Why it matters
Contacts are the central record for messaging in Whippy. Keeping contact details, preferences, and related data accurate helps teams reach the right people, avoid messaging mistakes, and build useful audiences.
Key Concepts
Contact record: A person in Whippy with fields such as name, phone, email, address, birth date, language, default channel, external ID, and blocked status.
Communication preferences: The contact-level settings that determine whether a contact can receive messages through specific channels or locations.
Tags: Labels used to sort, filter, and bulk update contacts.
List membership: The static lists a contact has been added to manually, by import, or through a bulk action.
Related objects: Structured records associated with the contact, often synced from another system.
Bulk actions: Actions applied to selected contacts, such as adding tags, changing list membership, adding contacts to a sequence, or unsubscribing contacts.
Step-by-Step: Review a contact
Open Contacts from the main sidebar.
Select All contacts.
Use Search or Filter to find the contact.
Open the contact from the table.
Review the contact details, tags, lists, communication preferences, and related activity.
Select Edit contact when core contact details need to change.
Use the available contact actions when you need to add the contact to a sequence or unsubscribe the contact.
Tips and Best Practices
Use the phone number, email, and external ID consistently so imports and integrations can match records correctly.
Use tags for simple labels and segments for dynamic audiences.
Check communication preferences before sending if a contact may have opted out.
Keep the default channel current when a contact should usually receive messages through a specific channel.
Troubleshooting
Issue | Possible Cause | Fix |
A contact cannot be messaged | The contact is blocked, unsubscribed, missing a valid destination, or restricted by communication preferences | Open the contact and review blocked status, phone or email details, and communication preferences |
A duplicate contact appears | Imports or integrations used different identifiers for the same person | Compare phone, email, and external ID values, then correct the source data before importing again |
Contact data looks incomplete | The record was created manually, imported with missing columns, or synced before all fields were available | Edit the contact or update the import or integration source |