Manage contacts

Article
05/15/2018
10 minutes to read

Applies To: Dynamics Marketing

Important

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing has been discontinued and is no longer available. All customer data related to this product has been permanently deleted from all Microsoft servers and is no longer available for extraction. This documentation is being provided for historical purposes only.

Contacts in Microsoft Dynamics Marketing are records that represent people.

Types of contacts

Dynamics Marketing supports the following types of contacts:

Staff contacts: These are people who work for the company that has licensed Dynamics Marketing (also known as the site company), and are typically employees of the site company. Some staff contacts might be licensed users of Dynamics Marketing, while others are included to provide contact details of colleagues. Some contact details for licensed users (name, email, user name, and more) are synchronized from Office 365, and appear as read-only values in Dynamics Marketing.
Client contacts: These are contacts that the site company provides services to. Client contacts typically work for a client company that is also stored in the Dynamics Marketing database.
Vendor contacts: These contacts provide services to the site company, or to client companies. Vendor contacts typically work for a vendor company that is also in the Dynamics Marketing database.
Marketing contacts: These contacts are targeted by marketing campaigns and other initiatives, and might be associated with a marketing company that is also in the Dynamics Marketing database.

Important

Each contact type has a matching company type (staff, client, vendor, and marketing). It's a good idea to match the contact and company type when you associate a company with a contact, because this often represents an employer/employee relationships. Nothing prevents you from creating company/contact associations across types, so be careful when you make company assignments for contacts. In particular, be careful with marketing contacts, because these have both a standard company (such as an employer, which is what we are referring to in this note) and a belongs-to company, which is the company that owns the contact as a potential sales lead. The belongs-to company is always the site company or a client company.

Viewing, managing, and working with contacts

You'll view, create, edit, delete, and interact with contacts by using Contact list and maintenance pages. Depending on which type of contact you want to work with, go to one of the following:

To work with the staff contacts, go to Settings > My Company > Staff.
To work with client contacts, go to Marketing Execution > Clients > Client Contacts.
To work with vendor contacts, go to Marketing Execution > Vendors > Vendor Contacts.
To work with marketing contacts, go to Marketing Execution > Marketing Database > Marketing Contacts.

Use the list page for the type of contact you select to sort, search, filter, add, and remove contacts (see Learn how to work and get around in Microsoft Dynamics Marketing).

Contact maintenance page

The Contact maintenance page opens when you click a contact name or contact label on a Contact list page, or from any page where you see contact names.

Basic contact information

At the top of the Contacts maintenance page you'll see and be able to edit basic contact details, which vary by contact type. The following settings are available.

Field	Description
Active	Select this check box to activate the current record; clear it to deactivate the record. Active records are always shown on the list page and are also available for use in other parts of Dynamics Marketing. Inactive records are usually hidden in the list view and aren’t available elsewhere. When you delete a record on the list page, it’s not actually deleted, just set to inactive. On the list page, you can toggle to show or hide inactive records in the list.
Group	Select the check box for the appropriate contact type (staff, client, vendor, or marketing). This determines where the contact appears, and can also affect functionality associated with the contact. You can assign a contact to more than one group, but typically you will pick just one, and for marketing contacts you can only pick one group. You can also change group assignments at any time, but for marketing contacts, once you move a contact out of the marketing group, you can't move it back in again.
Belongs To	This field is specific to and required for marketing contacts. Use this to identify the client or site company who owns this contact as a lead for targeting campaigns, marketing emails, etc. Often, this will be your site company, but if your company is an agency, then you may be working with marketing contacts and companies on behalf of a client company who has supplied you with their own list of leads that you should not share with other clients. Use this setting to protect marketing leads on behalf of their owners. You can only change this value when you create a new contact—after that it's read-only.
Role	Use this drop-down list to associate a role with the contact, such as a profession or role within a team. This is for information purposes only. Your admin can customize the drop-down list values as needed for your organization; see Create custom drop-down values and folders for details. Important This role has nothing to do with user roles, which apply only to licensed Dynamics Marketing users and establish access permissions within the system (see also Work with user accounts and staff contacts).
Salutation and Title	Enter these values as appropriate for your contact. You might use these when you address emails and other communications. Your admin can customize theSalutation drop-down list values as needed for your organization (see Create custom drop-down values and folders).
Name, Company, and Display As	Use the fields in the Name area to provide your contact's full name. Use the Company Type-ahead field to associate the contact with a company already in your database. Usually the company you assign will be of the same type as the contact (for example a client contact or client company), and typically indicates the company where the contact works. A default value for the Display As field is generated automatically based on the name, company, and/or email information you enter. You can make this a custom value if you want. Select the arrow by this field to revert a custom value to a value based on the default format. For information about choosing the default format for your site (see Configure site settings).
Phone, Mobile, Email, and Address	Enter contact details in these fields as needed. Note that a small button is displayed next to phone numbers and email addresses that have already been filled in; click these buttons to initiate a call or email. Most of the drop-down lists in this area can be customized as needed for your organization (see Create custom drop-down values and folders).

Note

Licensed Dynamics Marketing users have a staff contact record that was created by and is synchronized with Office 365. For these contacts, all synchronized fields (including name, email, user name, and possibly more) will be read-only; writable fields are not synchronized and are used exclusively within Dynamics Marketing. Use your Office 365 portal to edit synchronized fields.

Upload a contact image

To upload a picture or image for a contact, click the Upload button located to the right of the current contact photo/avatar, and then use the browse window to select an image file to upload.

Research contacts using Bing, Facebook, and LinkedIn

Find out more about a contact by clicking one of the buttons located to the right of the contact's photo/avatar.

As with most maintenance pages, Contact maintenance pages include several related-information tabs at the bottom of the page, below the dotted line. Use the drop-down list just below the line to switch between tabs, and use the tabs to view and/or create records that are related to the current contact. In most cases, the views you see here will match those found in the “main” area for that record type (for example, tasks), but the records you see will be filtered to include only those that are associated with the current contact.

For more information about a tab, refer to the online Help topic that matches that tab’s name (tasks, files, invoices, etc.). The following sections give some extra information about tabs that are either unique or especially important for contacts.

Alerts tab

The Alerts tab shows alerts that are configured for a selected contact. Alerts let users know when an important marketing contact has engaged with a marketing initiative (such as registered for an event) or when an important internal event has occurred (like a new task being assigned). Most users will set their own alerts in their preference settings, but administrators, managers, or teammates might assign alerts for other contacts using the settings here. See Work with alerts for more information.

Details tab

The Details tab is where you'll view or add more details for a selected contact. Some information on this tab is grouped into areas like Alt Addresses, Financial, Scheduling, and External Entity Fields. This tab also includes any custom contact fields you have added (see Create custom contact fields for market segmentation).

Most of the settings here are for information only, but these provide specific functionality:

Do Not Email: Select this check box if the contact has asked not to receive marketing email messages (or has not fully opted in). Dynamics Marketing won't send email marketing messages to contacts who have this check box selected, even if they are included on a send list. This feature helps ensure that you respect the privacy and preferences of your contacts. If a contact submits a subscription center form with the Remove me from all mailing lists check box selected, then the Do Not Email check box is selected automatically in that person's contact record (More information: Create a subscription center). Also, if you’re using double opt-in for new contacts signing up through a landing page, then this check box is selected automatically when the contact is created (after the initial opt-in), and then cleared when the contact confirms (More information: Set up the double opt-in system). You can also set this manually if you need to set a contact's opt-in/opt-out preference that you received through another channel (for example when you were working offline).
Prefill Landing Pages: Select this check box if the contact has opted in for the prefill feature, which enables landing pages to show prefilled values from the contact record rather than showing an empty form. Landing pages set to use this feature always include a check box that contacts can use to clear or set the prefill option, so the state of the checkbox should already indicate your contact's preference. You can also set this manually if you need to set a contact's opt-in/opt-out preference that you received through another channel (for example when you were working offline). More information: Create landing pages that include prefilled values for returning contacts
Contact Permission: This read-only text only shows a value if you are using the outgoing email filter, which requires special programming and integration with an external system to enable and use. When enabled, this value indicates the current contact’s permission status for various email topics. More information: Configure email marketing and marketing automation options
Message Format: This setting affects the format (HTML or plain text) of all emails sent to the contact.

The Details tab also includes any custom contact fields you have created for the company this contact belongs to. More information: Create custom contact fields for market segmentation

Email Opt-In tab

The Email Opt-In tab shows a record of all opt-in/opt-out requests that the current contact has made. This includes a record of all double-opt-in interactions for marketing contacts that belong to companies that require double opt-in. This record can sometimes be important for demonstrating compliance with local email marketing laws.