Contacts, lists, and tags
Your audience lives in Contacts. Understanding how to organise them makes every campaign easier to target.
Contacts
A contact is one person, identified by their email address. Each contact has a status (active, unsubscribed, bounced, or spam), any tags you've applied, and custom fields you've imported or collected. Mailee de-duplicates by email, so importing the same person twice updates them rather than creating a duplicate.
Lists
A list is a named group of contacts — for example Newsletter subscribers or Customers. Lists are the usual target for a campaign. A contact can belong to several lists.
Tags
A tag is a flexible label you attach to contacts — vip, trial, webinar-2026. Tags are lightweight and combine freely, which makes them ideal for building segments.
Segments
A segment is a live filter — "everyone tagged vip who opened the last campaign". Unlike a static list, a segment updates automatically as contacts match or stop matching. Use segments to target by behaviour and attributes without maintaining a list by hand.
Importing
Under Contacts → Import, upload a CSV and map your columns to fields. Unmapped columns become custom fields you can personalise with or segment on later.
Keeping it clean
Mailee suppresses bounced, complained, and unsubscribed addresses automatically — you'll never accidentally email them again. Periodically removing long-inactive contacts keeps your engagement (and your deliverability) high.