an email address or not. That made it an easy job. Now, we can no longer add a contact if we do not have an email address for them. So, we have to maintain multiple databases. This is inefficient and costly. We use the Notes part of Constant Contact for brief customer notes and we used to be able to easily use CC to look things up for customers. Now, we have to go to multiple programs to see where they are and find those notes or any contact information. 

I see others have had this problem. Does anyone know of another email program that allows for the inclusion of all customers, regardless of the availability of an email address?

[CWCTexas]

Good Morning,

My group also has the issue of needing to add contacts without email addresses.  I see for over a year you have referred this over to computer department that oversees this development.  Has there been any follow up?  Are they working on a solution?  Please have them respond to this thread or escalate this up to the Director.

Thanks,

[Top.of.the.Hill]

I did not get the sense that they are going to fix this issue.  The way I handled it was to take members that were no longer active and recylce their record.  These were members from the past that did not have an email address.  Instead of deleting them, I changed the name of the contact to the new person that did not have an email address.  CC does not enforce an email address on older, existing records...just new ones.

[Zoe_H]

Hello @Top.of.the.Hill and @CWCTexas,

Thank you for your feedback! We do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but we did make the change where you are not able to add contacts without email addresses into the account. When customers were adding contacts without email addresses into their accounts it was causing a lot of confusion, so we removed that option. We will put in your feedback about this product and alert our engineers of your request. Thank you! 

[JamesL752]

YES PLEASE!!!! I have about 1/8 of my contacts in the horse industry who don't use email. I want to keep using constant contacts as my one source to do everything. This may be the reason I look elsewhere!!!!!

[JamesL752]

yes this is also very frustrating to me!!!!!!!! I run a business that is rooted in the western horse industry and a lot of cowboys don't use email. They just want me to communicate with them via mail. We need to have this open back to be able to add contacts with no email. It is a big turn off for me when 1/8 of my clients don't use email. 

[Zoe_H]

Hello @JamesL752,

Thanks for your feedback!