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Overview

Contacts is where every person you can reach lives — everyone who has signed up, been imported, or come in through a connected CRM. It's the single list behind your segments, campaigns, and automations, so keeping it clean and easy to search pays off everywhere else in the app.

You'll find it under Audience in the top navigation, on the Contacts tab (its companion tab is Segments).

From the Contacts list you can browse everyone at once, search or filter down to exactly the people you want, and open any contact to see their full profile, custom details, and history with you. This guide covers the list itself; for the two things it links out to, see Custom fields and Importing contacts.

What you can do here

  • Browse every contact in a sortable table, with the columns you care about most.
  • Search by keyword — name or email — to jump straight to a person.
  • Filter with an AI-style search prompt — describe who you want in plain language (for example, "contacts tagged VIP who opened the last campaign") and the app builds the filter for you.
  • Choose which columns show, including any custom fields you've added, and reorder or reset them.
  • Sort by one or more columns.
  • Save a search as a view you can come back to, or save it as a segment so it can be reused in campaigns and automations.
  • Select multiple contacts and, in one action, add them to a segment, apply tags, or start an email or SMS to them.
  • Show or hide archived contacts with a single toggle.
  • Add a new contact manually, or import a whole list from a file (see Importing contacts).
  • Open a contact to see their profile: name, emails, phone, tags, custom fields, consent settings, segment memberships, any connected CRM records, and a full activity timeline of everything that's happened with them — opens, clicks, replies, notes, and more.
  • Edit any profile field inline by clicking its value and typing — including phone numbers and links. Phone, email, and URL values also show a small icon beside them to call, email, or open the link in a new tab.
  • Message a contact directly from their profile — start an email or SMS to them without leaving the page.
  • Archive a contact you no longer want to see in your main list (their history is preserved, and you can still find them with the archived toggle).

Example scenarios

Scenario: Find every contact who opened your last campaign

  1. Go to Contacts.
  2. Switch the search bar to the AI/prompt mode (rather than plain keyword search).
  3. Type something like "contacts who opened [campaign name]" and submit.
  4. Review the filtered list — the active filter shows as a chip above the table so you always know what's applied.
  5. Select all the matching contacts using the checkbox in the table header.
  6. Use the bulk action bar to add them to a segment, tag them, or send them a follow-up email or SMS on the spot.
  7. Optionally, click Save as ▾ → Save as segment so this same group is easy to reuse later in a campaign or automation.

Scenario: Look up one customer's full history before you reach out

  1. Go to Contacts and use the keyword search to find them by name or email.
  2. Click their row to open their profile.
  3. Check their tags, custom fields, and consent settings (whether they've opted out of email or SMS) so you don't reach out the wrong way.
  4. Scroll the activity timeline to see everything recorded for them — messages sent, emails opened, replies, notes your team has added, and any automation activity.
  5. When an email appears in the activity timeline, expand the record and choose View email to open the exact message that was sent — subject, send date, and the full rendered email body.
  6. Read the AI-generated summary card, if present, for a quick recap instead of scanning the whole timeline.
  7. When you're ready, click the email or SMS action right on the profile to start a message to them, or add a note for your team.

Answering a privacy request

If someone asks for a copy of the data you hold about them, or asks you to delete it, both actions live on their contact profile under the ⋯ menu. Only admins see them.

  • Export data — starts building a file containing everything the account holds about that person. It runs in the background; download it from Settings → Privacy when it's ready.
  • Erase data (GDPR) — permanently deletes their record, messages, activity, notes and files. You'll be asked to type their email address to confirm, because there is no undo.

An erasure deliberately leaves one thing behind: a suppression record of their email address and phone number, stored as a one-way fingerprint that can't be read back. It isn't leftover data — it's what makes the erasure stick. Because of it, this person can never be messaged again, and a later contact import containing them is rejected instead of quietly recreating them. Without it, the next spreadsheet upload would bring them straight back.

Erasures also produce a residual report listing anything that couldn't be reached — backups, third-party systems, and saved segments or views that filter on their address. Read it under Settings → Privacy after every erasure; some entries need a decision from you.

FAQ

Q: What's the difference between "keyword" search and the AI/prompt search? A: Keyword search matches a contact's name or email against the text you type — fast and literal. The AI/prompt mode lets you describe who you want in a sentence (tags, activity, custom field values, and more), and the app translates that into a filter for you.

Q: What happens when I archive a contact? A: They're hidden from the default list view but not deleted — nothing in their history is lost. Turn on Show archived to see them again, and you can restore them from their profile at any time.

Q: Can I message more than one contact at a time from the list? A: Yes, but bulk email/SMS from the list is capped at a small number of contacts at once (five) so it stays a deliberate, reviewed send rather than a mass blast. For larger sends, use a campaign built on a saved segment.

Q: What's a "view" versus a "segment"? A: A view is a personal shortcut — your chosen columns, sort, and filter, saved so you can jump back to that exact list layout. A segment is the underlying group of contacts itself, and segments are what you actually target in campaigns and automations.

Q: Why can't I add contacts to some segments from the list? A: Segments that are connected to your CRM have their membership managed by the CRM sync, not edited by hand here — only native (app-managed) segments accept manual additions.

Q: Where do a contact's custom fields come from, and can I add my own? A: Every field you see on a profile — built-in or custom — is defined once for your whole account. See Custom fields for how to add and manage them.

Q: Can I bring in a list of contacts from a spreadsheet? A: Yes — see Importing contacts for the file upload flow, including how column mapping and duplicates are handled.

Q: Does opening or editing a contact notify them? A: No. Viewing or editing a contact's profile is internal — it doesn't send them anything. Only explicit sends (email, SMS, or a campaign) reach the contact.

Q: What happens to campaigns when a contact unsubscribes or is marked "do not contact"? A: They're automatically left out of future sends. When someone clicks unsubscribe in an email — or you switch on do not contact email on their profile — the next campaign or broadcast to a segment they'd otherwise match skips them. The master do not contact switch removes them from both email and SMS sends. If they opt out of a specific subscription list only, they're excluded from sends tied to that list but still receive others. Turning the setting back off (marking them subscribed again) re-includes them on the next send.