Manage contacts

Manage contact properties, view activity, handle unsubscribes, and keep your audience clean.

Open the Audience tab in the sidebar to see every contact, search and filter them, and edit their details.

Contact verification

Every contact added to Brew is automatically verified to protect your sending reputation. You’ll see a verification status on each contact:

• Verified. The address is confirmed deliverable
• Pending. Verification is in progress (usually a few seconds)
• Suppressed. The contact was flagged as risky and won’t receive emails

Brew handles this in the background regardless of how the contact was added (CSV, API, integration, manual).

Suppressed contacts still appear in your contact list but are excluded from sends. This protects your bounce rate and sender reputation.

Contact properties

Every contact has properties, fields that store information you can use for personalization and segmentation.

Default properties

Property	Example	Merge tag	API name
Email	[e-mail]	{{{email}}}	email
First name	Philip	{{{firstName}}}	first_name
Last name	Sørensen	{{{lastName}}}	last_name
Source	CSV	{{{source}}}	source
Subscribed	Unsubscribed	N/A	subscribed
Created at	Oct 10, 2025, 3:02 PM	{{{createdAt}}}	created_at
Updated at	Oct 10, 2025, 3:02 PM	{{{updatedAt}}}	updated_at

Custom properties

Add custom properties for any additional data, demographics, plan, behavior, anything you want to use in personalization or segmentation.

To add a custom property:

1. Open the Audience tab
2. Click the contact-properties icon (rightmost icon in the audience table)
3. Select Add new property
4. Name it, pick a type, save

These field names are reserved and can’t be used for custom properties: created_at, updated_at, email, first_name, last_name, source, subscribed. Use alternatives like companyEmail or workEmail if you need similar fields.

Property types

String

Text values. Examples: "Enterprise", "New York", "Referred by Jane".

Number

Integers or decimals. Examples: 42, 99.95, 2500.

Boolean

True/false. Accepted formats: true/false, yes/no, 1/0.

Date

Unix timestamp (seconds or ms) or ISO date string.

Examples:

• 1704067200 (seconds)
• 1704067200000 (milliseconds)
• 2025-01-05
• 2025-01-05T14:30:00Z

Brew stores everything in UTC and displays times in your browser’s local time zone, small offsets between input and display are normal.

Activity timeline

Click any contact’s email in the Audience table to see their full activity timeline. Every event, in chronological order.

The timeline shows:

Email engagement

• Sent. When an email was delivered to the contact
• Opened. When they opened an email
• Clicked. When they clicked a link
• Hard bounced. Permanent failure
• Soft bounced. Temporary failure
• Marked as spam. They reported an email as spam
• Unsubscribed. They opted out

Audience events

• Added to audience. When the contact was first added
• Property updated. Any time a property changed

Unsubscribes

Every campaign and automation email includes an unsubscribe link automatically. You don’t have to add one or think about compliance.

When a contact clicks unsubscribe, they go to your branded unsubscribe page. Their status updates immediately and an “unsubscribed” event appears in their activity timeline.

What happens after unsubscribe:

• They stop receiving marketing emails (campaigns and automations)
• They continue to receive transactional emails like password resets, order confirmations, and account notifications
• The unsubscribe shows up in your analytics

Important rules:

• You can’t re-subscribe contacts from the UI. This protects against accidental re-subscription and keeps you compliant with CAN-SPAM
• CSV imports don’t re-subscribe contacts who’ve previously unsubscribed, even if Subscribed is set to true
• Hard bounces and spam complaints are handled separately from unsubscribes

Don’t delete unsubscribed contacts. If you re-add them later, they could end up subscribed again. Keep them in your audience so Brew can enforce their unsubscribe status.

Customize the unsubscribe page

Open Settings → Unsubscribe to preview and customize the page contacts see. You can adjust the copy, branding, and confirmation message. The unsubscribe link itself stays automatic in every email.

Updating contact properties

For individual contacts:

1. Click a contact in the Audience table
2. Edit any property
3. Click Save

For bulk updates, re-upload a CSV. Empty cells won’t overwrite existing values, so you can update only what’s changed.

Deleting contacts

To permanently remove contacts:

1. Filter or select the contacts to delete
2. Click the More menu (...) at the top of the table
3. Select Delete contacts
4. Confirm

Contact deletion is permanent. Deleted contacts are removed from all automations. This is different from unsubscribing or suppressing.

Programmatic management

For backend-driven contact management, use the Brew API to create, update, and delete contacts.

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