Marketing Cloud

Contacts: Overview (New)

You can organize and manage your contact database to enable more relevant messaging and significantly improve subscriber engagement rates. Effective contact management helps optimize email marketing ROI by providing the foundation for targeted campaigns, personalized communication, and better audience segmentation that typically leads to higher open rates and lower unsubscribe rates.

When properly structured with unique identifiers and custom fields, your contact system streamlines your workflow while ensuring data accuracy and compliance with privacy regulations. This enhanced organization enables you to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time, maximizing campaign effectiveness and building stronger customer relationships.

Contacts in Marketing Cloud are a group of customers who have subscribed to your mailing lists and receive your email campaigns, SMS notifications, feedback surveys, etc., at regular intervals.

Please Note: Help articles have been updated to reflect the new contact management process. If this hasn't been rolled out to your account yet, it will be in the coming weeks. See our Audience Management: Overview (Legacy) article to learn more.

Each contact is assigned a unique identifier (UID) that is distinct from every other contact registered in Marketing Cloud. This unique identifier is managed by Maropost and doesn’t need to be included in any calls or imports. Email and SMS addresses will also remain unique to a contact.

Contacts can be added to your Marketing Cloud account via seven methods: import, manual entry, FTP import, forms, API, carts, and integrations.

Maropost allows you to manage your contacts using lists and relational tables. You can use the following features to create and manage your contacts:

Creating a Contact: This section allows you to create and manage your contacts. A dedicated index page enables you to easily track every customer entry, and you can change a contact’s information with a few clicks.
Contact 360 Overview: This section allows you to view all the contact’s purchase and engagement metrics in one place. You can access a contact’s overview page from the dashboard or the contact list section.
Contact Tags: Tags are another way to categorize your contact information. Tags can be added or removed for each contact.
Custom Fields: Apart from some predefined fields, you can specify new characteristics/markers for unique contacts.
Brand Management: You can send brand-specific messages to contacts associated with a brand. This is a personalized form of marketing funnel that helps boost a business’s conversion rate.
Secure Lists: It’s an encryption list normally used in email suppression (such as a Do Not Mail (DNM) List).
Cleansing Rules: It removes inactive contacts and internet bots by setting up cleansing rules.

Contact Management:

Creating and Managing Contacts New - Comprehensive contact creation and management strategies
Contact Lists Overview New - Organize contacts into targeted lists

Contact Organization:

Custom Fields - Add custom data fields to contact profiles
Contact Tags - Tag contacts for better organization and targeting

Campaign Management:

Introduction to Segments - Create dynamic contact segments for targeted campaigns

Contact Management:

Creating and Managing Contacts New - Comprehensive contact creation and management strategies
Contact Lists Overview New - Organize contacts into targeted lists

Contact Organization:

Custom Fields - Add custom data fields to contact profiles
Contact Tags - Tag contacts for better organization and targeting

Campaign Management:

Introduction to Segments - Create dynamic contact segments for targeted campaigns

Contact Management:

Creating and Managing Contacts New - Comprehensive contact creation and management strategies
Contact Lists Overview New - Organize contacts into targeted lists

Contact Organization:

Custom Fields - Add custom data fields to contact profiles
Contact Tags - Tag contacts for better organization and targeting

Campaign Management:

Introduction to Segments - Create dynamic contact segments for targeted campaigns