Contacts, Tags & Lists
Contacts, Tags & Lists
Contacts are the foundation of ZingaConnect. Everything else, templates, campaigns, and the inbox, works against the contacts you hold and the segments you build from them.
Contacts
A contact is the canonical record for one person in your account. It holds:
- Identity — first and last name, display name, email, phone, and a separate WhatsApp number (a person may reach you on a different WhatsApp number than their primary phone).
- Company and location — a lightweight company name, plus city, country, address, and an optional map link.
- Consent and suppression — see below.
- Locale and timezone — used to localise and time-shift the messages you send.
Shared with ZingaShop
Contacts are shared across ZingaConnect and ZingaShop. A person who shops on your storefront and a person you market to in ZingaConnect are the same contact record. You do not maintain two separate lists, and you do not have to reconcile them by hand.
Because the same person can legitimately appear more than once (for example, two records created from a shared family email), ZingaConnect treats merging as a deliberate, reviewable action rather than silently combining records.
Consent and suppression
ZingaConnect tracks marketing consent per channel — email, SMS, and WhatsApp are each recorded separately, along with the date consent was captured. A contact might have agreed to email but not SMS; ZingaConnect respects that distinction on every send.
Separately from consent, each channel has a suppression state. A suppressed channel means "never send here, regardless of consent." Suppression is set automatically on a hard bounce or a spam complaint, and can also represent a hard opt-out. Before every message, ZingaConnect checks both: the contact must be consented and not suppressed on that channel to receive it.
Because consent lives on the shared contact, an unsubscribe captured anywhere, on your storefront or in ZingaConnect, applies everywhere.
Contact tags
Tags are free-form labels you attach to contacts (for example vip, newsletter, trade-show-2026). Each tag has a name and an optional colour.
Tags are shared across ZingaShop and ZingaConnect. A tag you apply to a customer in ZingaShop is visible on the same person in ZingaConnect, and the reverse. This makes tags a natural bridge for cross-app segmentation — tag high-value shoppers in ZingaShop, then target them with a ZingaConnect campaign.
Lists
A list is a named segment of your contacts. Lists are what campaigns target. There are two kinds:
| List type | Membership | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Static | An explicit set of contacts you add | A fixed audience — event attendees, a hand-picked group, an imported batch |
| Dynamic | A saved filter evaluated live | A self-updating segment that always reflects the current contact book |
Dynamic list filters
A dynamic list is defined by a filter. As contacts change, the list's membership tracks them automatically — you do not re-run anything. Available filter conditions include:
- Tags — contacts carrying one or more chosen tags. You can require any of the tags or all of them.
- Source — where the contact came from (for example your storefront, an import, a form, or the API).
- Consent — contacts who are marketing-consented and not suppressed on a chosen channel.
- Free text — a search across name, email, and phone.
An important safety rule: a dynamic list with no conditions resolves to nobody, not everybody. This prevents a half-built segment from accidentally targeting your entire contact book.
Reusing lists in campaigns
A campaign can target one or more lists at once; its audience is the de-duplicated union of every list it targets. A contact who appears in two of the campaign's lists is enrolled only once. This lets you compose an audience from several segments without worrying about sending duplicates.