In Brevo, you can create and use contact attributes to store information about your contacts and personalize your communications.

What is a contact attribute?

Contact attributes are static values that define a contact. They are the different fields that appear on your Contacts page and on your contacts' details page. Contact attributes are key for storing and identifying pieces of information about the contacts in your Brevo account.

What information can I store in a contact attribute?

Default contact attributes

By default, some contact attributes are automatically created by Brevo and cannot be deleted:

• CONTACT_ID: stores the contact ID of your contacts. This contact attribute can only be retrieved after exporting your existing contacts.
• EMAIL: stores the email address of your contacts.
• LASTNAME: stores the last name of your contacts.
• FIRSTNAME: stores the first name of your contacts.
• SMS: stores the phone number of your contacts used for SMS.
• WHATSAPP: stores the phone number of your contacts used for WhatsApp.
• LANDLINE_NUMBER: stores the phone number of your contacts used for phone calls.
• OPT_IN: stores whether a contact has checked the GDRP field in your subscription form. It is automatically updated by Brevo.
• DOUBLE_OPT-IN: stores whether your contacts have confirmed their subscription through a double opt-in process. It is automatically updated by Brevo.
• CONTACT TIMEZONE: stores the timezone of your contacts.
• EXT_ID: stores the contact ID of your contacts created outside Brevo.

Some other pieces of information that are not contact attributes appear as columns on your Contacts page. They are also automatically created and updated by Brevo and cannot be deleted:

• CONTACT displays the following identifying information about your contacts, in order of priority: FIRSTNAME and LASTNAME, EMAIL, SMS.
• SUBSCRIBED displays whether your contacts are subscribed to your email, SMS, and WhatsApp campaigns.
• BLOCKLISTED displays whether your contacts are blocklisted from your email, SMS, and WhatsApp campaigns.
• DATE_ADDED stores the date when your contacts were added to Brevo. It is automatically updated by Brevo.
• LAST_CHANGED stores the date when information about your contacts was last updated. It is automatically updated by Brevo.

Custom contact attributes

Chances are, you need to store additional information that doesn't fit into the default contact attributes. You can create custom contact attributes to collect any other information you'd like about your contacts and meet your unique needs:

• Information about your contacts
  For instance, a real estate agent could gather information such as the potential buyers' budget, the desired number of bedrooms, etc.
• Contacts' preferences
  For instance, you could gather information on how often they prefer to receive emails or the type of content that interests them.
• Contacts' responses to a form
  For example, you could gather feedback about an event you organized or a product purchased by a contact.

How to populate contact attributes?

Once you have created your contact attributes, you can populate them with your contacts' information by importing new contacts or updating your existing ones:

• Through a manual entry in your database.
• Through a bulk import.
• By copy-pasting information from a spreadsheet.
• By using a plugin or integration to connect your website to Brevo.
• By automatically adding contacts from a landing page or subscription form.

To learn more, check our dedicated articles What are the options to import contacts to Brevo? and How can I update my contacts?.

How to use contact attributes?

One way to make your contacts feel cared for and nurture your relationship with them is to create personalized experiences. For example, you could suggest similar products to those already purchased by your contacts. To do this, you need to store their information in contact attributes and then target them based on those values.

Here are some examples of how you can use contact attributes to create personalized experiences for your contacts:

🎨 Create personalized message content

You can easily personalize your emails, SMS, and WhatsApp messages with contact attributes by adding placeholders, also known as variables, to your content. During sending, these placeholders will be replaced with information about your contacts, such as their name or email address.

Here's an example of what placeholders look like in an email and what a recipient would receive:

Email with placeholders	Email received by the recipient

To learn how to create personalized message content using contact attributes, check our dedicated articles:

• Personalize your emails with contact attributes
• Personalize your SMS messages with contact attributes
• Personalize your WhatsApp campaigns with contact attributes

✂️ Segment your contacts

Using segmentation based on contact attributes, you can divide a larger audience into smaller, more targeted groups based on specific characteristics or behaviors. This allows for more personalized and tailored marketing efforts and a better understanding of each group's needs and preferences.

Here is an example of how a pet shop owner could segment their contacts using contact attributes to target French dog owners:

To learn how to segment your contacts, check our dedicated articles:

• About segments
• Create a segment

🚀 Trigger automations

Contact attributes can be used to trigger automations based on specific criteria. For example, you could set up an automation to automatically send a welcome email containing images of dogs to contacts who subscribed to your newsletter and specified they own a dog when filling in your form (and you could do the same with cats or rabbits!). Using contact attributes to trigger these automations can provide a more personalized experience for your contacts and increase the likelihood of conversion.

You can trigger automations using contact attributes by adding the following entry points:

• Anniversary: create your automation and select which date-type contact attribute you want to check. Learn more in our Anniversary Date use case.
• Contact attributes condition: create your automation and use the Contact attributes condition entry point with the contact attribute of your choice. Find an example in our article Launch an automation based on the date on which a contact is added to a list.
• Contact filter conditions: create your automation and use the Contact filter conditions entry point with the segment of your choice. Learn more in our dedicated article Launch an automation when a contact matches one of your segments.

⏭️ What's next?

• Create and manage contact attributes
• About transactional attributes
• Create and manage transactional attributes

🤔 Have a question?

If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.

If you’re looking for help with a project using Brevo, we can match you with the right certified Brevo expert partner.