The contact record
Each contact carries:Identity
Display name and E.164 phone number — the two required fields for any contact, whether created manually, via API, or through a CSV import.
Tags
Free-form segmentation labels (
vip, newsletter, 2026-winter). Tags are the shared primitive across Inbox, Contacts, and Campaigns — tag a contact once and it’s usable as an audience filter everywhere.Avatar
An initials-based fallback by default, or an operator-uploaded photo. See Contact avatars for why WhatsApp itself never supplies one.
Consent state
Marketing opt-out status, set automatically when a contact replies
STOP (or a localized equivalent) to a marketing template — excluded from future campaign audiences by default.Finding and filtering contacts
The Contacts list supports search and filtering by tag and other attributes, backed by server-side queries so it scales past the initial page of results. From an open conversation in the Inbox, the same contact record is visible in the sidebar — updates made from either surface are immediately reflected in the other.Creating contacts
Contacts are created in three ways:- Automatically — the first time someone messages your WhatsApp number.
- Manually — add a single contact by name, phone, and tags directly from the Contacts page.
- Bulk import — upload a CSV of contacts in one pass. See Contacts CSV import for the exact column format, phone normalization rules, and troubleshooting.
Segmentation for campaigns and journeys
Tags (and any combined filter criteria) built here become the audience definition for Campaigns and entry conditions for Journeys. There’s no separate “audience” data model — a campaign audience is just a contact query.Margaret and contacts
Margaret has direct, approval-gated access to contact data: she can find a contact by name, phone, or email, pull up recent conversations and tags, and — with your approval — update fields or add/remove tags for segmentation. Ask her “find contacts taggedvip who haven’t had an inbound in 60 days” instead of building the filter by hand.
See also
- Contacts CSV import — bulk import format, limits, and troubleshooting.
- Contact avatars — how profile pictures are rendered and uploaded.
- Campaigns — using tags as a broadcast audience.
- Data Model — the underlying
contacts,tags, andcontact_tag_linkstables.