Meet Contacts: the new way to view your audience

We’re making a small change that’ll make a big difference to how you manage your subscribers. In July, we’re beginning rolling out a change to EmailOctopus where the Lists screen, within the dashboard, is replaced with a new Contacts page.

This change isn’t just about a new name, it’s about making the platform simpler and clearer to use – but also more affordable. It should encourage a better way of working, managing your subscribers using a single list, using segments, tags, and fields to keep everything organised.

Why the change?

When we started EmailOctopus, we wanted it to be easy to use and affordable but over the last few years, we noticed that having multiple lists often caused confusion and created extra work and expense for you. Contacts ended up duplicated across lists, leading to higher than expected bills, unsubscribes weren’t respected across lists, and automations became harder to manage.

By using a single list, everything becomes simpler. You can still target specific groups, but without the hassle of switching between lists, creating additional campaigns or worrying about duplicate contacts.

The benefits of using a single list

Here’s how a single list setup can help you:

• All your contacts in one place. Manage your entire audience without needing to click out across lists.
• Send to the right people. Whether it’s your whole list of contacts or a specific segment, it’s quick and easy to select who gets each campaign.
• Keep unsubscribes global. When someone unsubscribes, they’re removed for good, helping you stay compliant and avoid accidental sends.
• Avoid duplicate charges. Using one list means you won’t pay for the same contact twice across different lists.

Keeping your contacts organised

Along with the naming change, we’ve launched some hugely exciting features to make managing your contacts within a single list as simple as possible:

• Single and multiple choice fields. Collect subscriber interests easily using checkboxes, dropdowns or radio buttons in your forms and landing pages.
• Subscriber managed preferences. You will be able add a subscriber profile. Let your subscribers update their choices themselves, giving them control over what reaches their inbox and keeping your data up to date.
• Quick tagging during imports Tag everyone in that import with a single click. There’s no need to include tags in your CSV file anymore (though this is still possible!).

Multiple lists aren’t completely gone

Perhaps you’re an agency who needs to keep subscriber lists segregated or use your account for both personal and business reasons. Well, if you need to use completely separate lists, we haven’t forgotten about you and when you have multiple lists, you’ll now see a list switcher in the Contacts view.

This makes it easy to switch between them when needed – it contains exactly the same information as the old Lists screen, with a subscriber count and list name. And if you want to view all the lists on a single page, this can be done from Manage lists. We’ve just hidden it away a bit, as we recognise most users won’t need this anymore.

For the majority of users, and for the best experience, we recommend merging your lists into a single one. It’ll save you time, reduce costs, and give you a clearer view of your audience.

If you’d like help with merging your lists, check out our step-by-step guide or get in touch with our support team. We’re always here to lend a hand.

Simpler for you, better for your subscribers

We’re really excited to be rolling these changes out over the course of July.

You’ll first notice these changes when the tab at the top of the screen changes to Contacts.

If you have any questions or feedback, we’d love to hear from you. And if you want to opt-in to get immediate access to all the additional updates, you can do so here.