A group is a list of addresses to whom you send messages.

Groups are the primary way that you organize contacts and send messages. Many settings, including sendout settings, are managed on the group level.

Group Creation​

You can create as many groups in Mapp Engage as you want. You can have one group that contains all your contacts. Or you can have many smaller groups.

How you create and organize groups in Mapp Engage depends on several factors. The list size, newsletter type, sendout frequency, and marketing strategy influence the number of groups you use. For example, you might have separate groups for your daily, weekly, and monthly newsletters. Alternatively, you can have different groups for members who are interested in different product types.

Groups for Multichannel Marketing​

In general, we recommend that you use separate groups for separate sendout channels. Dedicated SMS and mobile push groups offer the following advantages:

  • Manage SMS and mobile push subscriptions and unsubscribes separately from email. This process ensures better compliance with country-specific regulations for different types of marketing.

  • Limit the number of SMS messages and mobile push notifications that you send per week.

  • Have dedicated SMS and mobile push groups makes it easier to create automations that apply to each channel. This prevents you from accidentally creating automations that react to contact activity in multiple channels.

Group Categories​

You can create group categories in Mapp Engage. Group categories help you to find and filter groups in Mapp Engage.
Group categories can be used to search and filter for groups as well as for viewing data and creating reports.

You can create as many group categories as you need. You can only assign one category to a group at any time. You can assign, change, or remove the group category in the group settings, on the ​General Settings​ tab.

SuperGroups​

To combine several groups for one sendout, you can create a SuperGroup. The advantage of a SuperGroup is that you can send a message to two or more groups at the same time.

Example: You have 30 different email newsletter groups. You want to send the same holiday newsletter to all 30 groups. Instead of creating 30 sendouts, you can create a SuperGroup, and add all the groups to this SuperGroup as subgroups.

The groups added to a SuperGroup are called subgroups in Mapp Engage. The message that is sent to the SuperGroup is called a SuperMessage.

Group Attributes​

A group attribute stores information that pertains to all contacts in a group. One single value that is stored in the attribute is valid for every contact in that group.

Group attributes are an ideal place to store data that changes frequently, and which is not contact-specific. For example, group attributes can be used to store current product prices.

The group attributes do not store data about individual contacts. Contact-specific information is saved in profile attributes.

Contact Management​

In Mapp Engage, groups are the primary way of organizing and storing contacts. The organization of groups in Mapp Engage is entirely flexible, and allows you to arrange your contact lists as desired.

A contact can be a member of one group, of multiple groups or of no groups.

The contact profile is stored independently from a group. That means that even if a group is deleted, the contact profile remains stored in the Mapp Engage system.

You can add contacts to groups in any of the following ways:

  • Manually upload a list of contacts from a CSV or XML file. For more information, see ​Import Contacts​.

  • Automatically import contacts from an external system with the Mapp Engage API.

  • Create an automation that imports data from an address on a server. For more information, see ​Import Contacts​.

  • Create a selection that chooses contacts with specific attributes and transfers them to a new group. 

  • Manually add individual contacts to the system as members of a specific group. For more information, see ​Add Members (window)​.

Message Sendout​

Every message sendout occurs within and to one specific group.

There are several ways to personalize and target messages that are sent to your group:

  • Use personalisation to add personalized content to messages sent to different contacts within one group. Each personalized message variation is created from a single draft message and sent to all members of the group at once. For more information, see ​Personalization​.

  • Use selections to send messages to smaller, more targeted segments of a group. For example, you can select contacts by gender or location. 

To send a message to more than one group, you create a SuperGroup. For more information, see ​SuperGroup: Introduction​.

You can enable message moderation and approval to control sendout to specific groups. With message moderation, a moderator approves every message before sendout. For more information, see ​Message Moderation​.

Group Settings​

You can configure groups with settings that define how every message you send to this group is delivered. For more information, see ​Group Settings​.

Locked Groups​

Mapp Engage temporarily locks a group to prevent you from running multiple competing processes at the same time. For example, you cannot run a simultaneous import and sendout in the same Mapp Engage group.

There are two types of locks. A group can have an exclusive lock or a shared lock.

  • A group has an exclusive lock when Mapp Engage is writing information to the group. Examples include contact data import or a blacklist import to the group. An exclusive lock means that no other group action of any kind can take place until the exclusive lock is removed. You cannot import, export, or send messages while the group has an exclusive lock.

  • A group has a shared lock when Mapp Engage is using the information in the group for an export, sendout, or similar activity. When a group has a shared lock, you can use the group for an export or sendout. You cannot use the group for contact import or blacklist import.

The group lock does not apply to single actions. When a group is locked, contacts can still subscribe to the group. You can add individual contacts to the group in the user interface or with the API.

A lock is temporary. Mapp Engage removes the lock when the process is finished. You cannot manually unlock a group.