What is a List of User Records?

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Direct mail campaigns use lists of user records to target specific customers. You can use the Lists feature in Marketing Manager to create and manage useful lists of records. You can open, copy, import, export, add, subtract, and delete lists by using the Lists feature in Marketing Manager.

You can import the following types of lists into Marketing Manager:

• CSV-formatted text files. You can generate these files from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, or acquire them from third parties.

• Analysis reports. To target your users more successfully you can use an analysis report to generate a list of all customers who have not made a purchase in the past six months. You can then use that list in a direct mail campaign to target those customers and invite them to return and make another purchase.

• Lists from other applications. You can import SQL tables from SQL Server, ASCII text files from Notepad, spreadsheets from Microsoft Excel, or .pst files that contain a list of addresses from Microsoft Outlook. For example, if you have a list of addresses in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, you can import the list into Marketing Manager, and then use the list in a direct mail campaign.

You can update your user profiles by using a user list in Marketing Manager. For example, you can run a Sales report to identify users who buy the most products, and then use Lists in Marketing Manager to export the report as a list. In Commerce Server Customers and Orders Manager, you can then update the user profiles in the list by assigning a special value to a profile property. You can use that value to target specific ads or discount campaigns to the users whose profiles you have modified.

Commerce Server uses three different types of lists: user lists, mailing lists, and generic lists.

User Lists

User lists are lists of user records that contain rows of user IDs and (optionally) other user profile properties. You can use user lists to send e-mail to selected recipients. In Marketing Manager, you can import information into user lists from several different sources, including third-party e-mail lists. You can import information into a new list or into an existing list.

Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are lists of user records (including e-mail addresses, IDs, and other properties) in a predefined format. If you want to import information from a text file into a mailing list, Marketing Manager requires that you follow a specific format. The text file can contain up to five columns of information, and each column must be delimited by using commas. You can omit columns, but you must include the commas so that the columns line up. Each row in the list represents a single recipient. The following table shows the five columns a text file can contain.

The following table shows the contents of three sample mailing list import files that can be imported successfully into Commerce Server Marketing Manager.

Sample import file contents	Description
someone@example.com	Provides only e-mail addresses. Note: This is the only column that is required.
someone@example.com,,mhtmlsomeone@example.com,,text	Provides the e-mail address, omits the GUID (uses a double comma to indicate the missing column of information), and provides the message format. The language and URL are also omitted.
someone@example.com,0425b7c56e8dd,textsomeone@example.com,1328a4d89b3bb,text	Provides the e-mail address, the GUID, and the message format. The language and URL are omitted.

Generic Lists

Unlike user lists and mailing lists, generic lists do not have content requirements. To use generic lists, a site developer must customize your application.

Generic lists can contain anything, and they can include headers, as in the following example.

You may want to use generic lists to set product properties. For example, you can run a Sales report to identify the strongest selling products on your Web site. You can then use the Lists feature in Marketing Manager to import the results of this report as a list of products. In Catalog Manager, you can set a property on those products to identify them as strong sellers. You can then use this property to create target expressions, or to increase the price of these products by five percent.

You can also use generic lists to mail coupons to your frequent online customers for use in your physical store. For example, you can run a report to analyze user purchases, export the results of the report as a list that includes the mailing addresses, and then use Marketing Manager to export this list for use in a labeling application.

Expressions and Static Lists

User lists, mailing lists, and generic lists can be either expression or static lists.

Expressions are a combination of properties, operators, and values that yield a result upon evaluation. You create an expression by selecting from a list of predefined targets and operators. If required, you can also enter a value, such as a number, to be evaluated by the expression. For example, a target expression might be "Account Class is equal to 10" or "Female User is True". You use the Expression Builder to build your target expressions. An expression list can contain several expressions.

Static lists contain information that does not change frequently. Commerce Server creates static lists immediately upon request, and then stores them in the database that Marketing Manager uses. Use static lists for direct mail campaigns that you run infrequently, or for lists of recipients that do not change frequently.

See Also

Other Resources

How to Subtract a List from a List

How to Add Users to a List

How to Remove Users from a List

How to Merge Lists

How to Rename a List

Searching the Business Management Applications

Deleting Information from the Business Management Applications

Refreshing the Business Management Application Cache