Discover the different ways that contacts can be created in your Privy account.
A contact refers to an individual whose engagement with your business has led to the establishment of a profile in your Privy account. A contact’s profile contains useful data regarding whether or not a contact opted into your marketing, engagement activity, and shopping activity which can aid you in building Custom Segments and crafting personalized messaging.
Besides signing up via a Privy display, there are a few different ways that Contacts can be created in Privy:
During an import via Spreadsheet
During an import via Linked Account
Manually adding a contact via the Contacts dashboard
During the checkout process
(Shopify + Weebly stores)
Before you upload a contacts file, you must have your data structured appropriately. An example file is available for download here. Please ensure your import meets the following criteria:
Here’s an example of how the format should appear in your file:
Once your file is ready, please also note that:
To upload your properly formatted contacts file:
If you are importing both Emails and SMS Numbers, start by importing email contacts subscribed to your marketing list first, followed by a second import of SMS numbers consented to SMS marketing. You should still include the ‘email’ field in your SMS Import to map both marketing channels to a single contact.
After you’ve submitted the import, your contacts will initially appear in your account with an “unset: non mailable” status. These contacts will transition to a “mailable” or “textable” status following a review by the Privy Compliance Team. The review process is carried out during our business hours, which are from 9 AM to 5 PM EST, Monday through Friday. For imports initiated outside of these hours, approval will typically occur on the following business day.
Once the import undergoes review, and if it gets approved, you will receive a confirmation email, and your contacts will become mailable or textable. In case our compliance team requires additional information before approving the import, they will reach out to you with further questions. Please keep in mind that the duration of this process may vary depending on the size of the import file. You can check the review status of the import in the Import section of your account’s Business Settings.
Note: Privy will not approve purchased lists or mailing lists that contain non-permission-based contacts. If an import is rejected, you will receive an email from the Compliance Team, and the import will have a Rejected status in the Import section of your account’s Business Settings.
Some integrations, such as Shopify, allow you to import contacts directly into Privy from your dashboard. Before proceeding, make sure that you’ve already set up your integration in your account.
To check if one of your linked accounts supports this functionality:
You can check the status of your imports at any time via your Email Imports page.
The contact’s profile is created immediately and should be available after a page refresh. Select the profile to input additional information or unsubscribe the contact from future communications.
For importing extensive lists, we strongly recommend using our CSV import option. This is the ideal choice when bringing in numerous contacts, as it allows our Compliance team to review larger imports and helps in preserving the health of your contact list.
A previously unsubscribed contact cannot be resubscribed via these steps. While mailable is the default state of new contacts, an error message will appear when attempting to apply the subscribed status to an unsubscribed contact. Instead, the contact will remain unsubscribed until they opt back in via your checkout process or an onsite display with the same email address.
The Shopify, Shopify Plus, and Weebly integrations automatically create or update contacts in Privy when a customer’s email address is collected during your store’s checkout process. The email address used during checkout is captured in Privy as an ‘order’ and is used to generate or update a contact’s profile. An address is captured when the customer has either:
What if an existing contact opts in during the checkout process?
Deduplication: Privy will not create any duplicate contacts — the existing contact profile will be updated, and new order activity will be added to the existing profile.
Email permission status: If a contact checks the subscribe box as part of the order process, they will be marked as mailable unless they previously became ineligible due to hard bounces or by marking your emails as spam. If a contact does not check the box, their eligibility within Privy will remain unchanged. If the provided address is associated with a previously deleted profile, a new profile will be created using the contact’s last known eligibility state.
What if a new contact places an order without accepting email marketing?
New contacts who provide their email address without selecting the subscribe option will be included in your contact list with an “unset-non mailable” status. This designation indicates that the contact hasn’t made a clear choice to opt in or opt out of receiving emails. They will not be eligible to receive emails until they explicitly opt in during a subsequent sign up or order.
In Privy, we encourage the practice of maintaining list hygiene to ensure that you engage with your most active contacts. However, we advise caution when it comes to removing contacts. To prevent potential billing and compliance problems, please exercise care by only deleting contacts that you have no intention of re-adding, those that exhibit malicious behavior, or those who are no longer actively engaged. This approach helps maintain the health of your email list.
Before removing contacts, consider referencing the following guides to better understand healthy list cleaning practices:
Follow this guide on safely removing cold or uninterested contacts from your list.
Got bots? It happens. Follow this guide to learn how to identify bot email addresses and the most effective ways to remove them from your list.
If you’ve identified a large number of contacts that you’d like to unsubscribe from Privy, follow this guide on how to import the CSV as unsubscribed.
To delete a large amount of Contacts and all their data within Privy:
Next, expand the “with # contacts” menu on the upper right side of your Contacts table and select the Delete option on the dropdown.
To delete individual contacts in Privy:
Discover the different ways that contacts can be created in your Privy account.
A contact refers to an individual whose engagement with your business has led to the establishment of a profile in your Privy account. A contact’s profile contains useful data regarding whether or not a contact opted into your marketing, engagement activity, and shopping activity which can aid you in building Custom Segments and crafting personalized messaging.
Besides signing up via a Privy display, there are a few different ways that Contacts can be created in Privy:
During an import via Spreadsheet
During an import via Linked Account
Manually adding a contact via the Contacts dashboard
During the checkout process
(Shopify + Weebly stores)
Before you upload a contacts file, you must have your data structured appropriately. An example file is available for download here. Please ensure your import meets the following criteria:
Here’s an example of how the format should appear in your file:
Once your file is ready, please also note that:
To upload your properly formatted contacts file:
If you are importing both Emails and SMS Numbers, start by importing email contacts subscribed to your marketing list first, followed by a second import of SMS numbers consented to SMS marketing. You should still include the ‘email’ field in your SMS Import to map both marketing channels to a single contact.
After you’ve submitted the import, your contacts will initially appear in your account with an “unset: non mailable” status. These contacts will transition to a “mailable” or “textable” status following a review by the Privy Compliance Team. The review process is carried out during our business hours, which are from 9 AM to 5 PM EST, Monday through Friday. For imports initiated outside of these hours, approval will typically occur on the following business day.
Once the import undergoes review, and if it gets approved, you will receive a confirmation email, and your contacts will become mailable or textable. In case our compliance team requires additional information before approving the import, they will reach out to you with further questions. Please keep in mind that the duration of this process may vary depending on the size of the import file. You can check the review status of the import in the Import section of your account’s Business Settings.
Note: Privy will not approve purchased lists or mailing lists that contain non-permission-based contacts. If an import is rejected, you will receive an email from the Compliance Team, and the import will have a Rejected status in the Import section of your account’s Business Settings.
Some integrations, such as Shopify, allow you to import contacts directly into Privy from your dashboard. Before proceeding, make sure that you’ve already set up your integration in your account.
To check if one of your linked accounts supports this functionality:
You can check the status of your imports at any time via your Email Imports page.
The contact’s profile is created immediately and should be available after a page refresh. Select the profile to input additional information or unsubscribe the contact from future communications.
For importing extensive lists, we strongly recommend using our CSV import option. This is the ideal choice when bringing in numerous contacts, as it allows our Compliance team to review larger imports and helps in preserving the health of your contact list.
A previously unsubscribed contact cannot be resubscribed via these steps. While mailable is the default state of new contacts, an error message will appear when attempting to apply the subscribed status to an unsubscribed contact. Instead, the contact will remain unsubscribed until they opt back in via your checkout process or an onsite display with the same email address.
The Shopify, Shopify Plus, and Weebly integrations automatically create or update contacts in Privy when a customer’s email address is collected during your store’s checkout process. The email address used during checkout is captured in Privy as an ‘order’ and is used to generate or update a contact’s profile. An address is captured when the customer has either:
What if an existing contact opts in during the checkout process?
Deduplication: Privy will not create any duplicate contacts — the existing contact profile will be updated, and new order activity will be added to the existing profile.
Email permission status: If a contact checks the subscribe box as part of the order process, they will be marked as mailable unless they previously became ineligible due to hard bounces or by marking your emails as spam. If a contact does not check the box, their eligibility within Privy will remain unchanged. If the provided address is associated with a previously deleted profile, a new profile will be created using the contact’s last known eligibility state.
What if a new contact places an order without accepting email marketing?
New contacts who provide their email address without selecting the subscribe option will be included in your contact list with an “unset-non mailable” status. This designation indicates that the contact hasn’t made a clear choice to opt in or opt out of receiving emails. They will not be eligible to receive emails until they explicitly opt in during a subsequent sign up or order.
In Privy, we encourage the practice of maintaining list hygiene to ensure that you engage with your most active contacts. However, we advise caution when it comes to removing contacts. To prevent potential billing and compliance problems, please exercise care by only deleting contacts that you have no intention of re-adding, those that exhibit malicious behavior, or those who are no longer actively engaged. This approach helps maintain the health of your email list.
Before removing contacts, consider referencing the following guides to better understand healthy list cleaning practices:
Follow this guide on safely removing cold or uninterested contacts from your list.
Got bots? It happens. Follow this guide to learn how to identify bot email addresses and the most effective ways to remove them from your list.
If you’ve identified a large number of contacts that you’d like to unsubscribe from Privy, follow this guide on how to import the CSV as unsubscribed.
To delete a large amount of Contacts and all their data within Privy:
Next, expand the “with # contacts” menu on the upper right side of your Contacts table and select the Delete option on the dropdown.
To delete individual contacts in Privy: