Help

Clean your contacts database

Removing contacts from your Prezly Contacts database

You can use the Filter or use a View to find the specific contacts you wish to delete, then click on the check box at the top to select all contacts from that list.

 

Alternatively, if you already know the name of the contact (person or organization) you wish to remove from your database, simply type their name into the search box.

 

Once you select the contacts you want to remove, go to the pop up menu at the bottom of the screen and click on Delete.

Contact Suggestions

In your contact overview panel, you’ll find a Suggestions tab right next to the profile tab. From there, you can quickly merge duplicates, fix bounced emails, and link contacts to organizations. All directly from the contact.

 

Solving duplicates

There are several ways to review and merge duplicate contacts. When Prezly automatically finds duplicates (learn more about how duplicate detection works), you’ll receive a notification for any matches that couldn’t be merged automatically.

While this notification is the most common way to access duplicate suggestions, you can also review them from:

  • Contact grid – Look for the duplicate icon on a contact’s avatar.
  • Contact tooltip – Hover over a contact anywhere in Prezly. If the contact has duplicates, you’ll see a warning and a link to review them.
  • Contact overview → Suggestions – View all duplicate suggestions for that contact.
  • Campaign composer → Review – If your campaign contains duplicate contacts, you’ll see them during the review step and can resolve them before sending.

From any of these entry points, you’ll be taken to either the Duplicates panel or the Review modal, depending on the action you choose.

Duplicates panel

Open the New duplicates found notification to review all remaining duplicate suggestions in one place. You can also access the Duplicates panel from the Contacts page, the campaign composer review step, or from a contact overview.

From this panel, you can:

  • Merge individual duplicates
  • Merge multiple duplicates at once
  • Mark suggestions as Not a duplicate
    • Mark as "not a duplicate" by clicking [...] and selecting "Not a duplicate"
  • Open the Review modal to compare contacts before merging
    • Open the review panel on a contact by clicking [...] and them "Review"
You can order the list by confidence (high/low) from the list header

Review modal

The Review modal lets you compare two contacts side by side before merging them.

Matching information is combined automatically, so you only need to review fields with conflicting values. For each conflict, choose which value you’d like to keep, then click Merge.

No contact data is removed. Merging combines records, it doesn't delete them. Email addresses, phone numbers, website, tags, and linked organizations are never overwritten or lost.

You can also select two contacts from your contact list and click Merge in the floating action bar to open the Review modal directly.

 

Solving Bounces (from suggestions)

Prezly has a bounce fixing suggestion flow that gets your bounced contacts, and goes around trying to find possible fixes for it.

When it finds a suggestion, we send you a notification so you can act on it and accept (add the newly found email to the contact) or reject.

While this notification is the most common way to access bounce fixing suggestions, you can also review them from:

  • The contacts grid – Look for the suggestion icon on a contact’s name.
  • The contact overview → Suggestions – View all bounce fixing suggestions for that contact.
  • The campaign composer → Review step – If your campaign contains bounced email addresses, you’ll see them during the review step and can resolve them before sending.

 

Bounce Fixing Panel

Open the New bounced email fix found notification to review all bounce fixing suggestions in one place.

From this panel, you can:

  • Accept the new email
  • Decline and keep the old email by clicking [...] and "Decline"
  • Clicking [...] you can also have an more detailed overview of the suggested fix

If you accept a suggestion, the new email address is added to the contact.

If the bounced email was the only address on that contact, the new one becomes the primary email. If the contact already has another working primary address, the new one is added as an additional address instead.

 

Merging Contacts

When you decide to merge contacts, there are two possible outcomes:

  1. No conflicts. The system will combine both contacts into one.
  2. Conflicting data. You will see a popup that allows you to mark which information you want to keep between the two contacts, when merged into one.

Learn how to connect Contacts to their Organizations in your CRM

In Prezly, there are types of contact:

  • People
  • Organizations

On a contact preview

Clicking on the People or Organization tab to open a contact preview

 

Alternatively, if you already know the name of the contact (person or organization) you wish to link, simply type their name into the search box.

 

You can click on the Organizations or People contact that you want to link

If you want to link Contact to Organization, use the search bar to find and organsation

When it's the other way around and you wish to link an organization to a person instead, you can open the contact preview of an organization, click on the People tab and search for the name of the person you wish to add to the organization.

Converting contacts from Person to Organization

Changing the contact type without having to delete and re-import

If a contact was supposed to be imported as an organization type of contact but was imported as a person instead, there is a way to change the contact's type from person to organization, without having to delete them first and then re-import them as a person type.

On the contact preview, click on the '•••' button across the contact's name and then select Convert to organization.

Using filters to find and clean up your contacts

When you have hundreds (or thousands) of contacts saved in your Prezly database over time, sometimes a clean-up is necessary in order to remove bounced or unsubscribed contacts, or simply remove contacts you no longer send email campaigns or pitches to.

A contact list clean-up is an essential part of targeting your PR and outreach efforts, so we actually recommend doing this at least a couple of times a year. This way, you reach out only to people who want to receive your latest press releases and stories, and you get a better picture of your actual open and click rates. On top of that, fewer bounces and spam complaints are an added bonus.

How do you know it’s time to clean your contacts list? You can usually see the first warning signs in your Campaign reports once you have sent an email blast.

You can also identify potential names to amend or delete with the Views options in Contact

 

Using the filter rules in the Contacts page

  • Filter using symbols so you can delete names with errors in them. For example, if you search for "Names that contain @", you will find a list of contacts that have an email address instead of a first name:
Add @ to find if any email addresses that have been placed as People

 

Filter by Open rate and Emails. Set the filter to 0 ​ to find contacts that have had zero engagement with your email blasts.

You cant really build lists without using Tags and you cant send an email if the contact does not have an email address. Once again set the filter to 0

FAQs

Why do I get bounced contacts when I send campaigns?

A high campaign bounce rate could indicate a poorly maintained media list

When a campaign fails to reach a particular email address because of a problem on their end – for example, the email address no longer existing or the receiving mail server being down – that email address is marked as bounced.

This bounce status is immediately reflected in your CRM and Campaign Report and prevents new campaigns ​ from being sent to that email. We do this because sending campaigns to emails that cannot receive your email would affect your deliverability rating and skew your campaign results.

  • Email addresses reporting temporary challenges (such as quota or network issues) are retried for up to 72 hours, after which they are considered temporary or soft bounces.
  • More serious error codes (such as mailbox full, or non-existent address) puts contacts in a permanent or hard bounce list.

After a certain time, we test the bounced email addresses again to see whether they recovered.

  • Soft bounces are cleared ("purged") from the suppression list after 10 days.
  • Hard bounces are cleared ("purged") from the suppression list after 90 days.

Why are some contacts locked and unable to delete?

Your teammates who are in your contacts database are locked and cannot be removed, even if you have disabled that teammate.

The reason behind locking these contacts is that, if we delete them, then all of their historical data would be lost and you will not be able to see their history, such as their sent Campaigns, published or drafted Stories, updates to contacts, and more.