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Contacts

A contact is a person you wish to send SMSes to.

Fields​

Fields let you store information about your contacts. There are two types of fields:

The five default fields are:

  • cell
  • firstname
  • lastname
  • idnumber
  • email
note

The only field a contact has to have is the cell field. This holds their contact number that will be used to SMS them. The format is flexible. The following cell numbers are all valid, and will be normalised to Msisdn format when uploaded:

  • 0112345678
  • 011 234 5678
  • 27112345678
  • +27112345678

You can also add custom data to a contact using custom fields. Each contact can have up to 10 custom fields attached.

Uploading Contacts​

You can upload contacts to Dripcel using a CSV or Excel file, where each row is a contact. The headings in your CSV/Excel file can be whatever you want, as you can map them to the Dripcel fields when uploading.

  1. Choose your CSV/Excel file
  2. Map the fields in your file to the fields in Dripcel. The only required field is cell.
  3. Choose Country, Tags and Welcome Send. Country is used to format the cell numbers. Tags are used to group contacts and recommended to help you organise your contacts.
  4. Create new contacts.
info

As the file is being imported, Dripcel will avoid creating duplicate contacts using the cell field. In other words, there can only be one contact with a given cell number.

Do Not Contact List or Dedupe​

A Do Not Contact list or Dedupe is a way to prevent a specific campaign from sending to the same contact multiple times.

How to upload a Do Not Contact list:

  1. Create a CSV/Excel file where each row is a contact.
  2. There are 2 fields allowed, only one is necessary for each row:
    • cell - Cell phone number of the contact.
    • idnumber - ID number of the contact.
  3. Select the campaign that these contacts should be added to the Do Not Contact list for.

After the upload, those contacts will never be sent to for the given campaign again.

A valid example showing 2 Do Not Contacts, one with cell, and one with idnumber:

DNC List.csv
cell      , idnumber
0112345678,
          , 9901125075089

The search page lets you search for contacts based on various criteria. The following options are available when searching for contacts:

  • Include Tags: Match contacts that have a particular tag/s.
  • Exclude Tags: Exclude contacts that have a particular tag/s.
  • Deduped Campaigns: Search contacts that have been deduped against a campaign.
  • Reachability Window: Search contacts who have been validated in the last x number of days.
  • Last sent: Filter by the date the contact was last sent an SMS from any source.
  • Segments/Conditions: Search contacts that match a particular segment.

Search Functions​

You can perform the following actions on your search results:

  • Clear your search.
  • Download your searched contacts.
  • Bulk Delete all matching contacts.
  • Count: shows the number of contacts you have searched for.
  • Save your search by naming it and clicking on the "Save Search" button

Actions​

There are various actions that you can take on your contacts.

  • View/Edit Contact: You can view/edit the contact's information.
  • Delete Contact: Remove the contact from your database.

Validation​

Validation of a contact's cell number refers to the process of checking whether the number is reachable. In other words, will an SMS sent to this number be delivered or not.

Dripcel’s validation happens automatically based on the sends you run. When you send a batch of SMSs, Dripcel will automatically validate the cell phone numbers of those contacts based on the delivery status of the SMSs sent to them. If the SMS is delivered, the contact is marked as reachable. If the SMS is not delivered, the contact is marked as unreachable.

You can then leverage this data using the campaign reachable window feature, to narrow down your campaign sends to only contacts who you know are reachable.