Manage recipient list

Mailing list management can be found under the menu item Recipients. Here you can manage all your mailing lists, update their content, view details about individual recipients including their complete history, search the lists and filter lists using queries.

Mailing list management

The recipient lists are divided under the following tabs:

• Active - the active tab lists mailing lists that were updated or used by campaign in the last calendar month.
• Unused - unused tab lists mailing lists that were not updated or used by a campaign in the past calendar month.
• Disabled - disabled tab lists mailing lists that were manually disabled (using Disable button, which is located in the row for each list). No campaign will be sent to disabled mailing list.
• All - all mailing lists available in the system.

Moving the mouse pointer to a line belonging to a particular campaign will display additional options for working with the list:

• Enable / Disable - clicking the Enable/Disable button enables or disables the respective mailing list. You can not send any campaign to a disabled mailing list.
• Delete - removes the mailnig list from the system. Deletion will be permanent and along with mailing list, some statistical & historical data of recipients will be removed depending on whether the recipients exist in other lists or not.

Creating a mailing list

A new list of recipients is created by clicking the button Add a new list. A form will appear in which you will fill in the name of the new recipient list (name of the mailing list is public and may show up in automatically generated UTM tags for Analytics) and optionally its more detailed description (which is only visible in the platform). After clicking on the button Save button the list will be created and individual recipients can be stored in it.

TIP!

Try to keep a limited amount of mailing lists and do not create a new list for each campaign. In most cases one mailing list will be enough. For example if you have 2 country sites, have two lists - one for each country.

Keep in mind that campaigns can be sent to multiple mailing lists as well as subset of a list matching a delivery capping condition.

Managing recipients

Add recipient

There are multiple ways to add recipients to mailing lists. It could be done automatically (recipient import), manually (inserting recipients one at a time), but the most recommended method to automate mailing list recipient data updates is using data sources.

Mailkit can also generate subscribe forms that you can place on your website to allow visitors to sign up for your newsletters. In such case your signup process will be completely handled by Mailkit - from collecting the address, sending a confirmation email, tracking cofirmation and consent records to adding confirmed recipients to the lists.

Manually adding recipients

First, you need to open the list of recipients to which the new recipient is to be entered - either by clicking on its name or the Recipients button in the appropriate row for a specific list. When the recipients list is opened, the Add recipient button is clicked and a form will be displayed to fill in the details of the recipient.

This form contains all the information that may be available to the recipient on the system. These include personal information (such as name and gender), contact information (such as email and phone), address and up to 25 custom fields, which allow you to store all relevant information about the recipient to power your personalization and targeting.

The names of these custom fields can be changed. You can change the custom field name in any recipient detail window by clicking on the field title. Change of the custom field name will affect the whole mailing list.

The custom field names will be automatically preset from the heading name when importing recipients from data source or from a column title in case of importing from a CSV/XLS file.

Keep in mind that setting your own names for custom fields can help you find the right data not only in the list itself but when using advanced features like delivery capping. In case you will be using custom fields within content, templates and conditions, you will still have to refer to these fields using their custom field number, eg. [CUSTOM1] or recipient. CUSTOM1.

Recipient status

Mailkit distinguishes 5 status types of a recipient.

• unknown - the default status of the recipient in the mailing list. This state means that there is no single verified information about the existence of this recipient. Either no campaign has yet been sent or the recipient did not read it or click on any links.
• active - recipient with an active status has a verified existence. The recipient either received an email and the hidden tracking image was displayed in his browser to provide proof of his existence or clicked on a link in the email received.
• unsubscribed - the recipient has unsubscribed from the mailing using a link in email, marked email as spam or other method of unsubscribe has been used. No future campaign will be sent unless it would be a transactional message.
• temporarily unavailable - recipients with this status could not receive a message because their mailbox is temporarily out of service (but exists). Most common case reason for this status is a full mailbox. If the recipient is temporarily unavailable three times in succession, it will become permanently unavailable.
• permanently unavailable - the recipient's mailbox is permanently out of service (does not exist). Mailkit no longer attempts to send any further messages to these addresses.

Recipient history

Cliking the  icon in the recipient's row will display a complete recipient history for the last calendar year - information about all sent campaigns, their respective subject lines and content and the recipient's responses - whethere the recipient opened the campaign, clicked links, type of user agent used, etc.

Created: date of recipient record creation.

Last update: last time the recipient record has been updated (record can be updated using a data source, import, manual editing or by recipient's action in an email).

Consent date: date a consent has been recorded (if any).

Consent source:

• N/A - consent not available
• Subscribe - consent recorded via an API function mailkit.mailinglist.adduser
• Subscribe (form) - consent recorded using standard Subscribe form.
• Revalidate (form) - an unsubscribed recipient resubscribed using Subscribe form.
• Link in mail - consent has been registered through a confirmation link in mail by a CONFIRM_URL function.
• API revalidate - an unsubscribed recipient resubscribed using mailkit.email.revalidate or mailkit.email.adduser.
• API 3rd party - consent has been recorded by a 3rd party and passed on using the mailkit.mailinglist.adduser function.

Last sent: date of last delivery to recipient.

Status: current recipient status.