Contact Types
- 21 Oct 2024
- 6 Minutes to read
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Contact Types
- Updated on 21 Oct 2024
- 6 Minutes to read
- Print
- DarkLight
- PDF
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Contact Type allows you to create custom tags to segment your customers into different groups. These groups can be utilized in various features such as Page Security, Product Security, Allocations, List Builder, Promotions, and Sending Email Documents. Contacts can also be assigned to a Contact Type through a mass Excel file import (Customer Importer). The following information will assist you in working with contact types:
Creating A Contact Type
You can create multiple Contact Types to help segment your customer database into smaller groups. The following information will assist you in creating contact types:
1. Navigate to Contacts > Contact Types section of the Vin65 Admin Panel.
2. Click the green Add a Contact Type button on the right of the Contact Types management section.
3. Enter the name of the Contact Type as well as any of the other settings available. Please note there is a 32-character limit for names.
4. Click Save to save the Contact Type.
FIELD DEFINITIONS:
| Contact Type | The name of your Contact Type. Contact Types marked as IsPublic will display the type name to customers on your website on the Create Account member page. |
|---|---|
| Is Public | Allows your customers to choose one or more Contact Types, such as Newsletter, when a user signs up for an account on the Create Account member page. Most Contact Types are for internal use to help target groups of contacts. For this reason, 'Is Public' is not selected by default. |
| Is Deletable | Controls whether a Contact Type can be deleted or not. If Is Deletable is checked off, the Contact Type can be deleted. This box must be checked before a Contact Type can be deleted. Important Contact Types, such as Newsletters or Unsubscribes, should not be marked Deletable. |
Adding Contacts to a Contact Type
There are two general methods to place a single contact or groups of contacts into a Contact Type; manually or through the Customer Importer.
Manually
Contacts can be manually added or removed from a Contact Type through their contact card/record. Please follow these steps:
1. Navigate to Contacts > Contacts section to access your customer database.
2. Look up the specific customer record you want to change by manually skimming the list or using search filters.
3. Open the specific contact's customer card/record and navigate to the Types tab.
4. The Types tab will show your contact's associated types. You may check off or uncheck appropriate boxes to add the customer into or remove them from Contact Types.
Mass Import
The Customer Importer tool can add several contacts to a Contact Type. If you are updating existing contact records, often all you will need to do is place email addresses in the Email column of the spreadsheet and add your Contact Type name into the ContactType column. This will allow the system to match up customers to Contact Types during the import. If the customers do not already exist in your database, you may want to fill in more customer information(s) on the spreadsheet, as the system will help you create a brand new customer record!
The Customer Importer only adds contacts to Contact Types; it does not remove existing Contact Types. The importer is designed only to add and will never remove information. The import works similarly to opening several contact records and checking the appropriate boxes for Contact Types.
Managing Contact Types
The main Contact Types section allows you to review and manage your Contact Types. To view a record count of how many members are in each Contact Type, you will want to check the List Builder section of the Vin65 AdminPanel and look for the list(s) that matches the name of your Contact Type.
Contact types viewed in the List Builder tool will always include an asterisk (*) at the end of their name.
1. You can search for a Contact Type by name using the search bar at the top of the Contact Types page. To the right of the page, you will also see the most recent additions and edits made to your Contact Types.
2. To delete a Contact Type, you must open the Contact Type you wish to delete and click the delete button in the lower-left-hand corner of the Contact Type window.
Only Contact Types that are marked as Deletable can be removed. Deleting a Contact Type will not delete any customer records or other data - just the Contact Type. Deleting a Contact Type will affect any Allocations and List Builder lists.
Contact Type FAQs
How can I add a group of contacts to a contact type?
The list builder is able to build a list of contacts based on specific parameters, and includes the option to add the list generated to a contact type. Simply navigate to the list builder, create a new list, add the specifics of the people that you are looking for, and generate the list. From there, hit the Place Into Contact Type.
The list of people I must add does not fit the builder's parameters. How else can I add this group of people to a contact type?
The customer importer can be used instead of the list builder to batch add contacts to a contact type. It can be done by completing the following steps:
- Navigate to Settings > Import/Export > Customer Importer
- Click on and download the sample file
- In the sample file, fill in the email address column with the email addresses of all the clients you wish to add to the contact type.
- In the Contact Type column, fill in every box next to an email address with the Contact Type you wish to add that contact to. Feel free to ignore the rest of the columns at this point.
- Save the file, return to the Customer Importer
- Change the dropdown to Don't Overwrite Data
- Import the file that you have been working on!
At that point your contacts will now have their contact type appended to their customer profile.
Will adding a new Contact Type to a contact that has one already overwrite the old Contact type?
No. New Contact Types added to a customer that has one already will not remove the old Contact Type. It will append the contact type to any existing ones on the contact.
I can't delete my contact type, and I cannot change my contact type to "deletable." How can I get rid of my contact type?
If you have saved a contact type as a non-deletable contact type and need it removed, you will need developer priviledges to do so. Navigate to the Admin Users list by clicking Settings, select your name, and check the box "is Developer". Note this can only be done by Domain and Master Admins. With developer priviledges, you will be able to delete the contact types.
After adding developer rights, the admin will need to navigate back to the contact type that they would like to delete, click edit and mark the Is Deletable? check box and save the changes. After the changes have been saved, the option to delete should show on the page for that contact type.
Please Note: Once a contact type has been deleted, it will be wiped away from the system and from all contact records that it was assigned to.
Can my Contact Type automatically have new members added to it?
The only way that a contact type would be able to have new members automatically added to it would be if you tied the Contact Type to a Form. This can be done in the Form Builder within the form's general information header.
Otherwise, changes to a Contact Type must be done manually through the List Builder tool or the Customer Importer tool.
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