Contacts: import, organise and segment

Contacts are the people you talk to. Anyone who messages you is added automatically — you only need to import when you want to start the conversation rather than wait for it.

What is on the screen

• All Contacts — the full list, searchable and filterable by tag.
• Groups — saved collections of contacts you send to repeatedly.
• Custom Fields — the extra fields you have defined, such as city or plan.

Importing from a spreadsheet

1. Prepare the file

   A CSV or Excel file with one row per person. A phone column is the only hard requirement.
2. Put the country code on every number

   919876543210, not 9876543210. A number without a country code cannot be delivered to, and this is the commonest reason an import looks fine and the campaign does not.
3. Map your columns

   Name, phone and email map to built-in fields. Any other column can be mapped to a custom attribute, which you can then use as a template variable.
4. Tag the batch

   Give the whole import a tag such as oct-webinar. This is how you will select them for a campaign later, and adding tags afterwards is far more work than doing it now.

Tags, groups and custom fields

The practical difference: a tag answers who to send to, a custom field answers what to say to them.

Opt-outs

A contact marked opted out is excluded from every campaign and every drip sequence automatically. You can still reply to them in the inbox if they write to you — opting out stops you contacting them, it does not stop them contacting you.

Contacts from somewhere else

• Google Sheets — keep a sheet in sync with your contact list. See Integrations.
• Zoho CRM — two-way sync with your CRM records.
• The API — create and update contacts from your own systems. See Developer API.
• Your phone’s address book — when you connect a number by QR code, the contacts and chat history it already has come across at pairing.