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Audience → Contacts is your full contact directory. Search by name or email, filter by list or segment, and click any contact to open their profile.

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The contact profile

Each contact’s page brings together everything Retainful knows about them:
  • Profile details — name, email, phone, location, and any custom fields.
  • Subscription status — whether they can receive marketing email (and WhatsApp, if connected).
  • Activity timeline — a chronological feed of everything that happened: emails opened and clicked, lists joined, forms submitted, orders placed, and custom events from your integrations.
  • Engagement analytics — how they interact with your emails over time.
The activity timeline is the fastest way to answer “why did this customer get that email?” — it shows which automation or campaign sent each message.

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Add a contact manually

  1. Go to Audience → Contacts and click Add contact.
  2. Enter at least an email address; name, phone, and other fields are optional.
  3. Choose their subscription status and any lists they should join.
Only mark a contact as Subscribed if they actually gave you permission to email them.
For more than a handful of contacts, use the import wizard instead.

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Edit or delete a contact

Open the contact and click Edit to change their details, or Delete to remove them entirely. Deleting a contact removes their profile and history. If someone asks to be removed under privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA), deleting their contact honors that request.

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Bulk actions

Select multiple contacts in the directory to act on them together:
  • Subscribe / Unsubscribe — change marketing status in bulk.
  • Add to / remove from list — reorganize group membership.
  • Send double opt-in — ask contacts to confirm their subscription by email.
  • Delete — remove many contacts at once.
Large bulk actions run in the background — you’ll see progress and can keep working.

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Single vs. double opt-in

  • Single opt-in: a contact who submits your form is subscribed immediately.
  • Double opt-in: the contact receives a confirmation email and must click it before they’re marked subscribed. Slower list growth, but higher quality and required by law in some countries.
You can configure your opt-in preference under Settings → Email → Opt-in.