Understanding contacts

In Flexmail, a contact corresponds to a unique email address. You cannot add the same address twice, this is intentional. Working from a single, deduplicated database means your contact data stays accurate and consistent, and you always know exactly who you are sending to.

Each contact record can hold a range of data. The more complete your contacts, the more you can personalise and segment your campaigns.

What a contact consists of

Default fields

Every contact has five default fields available in every Flexmail account:

• Email address, the unique identifier for every contact, and the only required field.
• First name.
• Name.
• Language, the language in which the contact receives your emails and views your forms and profile page.
• Source, where the contact came from, required for GDPR documentation.

These fields are automatically translated into all your selected communication languages, so contacts always see field labels in their own language on their profile page.

Custom fields

Custom fields let you store any additional information relevant to your business, company name, birthday, subscription plan, region, loyalty tier, and so on. You create these yourself and can use them for segmentation, personalisation, forms, and automation workflows. On Essential subscriptions, you can create up to 25 custom fields. Pro subscriptions can add up to 50 custom fields, and Premium up to 100.

Interests

Interests are labels that indicate what a contact wants to receive or what they have engaged with. They can be assigned during import, through opt-in forms, by link tracking in campaigns, or through workflows. Contacts can also manage their own public interests on their profile page.

Status

Every contact has a status that determines whether Flexmail will send campaigns to them. Status is one of three values: confirmed, unconfirmed, or blacklisted.

Date added

The date and time the contact was first added to your account. This is set automatically and cannot be changed. You can use it in segmentation, for example to target contacts who joined in the last 30 days.

Segments

Each contact's detail page shows the segments they currently belong to. This updates automatically as contact data changes, so you always have an accurate view of how they are grouped.

Contact statuses

Confirmed

Confirmed contacts are active and can receive your campaigns. This is the main group your sendable audience lives in.

A contact becomes confirmed when they click the confirmation link in an opt-in email, when you import them (imports always create confirmed contacts), or when you add them manually.

Unconfirmed

Unconfirmed contacts have filled in one of your opt-in forms but have not yet clicked the confirmation link in the email Flexmail sent them. They are not part of your active audience and cannot receive campaigns.

Flexmail always uses double opt-in. When someone submits a form, they receive a confirmation email first. Only after clicking the link in that email do they move to confirmed status. This gives you documented consent for every contact on your list.

Blacklisted

Blacklisted contacts cannot receive any campaigns from your account. A contact ends up on the blacklist for several possible reasons:

• They clicked the unsubscribe link in one of your emails.
• They submitted a spam complaint.
• Their email address hard bounced.
• You added them manually or imported them directly into the blacklist.

Flexmail automatically skips blacklisted addresses in every campaign send, even if a blacklisted address appears in a segment you have selected. See "The blacklist" for full guidance on managing blacklisted contacts.

The contact overview

Go to Contacts, then All contacts. You will find three tabs, Confirmed, Unconfirmed, and Blacklisted, each corresponding to a status. Each tab shows the contact's email address, name, date added, and language. The Blacklisted tab also shows the reason and date of blacklisting.

Click any contact's name to open their detail page, which shows all their field values, interests, status

history, sources, and campaign interaction data.

Common mistakes to avoid

Not setting up contact data before importing

Custom fields need to exist before you import contacts. If you import first and create fields later, you have to re-import or manually update every record to fill in the missing data. Plan your database structure before your first import.

Treating language and source as optional

Both language and source feel administrative, but they do real work. Language controls what contacts see on their unsubscribe page and profile page. Source is your GDPR audit trail. Leaving them empty makes your database harder to manage and weaker from a compliance perspective.

Confusing interests with segments

Interests are labels stored on the contact, indicating what they want to receive or have engaged with. Segments are dynamic queries based on any contact data, including interests. An interest is something a contact has. A segment is a group you define. They work together but serve different purposes.

Next steps

• See "Add contacts" for how to bring contacts into your account.
• See "Contact fields" for how to set up default and custom fields.
• See "The blacklist" for how to manage blacklisted contacts and understand GDPR implications.
• See "Get started with interests" for how interests work and how to use them for segmentation

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