> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.retainful.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Audience overview

> How contacts, lists, and segments work together in Retainful.

Your audience is everyone Retainful knows about — customers synced from your store, subscribers from your signup forms, and contacts you've imported. Three concepts organize them:

## Contacts, lists, and segments

| Concept     | What it is                                                                             | Example                                                   |
| ----------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Contact** | One person, identified by their email address (and optionally phone).                  | `jane@example.com` with her order history and profile.    |
| **List**    | A static group you add contacts to and remove them from manually.                      | "Newsletter subscribers", "VIP customers".                |
| **Segment** | A dynamic group defined by rules. Membership updates automatically as contacts change. | "Ordered in the last 30 days", "Opened but didn't click". |

<Tip>
  Use **lists** for things people opt into, and **segments** for behavior-based targeting. A contact can be in any number of lists and segments at once.
</Tip>

## Subscription status

Every contact has an email subscription status that controls what you can send them:

* **Subscribed** — opted in to marketing. They receive campaigns and marketing automations.
* **Non-subscribed** — known to you (for example, a customer) but never opted in to marketing. They can still receive transactional-style messages where applicable.
* **Unsubscribed** — opted out. Retainful automatically excludes them from marketing sends.

Retainful enforces this for you — you can't accidentally email someone who unsubscribed.

## Where contacts come from

* **Store sync** — customers from Shopify or WooCommerce, kept up to date automatically.
* **Signup forms** — subscribers captured by your popups and embedded forms.
* **Imports** — CSV files from your previous email tool.
* **API** — contacts created by your own systems through the [REST API](/developers/api/contacts).

## What's in this section

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Manage contacts" icon="address-book" href="/audience/contacts">
    View profiles, activity timelines, and engagement history.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Lists" icon="list" href="/audience/lists">
    Create and manage static groups of contacts.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Segments" icon="filter" href="/audience/segments">
    Build rule-based groups that update themselves.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Import contacts" icon="file-import" href="/audience/import-contacts">
    Bring subscribers from another tool with the CSV wizard.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Export contacts" icon="file-export" href="/audience/export-contacts">
    Download your contacts whenever you need them.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Custom fields" icon="sliders" href="/audience/custom-fields">
    Store extra information on every contact.
  </Card>
</Columns>