Delivra uses the email address as the primary identifier of your contacts. This means that importing a new email address will cause a new contact to be created, but what if you need to update an existing contact (or multiple contacts) with a new email address? There are a few options available to accomplish this:
The most common method is to perform a one-off update to the contact record in your account. Follow these steps to change the email address for one contact.
1. Navigate to the Contacts dashboard and select all contacts.
2. Enter the email address in the search box to locate it.
3. One the returned record, hover over it to see the "Edit" button.
4. On the open contact record locate the "Email" field.
5. Type in the new email address for the contact.
6. Click the "Save" button.
This will update the contact's mailing address while keeping all of their previous mailing and engagement information intact.
Update email addresses in bulk
To change a contact’s email address through the API or CSV import, you'll need to use a field called External System ID. Although Delivra normally uses the email address as the main identifier, it will use External System ID instead if it’s provided.
Here’s how it works: if your import file contains both an email address and an External System ID, Delivra will update the email address of any existing contact with a matching External System ID. For this process to work, make sure every External System ID is unique across all contacts in your account.
Important: Using External System ID may permanently alter contact data. For help deciding if this approach is best for you, please reach out to our Support team.