Contacts

Contacts keeps the people you write to, and the permission each one gave you. It lives in the Panel.

Contacts come in three ways: you add them by hand, you import them, or people subscribe with the sign-up form on your website and confirm by email.

Contacts appears in the sidebar when Email is on for your account, or in trial mode once your sending domain is verified. Until then, there is nothing to see. Read Trial mode.

What a contact holds

Only the email address is needed. Everything else is optional:

first name and last name;
language and phone; the language is chosen from a list, and an email with languages reaches the contact in it;
an entity, their position in it, and when they joined and left;
one category;
tags;
one permission per newsletter or type of email, with its proof;
a history of everything that happened to them.

Keep only “What you know of this person. Only what you need to write to them well.”

“People” opens on “Active”. Your account counts only active contacts against the most it can have, and shows that limit under the title once you reach 80 % of it, and always in “Plan and usage”. Read What a contact can receive for how a permission works.

Find people

Open Contacts. “People” opens on “Active”; “All” lists everyone.
Write in the search box. It looks in names, email addresses and entities.
To narrow it down, press “Filter”.
Choose the “Field”, the “Condition” and the “Value”.
Choose “All of these” or “Any of these” when there is more than one condition.
Press “Apply”. “Clear” removes the conditions.

The fields you can use:

“Entity”, “Category”, “Tags” and “Position”;
“Joined the entity”, “Left the entity” and “Member of”;
“Came from the website”;
“Permission for”, with a purpose and a basis;
“Added” and “Language”.

Saved lists

A list is a set of conditions with a name: “A list keeps the conditions, not the people. It stays up to date as your contacts change.”

Save one. With the conditions applied, press “Save as list” and give it a name.
Use one. Each list has its place in Contacts, under “Saved lists”. “Active” goes back to everyone active. The group appears once you save your first list.
Pin one. Open it and press “Pin to the sidebar”. The list goes under Contacts in the sidebar, with how many active contacts it has now, for everyone in your account. “Unpin from the sidebar” takes it out. Up to 5: “You can pin up to 5 lists. Unpin one first.”
Send an email to it. Open it and press “Send to this list”. “Choose a ready email. Next you will see exactly who it reaches, and nothing leaves until you press Send.” “Continue” opens Send with the list already chosen under “Recipients”; nothing is sent until you press Send there. With no Ready email, it reads “No email is ready to send yet. When you mark one as Ready, it shows here.” Sending needs “Edit and send”. Read Send an email.
Delete one. Open it and press “Delete the list”. The contacts stay.

When a field a list uses is gone, its condition reads “No longer available” and matches nobody.

Active, pending and no longer receive

“People” has four views, each with its number:

“Active”: “Everyone you can write to, and the people kept only as contacts.” It is the number in the sidebar.
“Pending confirmation”: “People who signed up on a website and have not confirmed by email yet.” “Remove” takes one away; there is no resend.
“No longer receive”: “People who left everything, bounced or complained. They are kept so they are never written to again, and are not counted.”
“All”: “Every contact, also the ones who no longer receive.”

The “Can receive” column names what each contact can receive now. A contact with nothing shows “Only as a contact”, or why it stopped, for example “No longer receives · bounced”.

Can receive

Under “Can receive”, Contacts lists each newsletter and type of email with how many contacts can receive it now. Press one to see only them; “Show everyone” goes back. A search or a list only narrows: who can be written to is set by each purpose’s permissions.

Add a contact

In “People”, press “Add”.
Write their “Email” and any other details.
Under “Permission”, choose a “Purpose” and a “Basis” if they already gave you permission. Otherwise keep “No permission for now”.
With a purpose, tick the line that names it, for example “I declare that I have permission to write to this person for Notices.” It is required.
Press “Add the contact”.

“Their permission is optional: you can declare it later.” To bring in many people at once, read Import from Mailchimp or a file.

A contact’s page

Press a contact’s name to open their page:

“Details”: correct anything, then press “Save the changes”.
“Can receive”: one line per newsletter or type, with its proof, and what they “Cannot receive”. “Add to a newsletter or type” and “They asked to leave” are here. Read What a contact can receive.
“Never written to again”: shown when the address must not be written to, with the reason.
“Relations”: the entity they belong to.
“Tags”: “Add a tag”, or remove one.
“History”: “Everything that happened to this contact, newest first. It never holds what they opened or clicked.”

“Export this contact” gives you their details, permissions and history in one zip. Read Export your contacts.

Tag several at once

In “People”, tick the contacts on the page. To reach every contact that matches your search, conditions or list, not only this page, tick them all and press “Choose every match”.
Press “Tag” or “Remove a tag”.
Choose a tag, or write a new one in “Or a new tag”.
Press “Tag them” or “Remove the tag”.

In “People”, tick the contacts, or every match as above, up to 1,000 at once.
Press “Add to a newsletter or type”.
Choose the newsletter or type, its “Basis” and, when it needs it, “How and when they gave it”.
Tick the line that names it, for example “I declare that I have permission to write to these people for Notices.”
Press “Add them”.

Each contact keeps its own proof. Those who already had it, and those who cannot receive it, are skipped and counted.

Delete contacts

Press “Delete” on the contact’s page. For several, tick them in “People” and press “Delete”.
Leave “Never write to this address again” ticked, unless the address was mistyped.
Press “Delete the contact”, or “Delete them” for several. For more than 50, the box first asks you to write their number.

“Their permissions, tags and history are deleted with them.” With the box ticked: “We keep only the address and the proof of the permissions it ended, so no import adds it back.”

Entities

“Organisations, clubs and companies your contacts belong to.” They are in Contacts, under “Entities”.

Add one. Press “Add”, give it a “Name”, and press “Add the entity”. An entity is also made when you give a contact one that does not exist yet.
Its page shows its details, its “Current people” and its “Former people”.
Delete one. Press “Delete the entity”. “Its people stay in Contacts, with no entity.”

The contacts of one website

On a website’s overview in the Panel, “Contacts from this website” opens “People” with only the contacts who came from it. Press “Show everyone” to see them all again.

Messages from a website’s contact form arrive in your email, not in Contacts. Its sign-up form adds contacts, once each person confirms by email.

What each level can do

When you work in a team, each person’s level decides what they can do in Contacts:

“View” reads contacts, entities, lists and counts.
“Edit” also adds contacts without a permission, corrects details, tags, entities and categories, and saves lists.
“Edit and send” also declares bases, records that someone asked to leave, deletes contacts, imports, exports and makes types of email.

The holder can do everything. What a level does not allow shows greyed out, with who to ask. Read Working as a team.

When Email is paused

“Your contacts can still be read, corrected, exported, left and deleted. Adding, importing and declaring wait until it is back on.”