Add new contacts to your Brew audience for targeted email marketing
To send campaigns, automations, and transactional emails with Brew, you’ll need to add contacts to your audience. Brew makes it simple to import existing contacts and collect new ones through multiple methods.
Brew offers four ways to add contacts to your audience.
We recommend importing your existing contacts via CSV first, then setting up forms, integrations, or API to collect new contacts going forward.
Upload a spreadsheet with contacts — duplicates are removed automatically
Create customizable forms to collect contacts directly on your website or landing pages
Connect your tools and platforms to automatically add contacts when people sign up, make a purchase, or take any other action
Use our API to automatically sync contacts from your application, database, or custom tools
Every contact in Brew has properties that store information about them. These properties can be used for personalization in your emails and for segmenting your audience.
All contacts include these default properties:
Property | Description | Example |
---|---|---|
Contact’s email address (required) - used as the unique identifier | [email protected] | |
First Name | Contact’s first name | Jane |
Last Name | Contact’s last name | Smith |
User ID | Unique external identifier from your system (optional) | user_12345 |
Source | Where the contact originated from (defaults to “API” or “Form”) | Website signup |
Subscribed | Whether the contact can receive marketing emails | true |
In addition to default properties, you can create custom properties to store additional information about your contacts. These can include:
Reserved Field Names: The following field names are reserved and cannot be used for custom properties: email
, firstName
, lastName
, userId
, source
, subscribed
, and subscriptionGroups
. Use descriptive alternatives like companyEmail
or workEmail
if you need similar fields.
To add a custom property to your audience:
Brew supports four types of custom properties:
String
Text-based information (names, descriptions, categories, etc.)
Supported format: Any text value
Examples: “Enterprise”, “New York”, “Referred by Jane”
Number
Numeric values (counts, amounts, measurements, etc.)
Supported format: Integers and decimals
Examples: 42, 99.95, 2500, -15, 3.14159
Boolean
True/false values
Supported formats:
Examples: true, no, 1
Date
Date and time values
Supported formats:
Unix Timestamps (API):
Human-readable formats (CSV/Forms):
Examples:
Custom properties are powerful for segmenting your audience and personalizing your emails.
Each contact in your audience has a detailed profile page that shows their properties and activity history. To view a contact’s profile:
This opens the contact profile view, which includes:
Discover how to handle bounces, manage suppression lists, and maintain contact data
If you already have contacts that you want to import into Brew, the simplest way to get started is with a CSV upload.
Prepare your CSV file
Format your CSV file with at least these columns:
Include any custom properties you want to add as additional columns in your CSV.
Import your contacts
Review import results
After uploading, you’ll see a summary of:
Brew will not re-subscribe contacts who have previously unsubscribed, even if they’re included in your CSV import.
For detailed CSV import instructions, see our CSV Upload Guide.
To continuously grow your audience, you’ll want to set up at least one method for collecting new contacts:
Add a sign-up form to your website to collect new subscribers:
For detailed instructions, see our Sign-Up Forms Guide.
Connect Brew to your existing tools to automatically sync contacts:
This ensures new customers, leads, and users are automatically added to your audience.
For programmatic contact management, use our REST API:
Visit our API Documentation for complete reference.
Once you’ve added contacts to Brew, you have two main methods for targeting your communications: Audiences and Subscription Groups.
Dynamic filters based on contact properties and engagement
Explicit membership groups with subscription preferences
Our team is ready to support you at every step of your journey with Brew. Choose the option that works best for you:
Type in the “Ask any question” search bar at the top left to instantly find relevant documentation pages.
Click the sparkle ✨ icon next to the “Ask any question” search bar in the top left to chat with our AI assistant that’s been trained on our entire documentation.
Click “Open in ChatGPT” at the top right of any page to analyze documentation with ChatGPT or Claude for deeper insights.
Type in the “Ask any question” search bar at the top left to instantly find relevant documentation pages.
Click the sparkle ✨ icon next to the “Ask any question” search bar in the top left to chat with our AI assistant that’s been trained on our entire documentation.
Click “Open in ChatGPT” at the top right of any page to analyze documentation with ChatGPT or Claude for deeper insights.
Book time with our founders for personalized guidance on strategy, best practices, or complex implementation questions.
Need immediate assistance? Reach us at +1-(332)-203-2145 for urgent issues or time-sensitive questions.
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Contact us at [email protected] for detailed inquiries or if you prefer not to use Slack.