# Your First Contact

Add your first subscriber to SendBeam.

## Navigate to Contacts

Contacts are the foundation of everything in SendBeam. Every email address you send to must
exist as a contact in your workspace. SendBeam stores each contact's email address, name,
status, tags, and any custom fields captured for them.

To reach the Contacts section, click **Contacts** in the left navigation bar. You
will land on the contacts list view, which shows all contacts in the workspace. If you have
just set up your workspace, this list will be empty.

**One workspace, many contacts:** Contacts belong to the workspace, not to
individual lists. A single contact can be a member of multiple lists and still appear only once
in your contacts table.

## Add a contact manually

For adding one or a small number of contacts, the manual form is the quickest option:

1. On the Contacts page, click the **Add Contact** button in the top-right corner.
2. Enter the contact's **Email address**. This is the only required field
  (up to 254 characters).
3. Optionally enter a **First name** and **Last name** (up to 100
  characters each). These are used in merge tags so you can personalise campaigns with
  `{{first_name}}`.
4. Optionally choose a **Source** (Manual, Import, API or Form) to record where the
  contact came from.
5. Click **Add Contact**. The contact is created immediately with the status
  **Subscribed** and will appear in your contacts list.

**Tip:** To put the contact on a list, open **Lists**, choose the list,
and enter their email address in the **Add Contact to List** box. To change their
status, open the contact and click **Edit**.

## Understanding contact status

Every contact in SendBeam has a status that controls whether they receive emails. Setting the
correct status is important for compliance with anti-spam regulations such as CAN-SPAM and GDPR.

- **Subscribed** — The contact has opted in and will receive campaigns and
  automations. This is the status to use when you have explicit permission to email someone.
- **Unsubscribed** — The contact has opted out of marketing emails. SendBeam will
  not send campaigns or automations to contacts with this status. Unsubscribes are set
  automatically when a contact clicks the unsubscribe link in an email.
- **Bounced** — A previous email to this address hard-bounced. SendBeam marks
  contacts as bounced automatically from delivery events and will not attempt to
  send to them again.
- **Complained** — The contact marked a message as spam. Like bounced contacts,
  complained contacts are excluded from future sends automatically.

Double opt-in is tracked per list rather than as a status: a contact added to a double opt-in
list stays **Subscribed** but is not mailed by campaigns sent to that list until
they click the confirmation email. On the Free plan every campaign, whatever its audience, only
reaches contacts who have confirmed a subscription.

An address that unsubscribes, bounces, complains or is deleted goes on the workspace's
**suppression list**. The API refuses to create it again, and a CSV import brings
it in as Unsubscribed. Only the person can bring themselves back, by subscribing again through
one of your [signup forms](https://sendbeam.io/docs/forms).

## Import contacts via CSV

If you are migrating from another platform or have a spreadsheet of subscribers, the CSV import
tool lets you add hundreds or thousands of contacts in one go.

To import contacts:

- On the Contacts page, click the **Import** button next to Add Contact.
- Download the example file to see the expected column format.
- Your CSV must include an `email` column. The other supported columns are `first_name` and `last_name`.
- Drop your prepared CSV file (up to 5 MB) onto the upload area and click **Import**.
- SendBeam will process the file and report how many contacts were imported, how many duplicates were skipped and how many rows were invalid.

**Tip:** The import page lets you choose the status new contacts get
(Subscribed or Unsubscribed), a source label, and whether existing contacts are skipped or
updated. Only import as Subscribed contacts you have explicit permission to email.

For a full walkthrough of the import tool, including how duplicates and plan limits are handled,
see the [CSV Import](https://sendbeam.io/docs/contacts/importing) guide.

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Source: https://sendbeam.io/docs/getting-started/first-contact