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Managing Contacts

Contacts are the people who receive your newsletters.

Find your contacts

Open a project and select Contacts in the sidebar.

• The buttons along the top filter by status, with a count on each: All, Active, Pending, Unsubscribed, Bounced, Complained.
• The search box finds contacts by email, name, or external ID.
• Group shows only the people in one group. Choose All groups to see everyone again.
• The Groups column shows the groups each person is in (the first three, then "+N more").
• The list shows 25 contacts at a time; use Previous and Next to move through it.
• Select an email address to open that contact.

Work with many contacts at once

Tick the box next to each person you want, or the box in the header to pick everyone on the page. A bar appears with the number selected:

1. Choose a group, or New group… and type a name.
2. Select Add to group or Remove from group. Removing works with existing groups only.

Postak then says how many people were added or removed, and how many were already in the group.

To act on more than one page, pick everyone on the page, then select Select all N contacts that match. This selects every contact that the current search, status, and group filter finds, up to 100,000 at a time. Clear selection starts over.

Contact statuses

Status	Meaning	Receives campaigns?
Active	Subscribed	Yes
Pending	Signed up, waiting to confirm	No
Unsubscribed	Opted out	No
Bounced	The address doesn't exist or permanently refuses mail (a "hard bounce")	No
Complained	The person marked one of your emails as spam	No

Bounced and Complained are set automatically when you send through Amazon SES and your administrator has turned on bounce and complaint notifications. Postak stops emailing these addresses to protect your sender reputation. Temporary problems, such as a full mailbox, don't change the status.

A contact's page

A contact's page shows:

• Details: status, name, external ID, and when they were added and subscribed.
• Custom data: extra fields such as a plan or city.
• Groups: the groups they're in. Select a group's name to open it, or the × next to it to take them out. To add them to a group, choose one in Add to a group (or New group… and a name) and select Add to group.
• Matches segments: the segments whose rules they match right now. Segments only include active contacts, so someone who is pending, unsubscribed, bounced, or complained matches none.
• Campaigns received: each campaign sent to them and what happened (sent, opened, clicked, bounced, and so on).
• Activity: opens, clicks, unsubscribes, bounces, and complaints, newest first.

From here you can Edit, Unsubscribe (active contacts), or Delete the contact. Deleting can't be undone; their campaign statistics are kept.

Add or edit a contact

Select New contact, or Edit on a contact's page, and fill in:

• Email (required), First name, Last name.
• Custom data: a JSON object, for example {"plan": "pro", "city": "Columbia"}. Field names use letters, numbers, and underscores. Segments can filter on these fields.
• External ID: another system's ID for this person (for example from a CRM). Imports can then update them even if their email changes. Each external ID can belong to one contact only.

New contacts are Active. A contact's status can't be edited here: people opt out through the unsubscribe link, and come back by signing up again.

Import a list

Select Import on the Contacts page.

1. Prepare a CSV file. The first row holds column names: email is required; first_name, last_name, external_id, and groups are optional; any other column becomes a custom field. Select Download the template for an example, and follow the steps for Excel, LibreOffice, or Google Sheets on the page.
2. Select Select a file and choose your CSV file (up to 10 MB).
3. Check the table that shows how each column will be used. Columns named status, created_at, or subscribed_at (as in a Postak export) are not imported.
4. Choose whether to Update contacts that already exist. Contacts are matched by external ID first, then by email. When this is off, existing contacts are left unchanged.
5. Choose the group options (see below), if you use groups.
6. Select Import.

When the import finishes, Postak shows how many contacts were added, updated, left unchanged, and rejected, and any groups it created or skipped. Rejected rows are listed with the reason (for example "Not a valid email address"), and you can download them, fix them, and import them again.

Good to know:

• An import never changes anyone's status. People who unsubscribed, bounced, or complained stay that way.
• New contacts are added as Active, so only import people who agreed to hear from you.

Groups in a CSV file

There are two ways to put imported people in groups, and you can use both:

• A groups column (or group) gives each person's groups. Separate several names with |, for example Providers|Board. An empty cell means no groups for that row.
• Add everyone in this file (new and existing contacts) to these groups: tick up to 20 groups. Every valid row joins them, including people who were already on your list and rows that were left unchanged.

Create groups that don't exist yet is on by default. When it's off, group names from the file that don't exist are skipped and listed after the import.

An import only ever adds people to groups. It never takes anyone out of a group, so remove people on the Contacts page or the group's page instead.

If you used a column named groups or group for a custom field before, rename it: those names are now read as group names.

Export contacts

Select Export CSV on the Contacts page. The file contains the contacts shown by the current search, status, and group filter, with a groups column (names separated by |) and one column per custom field, so it can be edited and imported again. It opens in Excel, LibreOffice, and Google Sheets.

Unsubscribe a contact

Open the contact and select Unsubscribe.

Recipients can also unsubscribe themselves. Every email Postak sends includes an unsubscribe link. Postak adds one at the bottom if your template or text doesn't have one, and supports the Unsubscribe button that Gmail, Outlook, and other mail apps show next to the sender. Clicking the link opens a page with an Unsubscribe button, so automated link scanners can't unsubscribe people by accident.

Sign-up forms

People can subscribe themselves through a sign-up form. With double opt-in (recommended), new subscribers first appear as Pending and become Active after they confirm by email. See Sign-up Forms.