Ability to add a contact with no email address

[EddyM916]

It will not accept a new contact without an email, even if they are not subscribed to any list. Therefore, we are forced to enter a made-up email just to save the contact. But if say for example we use noemail@email.com, it will "update" the last contact that was entered with that email with the new contact's information. Which means we just lost a contact. Not only that, we track a lot of our customers by ZIP CODE, and never email those particular contacts, so in certain circumstances, an email is unnecessary requirement.

[CMPTA]

This is new and extremely annoying.  We MUST be able to add contacts without email addresses.   

Constant Contact, please stop making changes without consulting your customers!!!!!!  We use the service for many purposes and forcing us to make up email addresses to satisfy your new rules is not cool.  There is no good reason for you to add this requirement.  Back it off now!!!

[Beatriz_R]

Hello @EddyM916 and @CMPTA,

Thank you very much for the feedback, we truly appreciate any input.

In order to present the best experience within Constant Contact as it relates to Email Marketing activities, there's a need to simplify our Contacts platform to fit the story. By requiring email address for contacts added to the system, we're ensuring that only mailable contacts are being added moving forward.

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.
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 absolutely want to acknowledge that there are customers that have been adding contacts to the platform without email address with the intention of adding details over time, but the hope is that this requirement will help us continue to simplify so we can continue to deliver more performant and intuitive experiences in Contacts.

Please continue to provide any and all feedback and we will continue to keep you updated.

[Pacondolawyer]

We use CC as a way to capture contacts.  Sometimes, those contacts do not have an email or can't remember their email offhand, or are in the process of getting an updated email address.  We used to be able to put them (and their available data) into CC and use this (incomplete) record as a placeholder to come back to and update with the missing email.  The fact that a change was made to CC wherein we can no longer do this is counterintuitive, unproductive and, frankly, very frustrating to the end user managing contacts for a company.  Make CC a less frustrating tool to use by bringing back the old feature of not forcing people to have an email in order to complete a CC record.  Thank you for looking into this important matter.

[JohnD774]

Our organization signed on with Constant Contact because we could maintain a mixed database of postal-mail-only, email-only, and postal-mail-and-email contacts. Initially, we communicated with our members only by postal mail. However, we have been transitioning to where we now communicate with our members via email and via postal mail. Therefore, it is very important for us to continue to have a way to track postal-mail contacts. The feature of keeping postal-mail-only contacts in Constant Contact seems to have gone away. This could fundamentally change how we use Constant Contact and may preclude us from using Constant Contact going forward. I feel this should have been discussed with users before making this major change, especially since this was touted as a selling point for Constant Contact when we signed up. That said, we need a solution that will maintain our ability to track postal-mail-only contacts and to know if this solution will exist in Constant Contact. Thank you.

[JulieJ178]

Because you do have a third-party relationship with EZ Text. I would like to see a separate section that I can add contacts with just phone numbers. Shenia Ivey

[MichaelF104]

"Won't accept contact without an email address"

I am looking for an alternative email solution than CC.

If anyone knows of a email service that allows contacts without an email address, I know mail chimp does not. 

Thanks

[J.T6]

It is idiotic that I must have an email address to import a contact. How will I know who did not give me an email address or is sharing one or any of the several other reasons I can think of??

[BarbaraK185]

Seems like this is not getting resolved as it has been going on since 2016.

I volunteer for 2 organizations and both have the situations as all the others do when you have people without email addresses.

One organization is a Home Owner's Organization (HOA). We have peole with out email address but need to be logged in as we communicate with them in letter or phone call format.

The other organization is a Continuing Education over 50 Group. Again we have people with out email address but need to be logged in the database and we communicate with them by phone or letter.

My suggest is:

Since there is a need for this bypass that we have the capability to do so.

This way we can us the Tag program to keep them outside the email process and do our thing of calling and letter when an email goes out.

Also with the new texting colaboration with Eztexting we can have people with out email but mobile phone that we can communicate with via the Text program.

Can you please let me know what you think as I need to asnwer to 2 Board of Directors on this subject.

Thank you

Paul Hurst

256-541-4983

pnjhurst@knology.net Bradford Farms HOA

memebrshipc. LearningQUEST orginatzation 

256-541-4983

[mitchelll121]

I believe that for the Constant Contact product to be fully flexible and serve the needs of any uses, it would require a change in what constitutes a Contact. Today a contact is an email address. That is not always beneficial to all forms of group you may want to target communications to. I see you can create other fields such as name, address, phone # of contact, etc. but they are not functional as a contact list. 

Idea

If the database was set up by having a fictitious contact number rather than email (maybe customer ID followed by a sequential number) it frees the system from relying solely on email as a contact. All other fields (email, Name Address, phone number...) then become the equivalent of alternate access point for selection.

Example:

Let's say I wanted to target communications to a specific zip code or phone area code that I set up as additional fields. a query can select the contacts needed for that target group using those fields and then use the email to send the communications to those targeted for that communication.

Benefits:

• It saves the users of Constant Contact from trying to set up multiple list for different purposes. The query does that on demand.

• I gives and user of Constant Contact full flexibility of targeting any contact based on the additional fields created or just use the system as they do today.
  
  
• You can probably even sell it as a premium revenue generator.

Thanks for your consideration

Mitch Layne mitchelllayne@yahoo.com

[JimboL602519]

I have this same issue and need.