Where contacts come from

Every contact records a Source, and the Contacts page can filter by it using All sources. There are four ways in.

CSV import

You uploaded them against a list. See Import contacts from a CSV.

Store sync

Customers from a connected Shopify store, arriving continuously rather than as a one-off import. See Connect your Shopify store.

Ad leads

Lead-form submissions from Meta or Google Ads, filed by your routing rules. See Route ad leads into the right list.

API and website

Contacts created through the public API or by your own site. See Create and manage API keys.

Why the source matters

Not because of where someone came from, but because of what consent came with them:

• A store customer carries their shop marketing preference.
• An ad lead carries the lead form's consent setting — which is often not marketing consent at all.
• An imported contact carries whatever you had when you collected the address, which the system cannot verify for you.

This is why a list of 5,000 ad leads can have a few hundred mailable contacts and nothing is broken. See What "N mailable from M" means.

Using it to diagnose

When a batch of contacts behaves oddly — none of them mailable, all bouncing — filter by Source first. Problems almost always belong to a whole source rather than to scattered individuals, and seeing that immediately tells you where to look.

Next: open Contacts and use the All sources filter to see how many contacts each route has brought in.