Contacts

Statuses

The Contacts page lists the open newsletter's contacts, newest signups first. Filter them by status or by tag, or search by email address.

First names, tags and fields

Besides an email address, each contact can have a first name, tags and values for your own fields. Open a contact's menu and click Edit details to change them.

• First name: what {{first_name}} shows in your emails. Greeting readers by name
• Tags: labels like vip or podcast, 50 per contact at most. Tags are lowercase, up to 40 characters, without commas. Tag lists everyone the page shows with its filters, or takes a tag off them.
• Fields: your own, like a company or a birthday, as text, a number or a date, 20 at most. Add them from Fields, at the top of the Contacts page. They're shared by your newsletters. Deleting a field hides its values, and adding it again brings them back.

A signup form, an import and the API can fill them in too. When someone signs up again, their first name and fields only fill in what's missing, and new tags are added to theirs.

Segments

A segment picks some of your contacts with a few conditions, and keeps up to date as they change. The Contacts page shows each one as a card with its count: click it to list its contacts, and the export follows. New segment opens the editor, with a few starting points:

• Engaged: opened in the last 30 days.
• New: signed up in the last 30 days.
• Inactive: missed at least 5 issues in a row.
• Never opened: never opened and signed up more than 30 days ago.

Conditions can be on opens and clicks, issues missed in a row, the number of emails opened, the signup date, where they signed up (your website's signup form, the form on your own site, an import, by hand or the API), the email address, a tag, whether they have a first name, and your own fields, 10 at most. A segment matches all of its conditions, or any of them. In the send step, pick one to send an issue to its contacts only. Who gets it

Counts are of active contacts, the ones an issue goes to. Conditions on dates count back from now, so “opened in the last 30 days” follows time, and a send reads its segment when it goes out. A segment that a scheduled or sending issue goes to can't be deleted until that issue goes elsewhere.

Adding someone by hand

On the Contacts page, click Add a contact and type their email address. It works like a signup on your website: they get your confirmation email if the newsletter confirms signups, or your welcome email if it's on. Without a plan, you can add 3 contacts a day, enough to try it on yourself.

For a whole list, import a CSV file instead: Importing contacts.

Changing a status, and deleting

Each contact's menu, at the end of their row, has what applies to them:

• Edit details changes their first name, tags and fields.
• Mark as active brings back a dormant contact: they get your next issue. On a pending contact, it skips the confirmation email, once you confirm they asked for your emails.
• Mark as dormant stops issues to an active contact without unsubscribing them, as the list cleanup does. Mark them active again any time.
• Unsubscribe stops every email to them.
• Resubscribe brings back someone who unsubscribed. Do it only when they asked: Botensten Mail asks you to confirm it, and keeps who did it and when. Someone who unsubscribed can't be marked dormant, so they only come back this way or by signing up again.
• Delete contact removes them with their dates and engagement, and can't be undone. For someone who unsubscribed, bounced or complained, Botensten Mail keeps a scrambled trace of the address, so adding it again never emails it. Anyone else can be added again like a new contact.

Bounced and complained contacts keep their status: their address can't receive email, or they marked one of your emails as spam. No email goes out when you change a status. The API and AI assistants can change statuses too, with the same rules.

Exporting

Export downloads the contacts that match your filters as a CSV file, with their first name, tags and a column per field. Its columns go back in through the import as they are, so it's also a backup.

Addresses no one can reach

When an address hard bounces or turns out to be a spam trap, Botensten Mail remembers it for every sender: imports and signups leave it out, and sends skip it, showing the contact as bounced. A bounced address is remembered for 180 days, a spam trap for good.