Email Marketing

Managing Your Email List

How to view, organize, and maintain your email contacts — including tags, segments, list cleaning, and imports.

Managing Your Email List

Your email list is one of the most valuable assets your business has. Unlike social media followers (which belong to the platform), your email list belongs to you. No algorithm can take it away.

But a healthy email list doesn't just happen on its own. It needs a little care and attention. This guide covers everything you need to know about managing your contacts, organizing them into useful groups, and keeping your list in good shape.

Where Your Email List Lives

Your email list isn't a separate tool or spreadsheet. It lives inside your CRM -- the same place where all your contacts, leads, and client information are stored.

Every person in your CRM is a potential email recipient. When someone fills out a form on your website, books a discovery call, or gets added manually, they show up in your contacts. From there, you can email them (as long as they've opted in, of course).

To see your contacts, go to Contacts in the left sidebar of your dashboard. You'll see a list of everyone in your system, with their name, email, phone number, tags, and other details.

Tags vs. Lists: What's the Difference?

This is one of the most common questions, and it's an important distinction to understand.

Lists

Lists are groups you send emails to. When you create an email campaign, you choose a list (or a tag, or a segment) as your audience.

The practical difference: tags describe a contact, lists define who receives a specific communication.

When to use lists: When you have a distinct group that receives a specific type of communication, like a newsletter list or an event attendee list.

In most cases, you'll use tags more than lists. Tags are more flexible, and you can always send an email campaign to contacts with a specific tag. Don't overthink the difference -- if you're using tags to organize your contacts, you're doing it right.

Viewing and Filtering Your Contacts

Your contact list can grow quickly, especially once your forms, booking pages, and website are generating leads. Here's how to find exactly who you're looking for.

Basic Filtering

From the Contacts page, you can filter by:

Tags -- Click on a tag to see only contacts with that label. Great for quick lookups like "show me everyone tagged as Newsletter Subscriber."
Date added -- Find contacts who were added during a specific time period.
Source -- See where contacts came from (form submission, booking, manual entry, import).
Status -- Active, unsubscribed, bounced, etc.

Searching

Use the search bar at the top to find a specific person by name, email address, or phone number. This is the fastest way to pull up an individual contact.

Contact Profiles

Click on any contact to open their profile. Here you'll see everything about them in one place:

Their contact information (name, email, phone)
All their tags
Every interaction they've had with your business (form submissions, emails opened, links clicked, bookings made)
Notes you or the system has added
Their position in your pipeline (if applicable)

This profile is your single source of truth for every contact.

Creating Segments

Segments are dynamic groups based on behavior or attributes. Unlike tags (which are manually assigned or added via automation), segments update automatically based on the criteria you set.

Here are some useful segments you might create:

Engaged subscribers -- People who opened at least one email in the last 30 days
Cold contacts -- People who haven't opened an email in 6+ months
Website visitors who booked -- People who submitted both a contact form and a booking form
Clicked a specific link -- People who clicked the "Book Now" link in your last campaign
Recent leads -- People added in the last 7 days

Segments are powerful for sending targeted emails. Instead of blasting your entire list with a retreat announcement, you could send it only to people who clicked a retreat-related link in a previous email. These people have already shown interest -- they're much more likely to book.

To create a segment, go to Contacts → Smart Lists (or Segments, depending on your dashboard version) → Create New. Choose your criteria and save.

How Contacts Get Added

People end up on your email list in several ways:

Website forms. When someone fills out your contact form, newsletter signup, or any other form on your website, they're automatically added as a contact in your CRM. The appropriate tags are added automatically too (e.g., "Contact Form Lead" or "Newsletter Subscriber").

Booking pages. When someone books a discovery call, coaching session, or retreat consultation through your booking page, their contact info is captured and added to your CRM.

Manual entry. You can add contacts yourself. Go to Contacts → Add Contact, fill in their details, and add the relevant tags. This is useful for people you meet at events, networking sessions, or who reach out through other channels.

Automations. Your automated workflows can add tags, move contacts between lists, and update contact details based on behavior. For example, after someone completes a booking, an automation might tag them as "Client" and remove the "Lead" tag.

Imports. If you have an existing email list from another tool (Mailchimp, ConvertKit, a spreadsheet), we can import it for you. More on that below.

When People Unsubscribe

When someone clicks the unsubscribe link in one of your emails, they're automatically removed from receiving future emails. You don't need to do anything -- the system handles it.

Here's what happens behind the scenes:

Their contact profile is updated to show they've unsubscribed
They won't receive any future email campaigns or automated emails
They still exist in your CRM as a contact (their data isn't deleted)
If they ever want to resubscribe, they can fill out a form or you can update their status manually

Don't take unsubscribes personally. A few unsubscribes per campaign is completely normal and actually healthy. It means people who aren't interested are self-selecting out, which keeps your list engaged and improves your deliverability.

Cleaning Your List

This is one of the most overlooked aspects of email marketing, and it makes a bigger difference than most people realize.

Why cleaning matters: Email providers (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) track how your emails perform. If you're consistently sending to people who never open, never click, and never engage, email providers start to think your emails aren't valuable. Over time, this can cause your emails to land in spam -- even for the people who actually want to read them.

A smaller, engaged list will always outperform a large, unengaged one.

How to clean your list:

Every 3-6 months, look at contacts who haven't opened any of your emails in 6+ months.
Send them one last "re-engagement" email: "Hey, we noticed you haven't been opening our emails. Do you still want to hear from us? Click here to stay subscribed."
If they don't respond or click, remove them from your active email list.

This might feel counterintuitive -- why would you remove subscribers? Because those inactive contacts are dragging down your performance metrics and hurting your deliverability for everyone else.

A smaller, engaged list beats a large, unengaged one every single time. Don't chase big numbers. Chase quality subscribers who actually want to hear from you.

Importing Existing Contacts

If you have an existing email list from a previous tool (Mailchimp, ConvertKit, a spreadsheet, etc.), we can import it into your CRM for you.

Here's how it works:

Export your list from your current tool as a CSV file.
Send it to Korneel on Slack with a note about what the list is (e.g., "These are my newsletter subscribers from Mailchimp").
We handle the import. We'll map the fields (name, email, phone, etc.) and add the appropriate tags.
You review. We'll let you know when it's done, and you can check your contacts to make sure everything looks right.

One critical rule about imports: You must have permission to email every person on the list. This means they opted in at some point -- they signed up for your newsletter, booked a service, or otherwise gave consent to receive emails from you.

Never buy email lists or add people without their explicit permission. This violates GDPR, damages your sender reputation, and can get your email domain blacklisted. It's not worth it -- even if the list looks tempting.

Managing Tags Effectively

As your business grows, your list of tags can get a bit messy. Here are some tips for keeping things organized:

Use a consistent naming convention. Decide on a format and stick with it. For example:

"Newsletter Subscriber" (not "newsletter-subscriber" or "Newsletter subscriber" or "newsletter")
"Retreat Attendee 2025" (not "retreat2025" or "Bali retreat attendee")

Don't create too many tags. Every tag should serve a purpose. If you find yourself with dozens of tags that you never filter by or use in campaigns, it's time to consolidate.

Review your tags periodically. Every few months, look at your tag list and clean up any that are outdated, redundant, or unused.

Let automations handle tagging. Wherever possible, set up your automations to add and remove tags automatically. This reduces manual work and ensures consistency. For example, when someone books a discovery call, the automation can add "Discovery Call Booked" and remove "New Lead" automatically.

Common Questions

"Can someone be on my email list without being a contact in the CRM?" No. Every email recipient is a contact in your CRM. They're the same thing. This is actually one of the biggest advantages of your setup -- everything is connected.

"If someone unsubscribes, should I delete them?" No. Their contact profile is still useful for your records. They just won't receive marketing emails anymore. If they ever reach out again or book a service, their history is still there.

"How do I know if my list is healthy?" Look at your open rates. If you're consistently above 25%, your list is in good shape. If open rates are dropping below 15%, it's time to do some cleaning.

"Can I email someone who unsubscribed?" No. Once someone unsubscribes, you cannot send them marketing emails. You can still communicate with them directly (e.g., a personal email about their booking), but automated campaigns will skip them.

[VIDEO: Korneel shows how to view your email list, create segments, manage tags, and clean up inactive contacts]

Next Steps

Creating a Campaign -- Ready to email your list? Learn how to create and send your first campaign.
Managing Contacts -- Want to learn more about your CRM and how contacts work across your entire system? Head here.

This feature is part of our Growth Tools package. If you're interested in adding this to your setup, reach out to Korneel on Slack.

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