Exporting your contacts

Export on the contacts list takes what you are looking at out as a spreadsheet — the filtered list, not the whole database. Filter first, then export.

What the spreadsheet contains

The spreadsheet carries the columns you have showing on the list, in the same order, and always starts with First Name and Last Name. Four more columns are always added at the end, whichever columns you chose, showing whether each contact has opted in or out of email and text messages. Email and SMS are worked out separately: a bounced email address never changes the SMS columns, and a blocked mobile number never changes the email column.

• Email Consent — Subscribed when the contact has not opted out of marketing email and the address has not bounced; Unsubscribed when they have opted out of marketing email, or, in an export from a tribe, out of that tribe's emails; Bounced when an email to the address was rejected as undeliverable in the last 12 months, which stops every email to it; or No email. Email campaigns also only go to addresses that have passed Gorilla Dash's email validation, which this column does not show.
• SMS Consent — Opted in or Opted out when the contact has answered; Not asked when they have a mobile number but have never answered (whether marketing texts still go to them depends on your organisation's SMS consent settings, described in the guide Consent — who gets texted); Number blocked when the number is on your organisation's blocked list, which stops every text to it even if they opted in; or No mobile.
• SMS Consent Source — how the contact's most recent SMS answer was recorded, for example Opt-in from an enquiry form, Customer Survey, or Set by staff when someone in your team changed the setting on the contact. Blank when no answer has been recorded, including whenever SMS Consent is Not asked.
• SMS Consent Date — the date that answer was given, as year-month-day. Blank when no answer has been recorded.

The permission

Exporting needs Export CRM, which is held separately from the ordinary CRM permissions. That is deliberate: everything else in the CRM keeps data inside Gorilla Dash, and an export takes a copy of your customer list out of it.

If the button is not there, the role does not hold the permission. An administrator can add it to the role — worth doing consciously rather than by default.

Large exports

A big export is prepared in the background and emailed to you as a download link rather than downloading immediately. Nothing has gone wrong if the file does not appear at once.

Before you export

Better alternatives

• Sharing a list with a colleague — use a shared saved view.
• Reporting on activity — use the Activity Report.
• Calling a set of people — build a call list.
• A mail-out — use email marketing, which handles consent and unsubscribes properly.