How does contact management work in ActiveCampaign?

This article walks you through the various contact management features we offer. We'll also provide examples of when you might use these features and where to find them in your ActiveCampaign account.

Take note

How your contact limit is calculated depends on when you created your account:

• Accounts created on or after November 3, 2025: All contacts, regardless of their list status, count towards your contact limit. Learn more about contact list statuses
• Accounts created on or before November 2, 2025: Only active contacts count towards your contact limit 

What is a contact?

A contact is an individual in your database with a unique email address, unique phone number, or both. You cannot create a contact record without an either one of these items.

Once you have the contact information, you can send marketing messages to opted-in contacts via:

• Email Marketing (email address needed)
• SMS Marketing (phone number needed) (SMS add-on)
• WhatsApp Messaging (phone number needed) (WhatsApp add-on)

Defining contact types

Email-only contacts are contacts that only have an email. For email-only contacts, an email address counts as a single contact, no matter how many lists the contact is subscribed to. 

Phone-only contacts are contacts that only have a phone number.  You may need to turn on the option to use phone-only contacts. Learn more about phone-only contacts.

Phone and email contacts are contacts that have both an email and a phone number. 

How contacts are made when a contact submits a form

This section explains how contact information is applied to new and existing contact records in ActiveCampaign when a contact submits their information via a form. 

Email-only forms

When email-only contacts are created using email-only forms, the following workflows apply:

Phone-only forms

When phone-only contacts are created using phone-only forms, the following workflows apply:

Email and Phone forms

When email and phone contacts are created using forms that collect both email address and phone number, the following workflows apply: 

What is the Contacts Overview page?

This is the page you see after clicking Contacts on the left menu. It displays a sortable, searchable list of your contacts.

Most bulk contact management takes place on this page. From here, you can sort and search your contacts, bulk edit your contacts, create advanced searches and segments, and open up individual contact records.

Filter, sort, and adjust columns

You can filter contacts by the list they are on, the tags they have, and their status (confirmed, unconfirmed, unsubscribed, or bounced).

You can display additional columns by clicking the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of the contact list.

Basic Contact search

You can use the search field to find a contact by name or email address. As you type, the Contacts Overview page displays rows of contacts that match your condition. 

Advanced search

Use the Advanced Search tool to locate a group of contacts that match specific conditions. For instance, you may want to see the contacts that have viewed a particular product on your site or all the contacts that live in a specific state of the U.S.

Learn about Advanced Search.

Bulk Editor

The Bulk Editor is a time-saving feature that allows you to update a group  of contacts. For example, you can: 

• Add to or unsubscribe contacts from lists
• Add to or remove contacts from automations
• Add or remove tags from contacts
• Update contact field values

Learn about the Bulk Edit tool.

Manage tags

Add tags to contacts to help group and organize them in your account. You can also use tags to add information to your contact (in addition to using default and custom fields).

The Manage Tags feature lets you create and edit contact tags. You can merge duplicate tags and also describe a tag's purpose so that you don't forget why a tag was created or what it indicates.

Learn about managing tags. 

Custom Contact Fields

Custom contact fields store additional information about your contacts. The custom fields that make sense for your business may be different than what someone else needs, so we've made custom fields very flexible and you can create unlimited fields.

There are a variety of field types you can use to store different types of data:

You can also click from the Contact Record to manage these fields.

Learn about Custom Contact Fields.

Contact Scoring

Contact scoring gives you a numerical score that can indicate the contact's fit for your product and level of engagement so that you can prioritize your leads and treat them differently depending on their score. It's a flexible, valuable feature to marketers and salespeople, with many applications throughout the customer lifecycle.

Click “Scoring” on the left panel to manage your contact scores.

Learn about Contact Scoring.

Database Sync

Database Sync lets you quickly import contacts from a MySQL, MSSQL, or PostgreSQL database.

To access Database Sync to import your contacts, click "Database Sync" on the left panel. 

Learn about Database Sync.

Manage Exclusions

You may not want to send to groups of email addresses. For instance, you might find that you are getting poor quality contacts from certain domain names. With our exclusion feature, you can block those email addresses so that no emails get sent to them.

To access the Exclusions List, click "List Exclusions" on the left panel. Learn about managing exclusions.

Remove unengaged contacts from your list(s)

Use the "Expedited List Cleanup" automation to remove inactive contacts from your account. Doing so keeps your lists healthy and can improve open rates over time.

Learn how to set up the "Expedited List Cleanup" automation. 

This help article contains information to help you prepare for GDPR. See Article 16, Right to rectification.

Learn about GDPR.

What is a contact record?

 A contact record aggregates and organizes all the information you've collected about a contact. You can edit and add information from the record and a variety of contact management features are available to you. 

For example, you can subscribe and unsubscribe the contact from lists, filter lists by status and source, start and stop automations, add and remove tags, create tasks, and add notes. The contact record also displays a stream of the contacts recent activity. 

List filters

In the Lists section of the Contact Record, you can sort the lists a contact is associated with by “Status” and “Source.” 

To filter the contact lists, click the "Status" or "Source" dropdown fields to the right of the list and make a selection. 

To view the data summary for a specific list, hover over the list on the Contact Record. A modal with the "List," "Channel," "Status," and "Source" data will pop up. Click “See more” in the hover modal or click the list name to view details about the specific list data. 

“Status” includes Active, Unconfirmed, Unsubscribed, or Bounced statuses. Learn more about contact list statuses. 

“Source” refers to how the contact was added to the list. You can view the “Source” by hovering over a list in the Contact Record and view the details of the “Source” by clicking “See more” in the hover modal. 

Below are the “Source” filter options and how contacts can be added via that source:

1. Contact
   • Via email 
   • SMS
   • By a subscriber action
   • Via Form [name]
   • Via form after accidentally unsubscribing 
2. Manually
   • Via bulk contact edit
   • By admin user
   • Bounced from campaign
   • Unsubscribed from the campaign providing the reason or no reason given 
   • Imported into list from file (includes CSV Import or copy/paste)
   • Synced into list via [system’s name] or Synced into list via unknown
3. Automation
   • Automation [name]
   • API
4. Unknown
   • This option appears if the source of how the contact was added to the list is unknown