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• Generally speaking, lists are siloed databases. While segments are audiences based on behavioral and/or data point criteria within the same list.
• Campaigns, imports, exports are operations that are performed on the list level.
• See following FAQ

When is it recommended to use a List and when is it recommended to use Segments

• Multiple lists are typically used for managing different brands, websites, or different companies (in the case that you're an agency) in which case each separate brand, etc. will be managed on a different Ongage list.
• Moreover, multiple lists allows your subscribers to be active one list and unsubscribed from another. For example, lets say you have one list for email marketing of Jobs, and another for Real-Estate. By managing those on separate lists, a contact can be unsubscribed from one list, and yet active on the other one. 
• A List with Segments allows creating highly targeted marketing audience (segments) for the same brand, website, etc. For example creating an audience of shoppers where (gender = female AND last purchase = Bloomingdales).
• Also use segments when you want to segment your list by behavioral criteria, for exampled opened, clicked, did not open or clicked in the last... Post click data and/or external behavioral data can also be used, e.g., paying customers vs. non-paying customers, etc.

Can I copy the contents of an entire List to another List

1. Not directly.
2. The copy function in the "List > List Management" will create a new list, with an exact copy of all the fields that were in the original one, but it will not copy over the members.
3. You will need to export members from the old list and import them into the new list in order to copy over all list members.

Which contacts are counted towards my max allowed contacts per account

• All contacts in all your sending lists and archived lists are counted for that total.
• We do not count  contacts in your suppression lists.

Which list types are counted towards my max allowed lists per account

• Sending lists are counted.
• Archived lists are counted.
• Suppression lists are not counted.

What type of field should I use for storing ZIP codes aka Postal codes

• We recommend using a String type field for storing ZIP codes.
• In places like Canada and the UK, ZIP codes contains letters, so there the choice is clear.
• But even in the US, ZIP codes can start with a leading 0, and if the field is numeric, it will naturally truncate leading 0's.
• For all of the above reasons we recommend using a String field for storing ZIP codes.
• (Note: there are exceptions like France, where postal codes are only numeric and don't have leading zeros, in that case you can use a numeric field and benefit from the numeric range operator in the segment manager, which is not applicable for String fields).

What type of field should I use for storing Phone Numbers 

A String type field should be used for storing phone and mobile numbers. There are a few reasons for this:

• Often phone numbers are indicated with non-numerical characters like '+', '-', '(', ')'.
• Moreover in some countries phone numbers can start with leading zeros, and numeric fields truncate leading zeros. For example London area code is 020. So this is another reason why phone numbers should be stored in a field that is a string rather than numeric.

How to safely remove contacts added through wrong imports?

When you want to remove contacts which were wrongly imported through CSV upload, there is a risk involved of losing your existing contacts which were already added in the list prior to wrong import initiated. In order to safely remove the newly imported contacts and keep existing contacts, you can follow the steps given below.

1. You can Export the CSV file of the existing contacts by clicking the Hyperlink provided on the Count in the “Existing” column.
   
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2. Use the same CSV which was imported wrongly and delete those contacts by going to Contact Manager Change/Delete status > Import CSV > Remove Permanently.
   
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3. Now, import the CSV file of existing contacts which was downloaded in the first step.
4. Note: While following the above steps, the analytics associated with existing contacts will be removed and those will be added back as new contacts.

How to catch Bot users from the Ongage database?

 Ongage does not have an inbuilt bot user identification or removal process in place. But you can identify bot users based on the click on hidden text link and then adding them in the Suppression list. The steps below explains how you can execute the process of removing bot users based on click of a hidden link.

1. Create a list field named as “abuse”.
2. Create an email message with a hidden text link (not to be visible in the email body).
3. Then you can update the “abuse” field value with“Y” on user click by using “Update on Click” where the hidden text link (For example: “www.link.com?ocxf_abuse=”Y”) will be associated with the new list field created and it will update the contact with the value “Y” in the Abuse field when a user clicks on the link.
   
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4. Create a new segment selecting the criteria with list field Abuse equals Y as shown in the screenshot below. So, every time when the user clicks on the hidden text link with “ocxf_abuse=Y”, the contact gets into this segment. The hidden links are mostly clicked by bot users. You can eventually filter them using this segment.
   
   
   
   
5. Then you can export the segment and add them in the global suppression list.