# Contacts and Guest Data

Section: Guest Management · Page: https://artsvp.com/docs/guest-management/contacts-and-data

Every person who books, attends, or is invited to one of your events is
remembered. Contacts is your organisation's address book, built up automatically
as guests come through, the audience for your next private view, already
gathered. It lives under **Settings** → **Contacts**, next to the **Mailing
List** of guests who opted in to hear from you.

## Contacts (Plans: Pro & Expert)

Each contact arrives with their activity attached: which events, and what they
did. Several emails can belong to one person. Search the book, sort it, and
organise contacts into **lists** and **tags**. Import contacts from a CSV, and
export the book (or a single list) back to CSV. The pay-off comes at the next
event: from a list, invite everyone on it in one go. See
[Invitations](https://artsvp.com/docs/guest-management/invitations).

### Several emails

Collectors, assistants, and press often book with more than one address. Those
emails can belong to one contact. The list shows one row per person; a +1 next
to their email means more addresses are attached. Searching any of those
emails, or any name they go by, opens the same person.

Open a contact from **Settings** → **Contacts**. What you see is the whole
person: **Invites**, **Bookings**, and **Attended** count every email, and
**Recent activity** spans them all (a row that came through another address
says *via* that email). Names used with the other emails appear as
**Also known as**.

Emails are changed only under **Emails**, at the bottom of the contact:

1. Choose **Add an email** and enter the address.
2. If that address is new, it is added to this contact.
3. If it already belongs to someone in your book, the contact says
   **Already a contact** and asks whether to merge them. Choose
   **Merge contacts** to combine them, or **Cancel** to leave them apart.

A merged contact's **Note** keeps both notes, one after the other. You can
**Remove** an email at any time: it becomes a separate contact again, with
its own bookings and invitations. **Make primary** sets which email leads
the contact on the list. **Edit** corrects a spelling, or the name that
email goes by.

**Delete contact** removes the **Primary** email from your organisation.
Booking history is kept. Any other emails on the contact are not deleted;
each becomes a separate contact again.

One thing to be aware of: merging emails here is your organisation's
address book. It does not change a guest's
[ONE Pass](https://artsvp.com/docs/guest-management/onepass). Guests add extra emails
themselves on their pass. When you invite from a list, or pick a contact
while sending invitations, each email is still invited separately. A
**Download** of Contacts still lists one row per email.

Type one of those addresses in an **Email** field in **Invite Guests** or
**Add Guests** and a **Heads up** note appears if that person is already
on the guest list. It names them as they appear on the contact. If the
existing invitation or booking is filed under another name or email, the
note says so, for example *(under Jane Other, jane@studio.com)*. The
other name is left out when it matches the contact.

### Large imports

CSV imports are processed in batches, so a partial count may mean the import is
still running. If the import fails, you receive an email and an in-app notice.

Re-uploading the same contacts merges them by email address, so existing contacts
are updated rather than duplicated.

### Contact lists

Lists segment your contacts: *"Collectors"*, *"Press"*, *"2026 VIP preview"*.
They live on **Settings** → **Contacts**: there is no separate Lists page in the
settings sidebar. On Contacts:

1. Open **Filter** to pick a list and view only its contacts, or choose
   **Manage lists** to rename or remove lists.
2. Choose **New** → **New List** to create a list, or **New Contact** to add
   someone (and optionally put them on a list). CSV import sits in the same
   **New Contact** flow.

Deleting a list never deletes its contacts; they leave the list, nothing more.
An imported or exported list does not appear on an event's **Guestlist** until
you invite from it, open **Invite Guests** and pick the list there. See
[Invitations](https://artsvp.com/docs/guest-management/invitations).

> **Tip:** Keep one list per audience (collectors, press, members) rather than
> one per event. Event history is already tracked per contact, so lists can stay
> about who people are.

### Contact tags

Tags let you label contacts with short keywords (*vip*, *collector*, *press*).
The **New Contact** form has no tags field. Add tags through CSV import:

1. Go to **Settings** → **Contacts**, choose **New** → **New Contact**, then
   **Upload a CSV instead**.
2. Include a column headed **Tags**. Put several tags in one cell separated by
   commas: *collector, vip*.

Tags are merged with any the contact already has, so re-importing the same
contact adds new tags without removing existing ones. Tags are stored lowercase;
the importer lowercases them automatically. They appear in the **Tags** column
on Contacts. **Filter** on that page is for lists, not tags.

The contact card's **Tags** are from the person's bookings and invitations (a
booking link can pass its tags down to guests). Those are separate from the
contact's own tags and cannot be edited on the card.

When you **Filter** an event's guest list by **Tags**, you are filtering by the
tags on bookings and invitations (from booking links on the event's **Promote**
page, **Add Guests**, or **Invite Guests**), not by contact tags. See
[Booking links](https://artsvp.com/docs/guest-management/booking-links).

## Mailing list (Plans: All plans)

**Settings** → **Mailing List** collects the guests who opted in when booking or
RSVP'ing. The page is for viewing and exporting that list: pick a list, then
**Download List** for a CSV your newsletter tool can import. ARTSVP records the
consent and hands you the subscribers, but does not send newsletters itself, so
campaigns go out from your own newsletter platform. A mailing-list export is
not an invitation list: to invite those people, import the CSV into
**Contacts** (or add them when you send invitations).

A guest joins by ticking the opt-in on the booking or RSVP form, when
**Mailing List** is switched on under the event's **Settings** → **Details**.
That tick is the choice the booking keeps. Open the booking with **View
booking**, then choose **View more**: **On mailing list** reads **Yes** or
**No**, and the line cannot be edited. You cannot change a **No** to a
**Yes** there. **Add Guests** does not include the opt-in, so adding someone
yourself does not put them on the list.

When you create or manage a named mailing list, its **Opt-in text** sets the
checkbox label guests see as they book. **New list** and **Manage lists**
change that wording and the list's name. They do not change who has already
opted in.

One thing to be aware of: to correct a recorded consent, contact
[support](https://artsvp.com/docs/reference/support).

## Your data

Guest and contact data belongs to your organisation, and ARTSVP does not use it
for its own marketing. For the formal terms, see [Legal](https://artsvp.com/docs/reference/legal);
for exports, see
[Reporting and exports](https://artsvp.com/docs/reference/reporting-and-exports).

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Keep reading: [Invitations](https://artsvp.com/docs/guest-management/invitations) ·
[ONE Pass](https://artsvp.com/docs/guest-management/onepass) ·
[Reporting and exports](https://artsvp.com/docs/reference/reporting-and-exports) ·
[Organisation settings](https://artsvp.com/docs/settings/organisation-settings)

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