Learn the basics of the contacts section in WolfPack

Central to the world of marketing automation lies the pivotal role of contacts. The depth of information you can gather and synthesize directly correlates with your understanding of your contacts' communication preferences.

Within WolfPack Advising, there have been valuable enhancements to how you oversee and organize your contact data. This comprehensive guide is designed to take you through the fundamental aspects of contact management while shedding light on some of the latest features we've incorporated. This, in turn, will empower you to maintain a streamlined and efficient contact database

A contact within ActiveCampaign is primarily identified by their email address. While contacts may have additional associated information, an email address is a foundational requirement for contacts to exist in the CRM.

To include new contacts, navigate to the Contacts section. At the top row, you will find the choices to "Export," "Import," or "+ New Contact."

You have the flexibility to import a list of contacts, add individual contacts, or download a list of contacts based on your specified criteria.

To manually include a contact, simply click on the blue "add a contact" button. This action triggers the appearance of a modal window, enabling you to input the contact details manually.

Opting for the "Import" feature provides you with the flexibility to bring in your contacts through various methods, including utilizing a .CSV file, copying and pasting, or reviewing recent imports.

Furthermore, you can establish connections with various services that allow WolfPack CRM to seamlessly retrieve your contact data.

Moving on, you'll see a header. This table view facilitates various actions, such as selecting multiple contacts through checkboxes.

You can either engage in group editing or apply bulk edit actions. These actions encompass tasks like adding contacts to an email list, removing them from an email list, adding them to automation, removing them from automation, tagging or untagging them, and updating particular fields.

Then you can easily sort through different contacts by a tag, sort through contacts by email list, and sort by the status that they are subscribed to your email lists whether they're active, unconfirmed, unsubscribed, or bounced.

Finally, you can easily search through all of your contacts by searching for something like a phone number, email, or name in the search field.

Alternatively, you can access the Advanced Search option by clicking within the search box. This feature enables you to perform advanced searches on various criteria. You can perform advanced searches based on contact details or custom contact fields, like their birthday.

If you perform an export without entering any search criteria, the system will generate a CSV file containing your complete list of contacts.

However, when you conduct a search and then choose to export, only the contacts within the defined search segment will be included in the downloaded CSV file.

If we were to click into an individual contact, like the one shown here, you'd find a profile image imported from Gravatar as well as the contact's name. It also displays the associated email address and phone number. At times, you might also come across a social media icon that includes links to their respective social media platforms within this section of the contact's page.

Further down, you'll find a list of general contact fields, including name, last name, email, phone, account (company), job title, and birthday, along with any custom fields specific to this contact.

All these fields are editable, and you can input additional information as needed. Any custom fields, including form fields, are presented as distinct fields within a contact record, enabling you to input specific form data for that contact.

Going down to the bottom of a contact section, we can see tags, which are like labels or filters a way to label individual contacts, the email list they're subscribed to.

If we click into a particular email list, we can see when they unsubscribed or when they subscribed, unconfirmed, or bounced even the automation that they're currently in.

And if we click on a given automation, we can see where they are exactly within that given automation or just in them within that automation itself.

Then we can see any tasks that are given for the individual contact, and we can view completed tasks, or quickly add a task.

Towards the bottom of the page, you'll find a section that displays any contact notes, attached files, and a history of emails sent to the contact. If you wish to add a contact note or send an email directly to the contact, you can do so in this area located at the bottom right.

On the right-hand side, you'll find a section dedicated to displaying recent activities specific to the individual contact. This is similar to the dashboard overview, which shows recent activities for all contacts, but here, you're focusing solely on the recent activities of the selected contact. If you need to troubleshoot or gain insights into how the contact entered automation, their current status, or past events, this section provides a detailed record.

At the top, you can access information about any deals associated with the contact.

While we won't delve into the details of deals in this contact overview, you can find any deals linked to an individual contact in this tab.

Finally, if you want to send a campaign to an individual contact, you can do so by selecting one here and clicking the 'Send' button. Keep in mind that they need to be subscribed to an email list to receive a campaign email."

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Now, in the 'Contacts' section, you'll also find 'Accounts.' These accounts represent various companies or agencies that you engage with. If your marketing strategy involves business-to-business interactions, you'll list all the different businesses you're working with or targeting here. Think of accounts as similar to contacts, but they pertain to different companies.

For example, if we click on 'WolfPack Advising,' we can access all their general information and the custom fields specific to this account. You'll find details, notes, files, and emails related to this particular company. This includes when the account was created and last updated, the contacts linked with this company or account, any ongoing deals, and recent activities – much like you'd see for an individual contact. The key difference here is that this information pertains to the company as a whole, and you can have multiple contacts associated with a single company, whether it's two, five, or even ten.

Moving on, we come to the 'LIST' tab. Here, you can create a new email list by providing a name, list URL, and a brief description of the list.

The 'Name' is for your internal reference, the 'List URL' is essentially your website's address, and the 'Description' serves as a reminder for the context of why individuals are on the list, making it visible in emails and during the unsubscription process.

However, if you wish to see a list of all your email lists, including their creation dates, import contacts, or perform specific actions related to particular email lists, you can do so from this dropdown menu.

It's essential to understand that clicking on a specific email list will simply redirect me to the Contact tab, displaying the individual contacts categorized under that particular email list, as demonstrated earlier.