import of email list: where should i do this?

[mjorter]

Dear all, hope someone could explain me best practises. I'm quite newbie, but generally experienced admin.

I have three lists:

a) newsletter subscribers. Just e-mail addresses
b) few hundred leads, they have lastname, e-mail and are possible clients
c) clients.

So generally i want to communicate, and get users from a to b to c, and from b to c.

Should user type 'A' be 'contacts or leads? Sugarcrm 5.2 does not have 'targets' in my version. Or am i wrong?

Should user type 'B' be leads (sounds logic).

When I try to import type 'A' into any kind of level, Scrm asks me for 'last_name', which I obviously don't have. Can I change the 'required' / indicator field to 'email' ? or would that be bad practise?


thank you for your time,

[roblaus]

Just checked - targets are still there in 5.2 - go to campaigns and look at the shortcuts on the left (provided you use the standard theme).

The approach you mentioned is very common: Use targets as "suspects" with no information to speak of, leads for the ones whose information is a bit more complete and contacts/accounts for clients, suppliers and so forth.

The last name field is used in targets/leads/coontacts in order to provide you with a link to open a particular person in the list. This can't be done with email addresses because there is a different logic behind.
We usually use a dot or simply nn to have at least something in there.

There is anothe issue connected to it: Usually emails are sent as name <email address> - I am not sure whether it will work at alll if you remove last_name as a must field (what can be done in the code).

There might be other solutions though.

[mjorter]

Dear Robert,

Thank you for your answer. I have found more people looking for a simple solution to change the mandatory field, but i do believe it goes against good practise. Maybe I should copy the e-mail fields to the last_names, and use these as recipient e-mail addresses.

thank you again,

MR

[sugarcane]

Hello mjorter,

a) newsletter subscribers. Just e-mail addresses

I would suggest importing these as leads. The targets module is generally for a list of random people, like when you purchase lists. Since your list are people who have willingly subscribed to your newsletter, they are definitely more qualified. It is a best practice not to remove the name requirement, for the time being I would recommend importing the email as the last name as well. You can also populate the lead source dropdown, lead source description, or referred by fields to indicate that these are newsletter leads.

b) few hundred leads, they have last name, e-mail and are possible clients

I would import these into leads module and use the lead source dropdown, lead source description, or referred by fields to indicate where these originated from (so that you can differentiate them from your newsletter leads)