multiple emails for a contact

[mitchelll121]

I live in an HOA with 1631 homes. Each home has multiple email addresses (people) living at that address. There is a master database with all of that information. With homes changing owners or people in the homes changing emails, what I would like to do is have a spreadsheet that I can create from that master database that keys off of the home address. Within that address it would house all the emails for the people living at that address. Each time I import that information into Constant Contact, it would update those email addresses. IE

Address: 12345 my street

Name 1: My Name 1

Email 1: My email 1

Name 2: My Name 2

Email 2: My email 2

Address: 98765 my street

Name 1: My Name 1

Email 1: My email 1

Name 2: My Name 2

Email 2: My email 2

By doing this, I believe I can take a periodic download in spreadsheet format from my master database and import it into Constant Contact. It would then replace all of the names and emails per address. Is this possible? If not how do I handle this type of situation and do not have a manual process to keep our master database and Constant Contact in sync.

Note, it goes without saying that an email campaign would pickup each of the emails within the address to send to each recipient.

Thanks mitch

[William_A]

Hello @mitchelll121 ,

A unique contact is determined by their email address, so uploading the same email address but with different names or physical addresses, will force it to be updated each time.

You may need to do some manual reconstruction of the CSV file outside of our system. I'd recommend having separate columns for Email Address 1, First Name 1, Last Name 1, Email Address 2, First Name 2, and Last Name 2. Then, when you upload the CSV file to your Contacts dashboard, you'll do an initial upload for the 1 fields, then a second upload for the 2 fields. On the page where you assign contact fields, simply exclude the 1 and 2 fields respective to which upload you're doing.

[mitchelll121]

I think I understand your response except that if email is the unique contact and not the address, when a home is sold, it means I would now have both the old owners and new owners email addresses when I only want the new owners. That would cause a manual effort to remove the old owner. 

[William_A]

That is correct. So in that regard, you may need to do a search for physical addresses in the contacts dashboard to see any "duplicates," and delete the outdated contact accordingly.

[mitchelll121]

Thanks, that is helpful. 

[PasadenaCove]

Hi William - Can you help me understand this more, please?  I have multiple email addresses for a single contact, too.  I don't understand your comment about excluding fields 1 and 2 and the uploads.  Thanks

Chuck

[William_A]

Hello @PasadenaCove , The 1 and 2 fields bit was referring to mitchelll121 's original post. 

Ultimately, you're going to need to have your contacts (unique email addresses) separated out for the upload. Even if you have several "duplicates" based on physical address, name, etc., it's the unique email addresses that ultimately determine a unique contact for sending, reporting, billing, etc.

You can technically have a single contact with multiple other email addresses listed as custom fields, but only the address listed for a contact's official Email Address field will be available for sending to.