Make large contact lists easier to handle

Keep a well-organized contact list of 10,000 contacts or more that's easy to maintain and segment

Large contact lists with over 10,000 email addresses can feel challenging to import, organize, and maintain. Here are some tips that can help you save time and get better marketing results:

• Import a large list
• Segment a large list
• Maintain a large list

Important: If this is your first time adding contacts to your account, please review our permission policy before importing your contacts.

Import a large list

A spreadsheet full of contacts holds a ton of information! The biggest effort always comes when you're importing contacts, and being prepared will save you time and frustration.

• Prevent file import errors - Before you import your list into Constant Contact, take a little time to make sure that your file is a compatible file type, the data is formatted and organized, and the column headings are recognizable by Constant Contact.
• Split your list into separate spreadsheets - To be imported into Constant Contact, a file can't have more than 500,000 rows of data and can't be larger than 25MB. If you have more than 500,000 contacts, you'll want to split your spreadsheet into several spreadsheets before importing.

Segment a large list

Getting the right content in front of the right contacts at the right time helps improve your open and engagement rates! It's hard to keep track of individual contacts on your own, but with our segmentation tools, you can scan your entire list for a specific subset of contacts and create a list from the results. The best part is that once you've created a segment, it's refreshed before you send an email to it, so you always know you're sending to the most current group of contacts who meet your criteria.

• Find your most engaged or least engaged contacts and create a segment - Want to try and re-engage your least engaged contacts, or maybe reward your most engaged contacts? You can find those contacts through segmentation! Once you find them, you can send them targeted content based on their engagement level.
• Create a segment from contact information or contact activity - You can combine all sorts of different criteria to find the right contacts for your message. 
• Send targeted emails to the segment - Once you've created a segment, you can send an email directly to the segment, or add all the contacts in the segment to a list, and then send an email to the list.

The data shows: When you send shorter emails with personalized content and a clear call to action to a defined segment of your list, your open and click rates improve.

Maintain a large list

Once your contacts are in your account, the challenge is to keep your list current. Large lists have lots of contacts, but we have a few tools to help you weed out the contacts who are bringing your open and engagement rates down:

• Enable confirmed opt-in - Making sure that the contacts who join your list actually want to receive emails from you helps prevent bounced emails and increases the likelihood that your contacts will open and engage with your emails. Our Confirmed Opt-in feature requires anyone who signs up for your contact list through one of our sign-up tools to click a link in an email to confirm they want to be on your list. If they don't respond to the email, they don't get added to your list.
• Manage your bounces - Keep your eye on who isn't getting your emails and remove them from your list. Removing bounced emails not only helps to improve your open rate, but also your email deliverability, keeping your emails out of the spam folder!
• Let your contacts keep their own contact record up-to-date - Take some time to customize the "Update Profile" Form and "Update Profile" Email. The "Update Profile" link is in the footer of every Constant Contact email. When your contact clicks it, they receive an email with a link to update their contact information and choose the lists they want to be part of.

Questions?