Contact Methods

Overview

A Contact appears in one List in your system. It represents one instance of an individual, and it has a unique Contact ID within its List. Various Field settings define types and states of Contacts, such as Subscriber/Unsubscriber, and activated/deactivated.

Contact Terminology and Definitions

The following definitions explain the various terms used when discussing Contacts.

Duplicate

A Contact with the same Email or SMS Address as another Contact. Some methods do not perform their actions on duplicates, while others automatically or optionally do.

Subscriber

A Subscriber is a Contact who appears on one of your Lists and receives Messages. Contacts can subscribe through links in websites or Emails, or you can subscribe them.

Unsubscriber

An Unsubscriber has either selected to unsubscribe from one of your Lists, or you have unsubscribed them. You can either unsubscribe a Contact by its ID or by its Email. If you unsubscribe it by its Email using unsubscribeContact, all duplicates in the List are also unsubscribed, but if you unsubscribe it by ID using unsubscribeContactById, duplicates are not unsubscribed.

When a Contact is unsubscribed, its is_unsubscribed Field is set to 1, so it does not receive Messages. The Contact is also added to the Unsubscriber List (see the next definition).

Unsubscriber List

A List of Contact IDs that have been unsubscribed previously and are either still unsubscribed or have been resubscribed. When the system is uploading Contacts, you can set a flag indicating that it should not re-upload any Contacts on this List. Therefore, a secondary function of the Unsubscriber List is to prevent subscribed Contacts from being overwritten with modified information. (In other words, you can unsubscribe and immediately resubscribe a Contact so it will receive Messages sent to its List but it will not be re-uploaded by the system.)

Resubscribe

Resubscribing a Contact sets its is_unsubscribed Field back to 0 so the Contact receives Messages sent to the List again. However, resubscribing a Contact does not remove it from the Unsubscriber List. The only way to remove a Contact from the Unsubscriber List is through the user interface. :

Previously Unsubscribed

The term previously unsubscribed includes all Contacts on the Unsubscriber List, those who have been resubscribed and those who are still unsubscribed.

Activated

An activated Contact receives Messages from the system. Its is_active Field is set to 1.

Deactivated

A deactivated Contact does not receive Messages from the system; however; it is not unsubscribed and does not appear on the Unsubscriber List. When a Contact is deactivated, its is_active Field is set to 0.

The system automatically deactivates a Contact if Messages sent to it bounce 3 subsequent times because the mailbox does not exist or is disabled. However, you can deactivate a Contact at any time. One reason to deactivate a Contact is to avoid sending it a specific Message. To do this, deactivate the Contact, send the Message, and then reactivate the Contact.

Reactivate

Reactivating a Contact changes the value of its is_active Field from 0 to 1 and enables the Contact to receive Messages again.

Contact Methods

Contact methods enable you to perform a wide range of tasks, including adding, editing, and deleting Contacts, unsubscribing and deactivating Contacts, and searching for Contacts. Click on any of the Contact methods in the following List to go to its reference page.

• addContacts

  Adds one or more Contacts to a List.

• confirmContact

  Confirms the subscription of a specific Contact.

• countContacts

  Counts the number of Contacts in a List that match the search criteria.

• countPreviousUnsubscribers

  Counts the number of previous unsubscribers in the Unsubscriber List that match the search criteria.

• deactivateContact

  Deactivates a Contact in a List.

• deleteContacts

  Deletes one or more Contacts from a List.

• editContacts

  Edits one or more Contacts in a List.

• getContactById

  Returns details for a specific Contact.

• reactivateContact

  Reactivates a deactivated Contact in a List.

• resubscribeContact

  Resets the unsubscribe flag on a Contact.

• searchContacts

  Returns the Contacts in the List that match the search criteria.

• searchPreviousUnsubscribers

  Returns the Unsubscribers in the Unsubscriber List that match the search criteria.

• subscribeContact

  Subscribes a single Contact to a List.

• unsubscribeContact

  Unsubscribes an email address.

• unsubscribeContactById

  Unsubscribes a specific Contact from a List.