Feature Request: Contacts without email addresses
This is something I requested before and was told that it's not possible, but I'll post here in hope that others will chime in.
And that is: currently, there is no way to add contacts in FluentCRM without an email address being assigned to the contact. It's the one required field.
Problem is, when it comes to prospects--especially offline retail stores (which my business is focused on) so many either don't have a publicly-available email address, or I just don't have that info yet. I want to track prospects and activity pitching to them, but haven't any way to do so without assigning them a fake email address. This becomes a problem later when they do convert to actual paying clients.
Is there any way we could have an ID or otherwise track contacts without email address being required? That would be a huge upgrade.
Followed. Because we could send SMS or Whatsapp message to a contact, instead an email.
Laurent Brugiere yes! Or phone calls, snail mail...it would be nice to utilize FluentCRM as our full CRM solution.
I have a similar situation! I work in healthcare, and some of my clients bring their babies, children, and parents or grandparents to their visits. These clients often use their own email addresses, which affects the existing records. Not everyone has a valid email address, and when I try to use fake addresses, it creates problems when I send out newsletters. I receive a lot of bounces from these fake addresses. Additionally, some email addresses that appear valid actually belong to other people I don’t know. These recipients immediately unsubscribe, and some have even reported my emails as spam, which has damaged my reputation. I need a solution, but I know it’s not as simple as changing the email address field from required to optional, as that could jeopardize data integrity and disrupt the software. I’m really struggling to find a solution. Can anyone offer their advice?
I woud propose you opt for a default email that you assign to those contacts without a formal email.
That's equally the same as having no email. When they obtain the email you basically just change that........how about that?
Nuhuh Mutebi I think the email is a unique identifier. Trying to add another with the same email results in "Provided email already assigned to another subscriber."
Frank Hurt could assign these prospects a prospect tag so that they can be easily searched later upon conversion and excluded from email blasts in the meantime.
Mark Anderson this is precisely what I do at present. It's kind of clunky but it's the best solution I have with the current system.
If It's a unique identifier problem you could hack it with "FakeEmail00001.myBusinessName", "FakeEmail00002.myBusinessName", "FakeEmail00003.myBusinessName" etc and as Nuhuh suggested then any email that doesn't begin with FakeEmail is a real one.
Sean Johnson that's what I do right now, yes. It's just not the most elegant solution!
Frank Hurt Shahjahan Jewel Speaking as a programmer, and I'm hacking Fluentcrm a bit to suit my needs (I've just installed it on my bluehost site, which is underpowered so I need fluent to be lean and mean, hense the hacking) , my question is... why is the email field required?
Tables should have a numerical ID primary key field (which I'm guessing Fluent has) I've connected to it using MySql workbench.
So the wider question is... the email field is set as "required" But ....
What would happen if an alter table sql command was issued on a given install such as Frank Hurt's install?
Would it break fluent crm (for example because you may have some php logic somewhere that requires it to be filled out) or would it solve Frank's problem?
Sean Johnson Frank Hurt my thoughts…Fluentcrm is a Wordpress plugin and depends on Wordpress for authentication and other things…a unique email address is a Wordpress requirement.