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.

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 extra information relevant to your business: company name, birthday, subscription plan, region, loyalty level, and so on. You create them yourself and can use them for segmentation, personalisation, forms, and automation workflows. With a Start plan, you can create up to 5 custom fields; Essential allows up to 25, Pro up to 50, and Premium up to 100.

Interests

Interests are labels that indicate what a contact wants to receive or what they have interacted with. They can be assigned during an 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 sends campaigns to them. The status has 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 added in the last 30 days.

Open tracking consent

Every contact has an open tracking consent field with one of three values: "Yes", "No", or "Not set". The field is always visible, even if you have not activated the consent policy. An explicit "No" keeps a contact free from a tracking pixel even without an active policy. You cannot edit the field on the contact record. The value comes via an opt-in form, the profile page (reached via the footer link), an import, the API, or when you add a contact manually (in which case it is always "Not set").

The consent log shows the timestamp (in UTC), the new value, the source of the choice, and a short note for each change. The sources are: Opt-in form, Campaign, Profile page, API, Import, and Manual. Contacts from before the feature do not have a log and show a message that no history is available.

See Tracking settings for an explanation of the consent policy.

Segments

The detail page of each contact 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 that makes up your sendable audience.

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 they click the link in that email do they receive the confirmed status. This gives you documented consent for every contact on your list.

Blacklisted

Blacklisted contacts cannot receive any campaign 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 caused a hard bounce.
• You added them manually to or imported them into the blacklist.

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

The contact overview

Go to Contacts, then to All contacts. You 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 on a contact's name to open their detail page, which displays all field values, interests, status history, sources, and campaign interaction data.

Common mistakes to avoid

Not setting up contact data before importing

Custom fields must exist before you import contacts. If you import first and create fields later, you have to import every record again or update it manually 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 determines 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 that indicate what they want to receive or what they have interacted with. Segments are dynamic queries based on all 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.

Trying to manually confirm unconfirmed contacts

There is no way to manually change a contact from unconfirmed to confirmed. The contact must click the confirmation link themselves. If someone is stuck as unconfirmed, the right approach is to ask them to submit the opt-in form again or use a direct form link.

Deleting unconfirmed contacts instead of leaving them

Unconfirmed contacts do not count towards your active contact limit and do not receive campaigns. There is no harm in leaving them. Deleting them removes every trace of their attempt to subscribe, which can cause complications later if they get in touch.

Deleting a contact instead of blacklisting them

Deleting a contact removes all data, including the fact that they were ever in your database. If someone opted out or you no longer want to email them, put them on the blacklist instead of deleting them, so you keep a permanent record of their preference.

Next steps

• See "Adding contacts" for information on how to bring contacts into your account.
• See "Contact fields" for information on setting up default and custom fields.
• See "The blacklist" for information on managing blacklisted contacts and understanding the GDPR implications.
• See "Getting started with interests" for information on how interests work and how you can use them for segmentation.