Extracting all contacts from Marketingcloud

Question

I'd like to export all of our contacts from the AllContacts list to a csv file. Is there any good solutions for this?

I tried using an empty call to "https://www.exacttargetapis.com/contacts/v1/contacts/search", but it only returns 50 per call. This not seems like a good solution, as we have a few orders of magnitude larger contact list.

Also, I discovered, there were a queryable data view, but it's now unavailable. (Source)

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

You should be able to export all the data manually from your list to the SFMC SFTP export folder

Answer 2

You could create a tracking extract interaction and extract via an Automation.

Alternatively you could query _subscribers data view, store in a data extension and then use a data extension extract. It is important to note that data views will only provide 6 months worth of history. To go further back, you should contact Marketing Cloud Support.

https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=mc_as_data_view_subscribers.htm&type=5

https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=mc_es_tracking_extract.htm&type=5

Answer 3

As above answers state, the _subscribers data view could work for this, however what about Contacts that are not on the All Subscriber's table, or as mentioned, are outside the six month scope of the data view.

When I have faced this issue (exporting All Contacts), I use the "Mobile Lists" feature in Contact Builder. I make a List with only this criteria: Contact Key is not null.

I then run the List and it filters every Contact into the list (the number of records in the list matches my All Contacts number). I can export that list, and often need to use the FTP option since my file will be larger than 25mb.

When you go to retrieve the file, if you have Contacts in All Contacts that are NOT a Subscriber, you will encounter this documented issue - Export of a Mobile Filtered List results in an empty file. The solution in this article works to get an eventual export of All Contacts, however the limitation is that you can really only get an export of the Key for each Contact record, not the rest of the Contact properties.