Connecting and Understanding the Connection Between Constant Contact and Kindful – Kindful Help Center

Use Constant Contact to send bulk emails to your donors.

Overview

Forget about exports and imports. Emailing your donors and constituents just got a whole lot easier with Kindful and Constant Contact.

Seamlessly sync all constituent information, leaving out all the old exporting and importing
Sync your Groups of contacts in Kindful into Lists in Constant Contact
- Tags in Constant Contact will not sync with Kindful. These Tags will just live in Constant Contact.
Import email subscribers from Constant Contact to Kindful
Kindful will automatically keep your groups and lists in sync after you’re connected
Kindful contact profiles will be automatically updated with email deliverability preferences

Sync Overview

When Kindful creates a contact in Constant Contact:

The contact belongs to at least one Group in Kindful.
has a valid email address in the Primary Email field. ** Contacts with no email, or an email in the alternate email field, will not be synced. In Kindful, the contact's primary email is the one used for receipting. When you are integrated to Constant Contact, only the primary email syncs with Constant Contact. If you need to send emails to both spouses (for example), it is better to have a separate profile for each contact in the household.
The contact’s Communication Preferences are set to Integration Email Opt-in: Yes.
The contact's email address has a top-level-domain of 3 characters or less (.com, .net, .org, etc)
Changing a contact’s email in Kindful will create a new contact in Constant Contact.
Organization Contacts in Kindful will be created in Constant Contact. In this scenario, Company Name becomes the Organization Name and First Name/Last Name becomes primary point of contact.
Kindful syncs only these fields when creating a contact in Constant contact: First Name, Last Name, Address 1, Address 2, City, State, Postal, Country, Integration Email Opt In status

When Constant Contact creates a contact in Kindful:

a contact is created in Kindful when:

They belong to a List
You have permission to send email to the contact.
The contact has a valid email address.

Fields synced: First Name, Last Name, Primary Email, Address 1, Address 2, City, State, Postal, Country, Integration Email Opt In: Yes

When Kindful updates a contact in Constant Contact:

Changing or updating any of the following in Kindful will update the corresponding fields on the Contact in Constant Contact:

Adding them to a Kindful Group, adds them to the corresponding Constant Contact list)
Removing them from a Kindful Group (removes them from that corresponding List in Constant Contact)

When Constant Contact updates a contact in Kindful:

When these fields are changed in Constant Contact, the fields are updated in Kindful: First Name, Last Name, Address 1, Address 2, City, State, Postal, Country, Integration Email Opt In

Note: email will not be updated, as that is how we match on contacts between systems

Before you connect Kindful to Constant Contact

The Kindful and Constant Contact is AUTOMATIC. When you connect this integration, ALL contacts in Groups in Kindful will be synced to Constant Contact and ALL contacts in Lists in Constant Contact will be synced to Kindful.

Specific details are outlined below:

If you have contact Groups in Kindful, corresponding Contact Lists (per Kindful Group) will be created in Constant Contact.
If Contact Lists exist in your Constant Contact account, corresponding Groups will be created in Kindful.
Contacts that belong to one or any of your Kindful Groups will be added to the corresponding Lists in Constant Contact.
Contacts that belong to one or any of your Constant Contact Lists will be added to their corresponding Kindful Groups.
There is no way to select which Groups and Lists will sync. All Groups and all Lists will sync and have corresponding entities in both applications. This is very important to note if you are on a low contact pricing plan with Constant Contact.
Adding a contact to a Kindful Group will add them to the corresponding Constant Contact List if they meet the syncing rules.
Adding a contact to a Constant Contact List will add them to the corresponding Kindful Group.
As contacts are removed from Kindful Groups, they will be removed from the corresponding Constant Contact List.
If a contact is added to a Constant Contact List they will be added to the corresponding Kindful Group
If contact opts-out/unsubscribes from ALL email Lists in Constant Contact, they will be set to “Email Integration Opt-in: No” in their Kindful contact record.
If a contact unsubscribes from a Constant Contact List, email preferences in Kindful will not be updated

Connecting Kindful to Constant Contact

Important: You cannot disconnect Constant Contact from your Kindful account if a sync is in progress. You must wait until the sync has finished before you can disconnect. To disconnect, head to your Constant Contact App page in your App Directory and then click More > Disconnect. You can reconnect a different account at this time if so desired.

In Kindful, go to Apps on the left sidebar. Find Constant Contact on the list. Select Learn More, then Connect.

After logging in to your Constant Contact account, select Grant Access.

Note: If you don’t have a Constant Contact account, you’ll need to create one in order to continue.

The sync will be begin after you select Connect and you should see a Syncing indication in the Kindful App Directory.

There is no set time for how long this will take to complete the initial integration connection. It depends on a number of factors, including how many contacts you have syncing between the two applications. If you connect and wait overnight and find that it is either still showing as syncing or that contacts are missing, please contact our Care Team (link at the bottom of this article).

Rules for syncing contacts

A contact in Kindful will sync to Constant Contact when:

The contact belongs to at least one Group in Kindful.
The contact has a valid email address in the Primary Email field. Contacts with no email, or an email in the alternate email field, will not be synced.
The contact’s Communication Preferences in Kindful are set to Integration Email Opt-in: Yes.
The contact's email address has a top-level-domain of 3 characters or less (.com, .net, .org, etc)

A contact in Constant Contact will sync to Kindful when:

The contact belongs to at least one List in Constant Contact.
You have permission to send email to the contact.
The contact has a valid email address.

Kindful makes every effort in this integration to compare the "updated_at" timestamps, so the integration is designed in such a way that whichever side of the integration makes the update, (Kindful or Constant Contact) the other side will be updated to reflect this change. It is common to see Constant Contact make the "last change" given how their system updates itself, so you may find that what you see in Constant Contact is what you get in Kindful.

Troubleshooting

You cannot disconnect Constant Contact from your Kindful account if a sync is in progress. You must wait until the sync has finished before you can disconnect.
Our recommendation is always to create and manage Groups in Kindful.
Empty Groups in Kindful will not be created as Lists in Constant Contact.
Empty Lists in Constant Contact will not be created as Groups in Kindful.
Lists deleted in Constant Contact will not delete the corresponding groups in Kindful, but groups deleted in Kindful will delete the corresponding list in Constant Contact
An ongoing automatic sync occurs every hour. You do not need to initiate a sync. It is possible for a sync to take longer than an hour to complete.
Changing a contact’s email in Kindful will create a new contact in Constant Contact.
After the initial sync, if a contact is removed from a Constant Contact List, they will not be removed from the corresponding Kindful Group. This is due to the fact Kindful Groups are used for more than just email campaigns.
Renaming a Kindful Group will update the corresponding Constant Contact List. Renaming a Constant Contact List will not update the corresponding Kindful Group name.
Please note that "Allows Solicitations," "Marketing Mail," "Newsletter," "Receive Other Mail," "Email Deliverable?," "Alternate Email Opt-In?" fields on the Kindful Contact do not affect/control the Constant Contact sync.
Constant Contact does not allow duplicate List names, so do not create Groups in Kindful with the same name.
Constant Contact does not allow for a contact to be imported if the top-level-domain (.com, .net, .org) is longer than 3 characters. If a contact has a top-level-domain like .guru, .aarp, .tools, etc they will not sync to Constant Contact
A contact in Constant Contact that does not yet exist in Kindful will be imported to Kindful as a person with the following fields (if available):
- First Name, Last Name, Primary Email, Address 1, Address 2, City, State, Postal, Country, Integration Email Opt In: Yes
It is possible that you have more contacts in your Kindful Group than appear as contacts in the connected email marketing provider. To get a better understanding of why this might be, you can identify which of your Kindful Contacts are Email Solicitable (and able to be synced). To find this number, head to the individual Group page by clicking on the Group name link from your Contacts > Groups page in Kindful. Hover your mouse over the number below the "Total Members" section. Doing so will make the "Email Solicitable" number appear.

Glossary of Terms

Constant Contact Terms

Contacts - the people and businesses that Constant Contact admin users reach out to. There is only one type of contact in Constant Contact, whereas Kindful has two: Organization and Person types.
Contact Lists - collections of contacts used to distribute email and other campaigns.
Email Campaigns - a marketing campaign using email messages distributed to Contact Lists.
Contact Statuses

Active - The contact subscribed to an email List, or they confirmed their subscription after being added by the account. They can be sent email campaigns.
Opt-out - The contact has either unsubscribed or the account owner has deleted the contact, placing them on the Unsubscribed List; the Constant Contact user cannot add them to any of their Contact Lists.

Kindful Terms

Contacts - Kindful has two types: Organization and Person.
- Organization Contacts in Kindful will sync to Constant Contact, but the Company Name and Primary Contact Name will not sync; only Primary Email and basic contact information will sync to Constant Contact.

Important: Users will need to convert Organization Contacts to Person Contacts to preserve First name & last name in Constant Contact.

Contact Groups - group of Contacts used for segmentation, targeting, and reporting in Kindful.
Contact Communication Preferences:
- Integration Email Opt In
  - Yes - the contact has given permission to send emails via a connected email marketing integration (Yes by default).
  - No - the contact has revoked permission to send emails via a connected email marketing integration.
- Email Deliverable
  - Yes - the contact’s email is able to receive emails (Yes by default).
  - No - the contact’s email has been marked as unable to receive messages, either by an admin or attached email marketing integration.

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