Contacts & segments

Who can do what

Everyone can see contacts and segments. Importing and adding contacts, building segments, and creating and running re-engagement rules are meant for org admins and supervisors. That limit is being rolled out and isn’t enforced yet, so today anyone can do them. Contact fields are defined by an org admin only. See Roles and permissions.

The contact list

Open Contacts in the sidebar. Three tabs sit along the top: Contacts, Segments and Re-engagement.

The list shows each contact’s name, phone, your contact fields as columns (until you define any, City, Product interest, Budget and Status), and tags. Columns that are empty for every contact on screen are hidden; click … empty columns hidden · Show to bring them back. More contacts load as you scroll. The search box finds contacts by name or phone.

If your workspace’s privacy setting hides phone numbers, the Phone column is hidden and the page says so.

Where contacts come from

• Conversations. A contact is created automatically the first time a conversation with a new number starts, whether the customer wrote to you or you messaged them (a broadcast included).
• Add contact. On the Contacts page, click Add contact, enter the phone with its country code (for example 919876543210) and, optionally, a name, and click Save.
• CSV import. See Import a CSV.
• The API. Your developers can push contacts from your app or CRM with the Contacts API.

A contact’s profile

Click a contact to open their profile. It shows their name, phone, opt-in status, tags and every field, how many conversations they have, and the date they were added. With several WhatsApp numbers, it lists their conversation on each number. Below that: the Flows they have been through and their answers, AI conversations, Forms filled, and Broadcasts received with the status of each.

History is matched to the contact by the last 10 digits of their number, so it still shows when a number was stored with and without its country code.

Import a CSV

Click Import CSV on the Contacts page (or Settings → Contacts → Upload CSV). The file needs a header row.

Column	Required	What it does
phone	Yes	The contact’s number. A bare 10-digit number is taken as an Indian number (+91). Rows without a usable number are skipped.
name	No	The contact’s name.
tags	No	Tags, separated by commas (put the cell in quotes when it has more than one).
opt_in	No	1, true, yes, y or opted_in marks the contact Opted in.
opt_in_status	No	Used when opt_in isn’t one of those: opted_in, opted_out or pending. With neither, the contact is Pending.
any other column	No	Stored as a field on the contact, under the column’s name.

contacts.csv

phone,name,city,rate_interest
9876543210,Ravi,Chennai,gold
9812300002,Priya,Mumbai,silver

When it finishes, the page says how many contacts were added or updated. The same number is never stored twice: a number already in your contacts, in any format, updates that contact.

An import replaces, it doesn’t merge

Importing a number you already have (or saving it again with Add contact) replaces that contact’s name, tags, fields and opt-in status with what the new row says. A column missing from the file, or an empty cell, clears that value, and a missing opt-in goes back to Pending. To update a few contacts, import a file with every column you want to keep.

Developers can import the same file format through the API: see Import Contacts (CSV).

Contact fields

Every extra column you import becomes a field on the contact. Settings → Contact Fields lets an org admin give those fields a label and a type, so they show as proper columns on the Contacts list and as the right kind of filter in Segments.

1. Open Settings → Contact Fields.
2. Enter the Key: letters, numbers and _ only. It must match the column name in your CSV (or the attribute your integration sends), for example party_type.
3. Enter the Label people will see, for example Party type.
4. Pick the Type. For a dropdown or multi-select, list the Options separated by commas.
5. Click Add field. Edit or delete a field from the list below the form.

Type	Use it for	In Segments
Text	Free text	Text conditions
Dropdown (single)	One value from a fixed list	Pick the value from the list
Multi-select	Several values from a fixed list	“contains any / all / none of”
Date	A date	Date conditions (before, after, in the last N days…)
Phone	A phone number	Text conditions

Defining a field doesn’t change the values already stored. If you type a field as Date and some contacts hold something that isn’t a date, a segment on that field skips them and tells you how many it couldn’t read.

Segments

A segment is a saved group of contacts defined by conditions, for example “city is Chennai and tagged gold”. Use segments as a broadcast audience, as the audience of a re-engagement rule, or just to look at a slice of your list.

Create a segment

1. Go to Contacts → Segments and click New segment.
2. Choose Match all conditions (every condition must hold) or Match any condition (one is enough).
3. Click Filter and pick a field, then an operator and a value. Add as many conditions as you need. The table below updates live with the contacts that match.
4. Type a name, or use the button beside the name box to suggest one from the conditions.
5. Click Create segment.

You can filter on:

• Dates: Date (when the contact was added), Last updated, and Reply window expires (when their 24-hour reply window closes).
• Your contact fields (or, before you define any, a standard set: City, State, Country, Company, Stage, Status, Source, Product Interest, Budget and Email).
• Tag.
• Opt-in status: Opted in, Opted out or Pending.

Operators

Field type	Operators
Text, dropdown, phone	is, is not, contains, does not contain, starts with, ends with, is any of, is none of, is set, is blank
Date	on, before, after, is between, in the last … days, in the next … days, today, yesterday, this month, is set, is blank
Multi-select	contains any of, contains all of, contains none of, is blank
Tag	has tag, does not have tag, has any of, has all of, has no tags
Opt-in status	the text operators, with Opted in, Opted out or Pending as the value

“In the last / next … days” takes a whole number from 1 to 3,650. A condition still missing its value shows needs a value, and the builder warns that it isn’t being applied, so the segment matches more contacts than the filters show. Fill it in or remove it before you save.

Segments update themselves

A segment built from conditions is dynamic: it is worked out again every time it is used, so the Total contacts column on the Segments page is always current, and a contact who starts matching the conditions is in it the next time you use it.

From the ⋯ menu on a segment you can Edit filters, Rename, Copy link (a link that opens the segment’s contacts), and Delete it. Re-engage (WhatsApp) takes you to the Broadcast page. Click a segment’s name to see its contacts. Drag segments to reorder the list.

Combine segments (union and intersection)

Click Combine (you need at least two segments), pick 2 to 10 segments, name the result and choose:

• Union: a contact is included if they are in any of the chosen segments.
• Intersection: a contact is included only if they are in all of them.

A combined segment is a fixed list: it holds the contacts that matched at the moment you combined, and it doesn’t change when the segments it came from do. Its Filters column says it is a union or an intersection. To refresh it, open Edit filters on it and click Create union (or Create intersection) again: that updates the same segment rather than making a new one.

The 20,000-contact cap

When a segment is turned into a list of people (as a broadcast audience, a re-engagement audience, or when combining), it includes at most 20,000 contacts. The count on the Segments page can show more than that, but only 20,000 are used. Split a larger audience into several segments, for example by city or by date added.

Re-engagement rules

A re-engagement rule sends an approved template to contacts who haven’t messaged you for a while. Find it under Contacts → Re-engagement.

Rules never send on their own

There is no schedule. A rule only sends when someone clicks Run now. Active doesn’t mean automatic. Paused means the rule refuses to run even if Run now is clicked.

Create a rule

Click New rule and set:

Setting	What it does	Default
Rule name	Your label for it.
Audience	All contacts (org-wide) or one of your segments.	All contacts
Approved template	The message to send.
Quiet days	A contact qualifies only if they haven’t sent you a WhatsApp message for this many days. Contacts who have never messaged you always qualify. 1 to 365.	14
Cooldown days	After this rule sends to someone, it won’t send to them again for this many days, however often you click Run now. Counts this rule’s sends only. 1 to 365.	7
Max / run	The most contacts one Run now sends to. The rest are left for the next run. Up to 5,000.	200

Quiet contacts are always outside their 24-hour window, so only an approved template can reach them.

Pick a plain template. Run now sends the template exactly as approved, with nothing filled in:

• A template with variables ({{1}}) fails for every contact. The form warns you if you pick one. Use a broadcast to send a template with variables.
• Templates with a location header, or a button that needs a value (a link ending in a variable, an offer code), can’t be chosen.
• A header file you attach in the form isn’t sent, so don’t pick a template with an image, video or document header either.

Run it

An audience includes at most 20,000 contacts, All contacts included (see the cap).

Click Run now on the rule. When it finishes you see how many were sent, skipped and failed. A contact is skipped when they have no phone number, have unsubscribed, were sent this rule within the cooldown, have messaged you within the quiet days, or the run reached Max / run. The Last run column shows when it last ran.

Re-engagement messages go out from your workspace’s default WhatsApp number, and Meta charges them like any template message (see Billing & wallet).

Opt-in and unsubscribes

There are two separate things, and only one of them stops messages.

• Unsubscribed (STOP). A contact who sends STOP (or unsubscribe, opt out and similar) goes on the Unsubscribed Contacts list on the Broadcast page. Everyone on that list is left out of every broadcast and every re-engagement rule until they send START or you re-subscribe them. See Unsubscribes for the exact keywords.
• Opt-in status (Opted in, Pending, Opted out) is a field on the contact, set by your import or your integration. It shows on the contact’s profile and you can filter segments on it. It does not stop broadcasts by itself, and replying STOP doesn’t change it.

To send marketing only to people who agreed to it, build a segment with Opt-in status is Opted in and send to that segment.

Exports

There is no export of the contact list from the dashboard. Each broadcast has its own per-recipient report you can download as CSV; see Delivery report.