If you've enabled our Conversations or Web Push apps on your Brevo account, you may find "anonymous contacts" in your contact list.

Anonymous contacts are contacts who you interacted with, but for whom you don't have any information (name, email address, etc.). They're stored at the bottom of the Contacts page under the Know more about your # anonymous contacts section.

💡 Good to know

On the classic Contacts page, anonymous contacts are added to your contact list, and their attributes are filled with the No entry 🚫 icon:

🥷 Types of anonymous contacts

Based on the app you used to interact with them, there are two types of anonymous contacts:

Anonymous Conversations contacts are visitors who interacted with you over chat but didn't leave any details. Since they didn't leave their details, you won't be able to recontact them or use them in any Brevo feature.

Anonymous Push contacts are visitors who allowed their browser to subscribe to your Web Push notifications without creating an account or being logged into your website. Since they didn't leave their details, you won't be able to recontact them or use them in any Brevo feature.

🧐How are anonymous contacts identified?

Anonymous Conversations contacts and Anonymous Push contacts can be identified in different ways:

If an Anonymous Conversations contact later leaves their details through the contact form or provides them by chat, Facebook, Instagram, or Whatsapp, Brevo will identify them and automatically sync the information collected from them with their contact details. They won't be anonymous anymore and will automatically be added to the default Contacts involved in Conversations list.

❗️ Important

For Anonymous Push contacts to be identified, make sure you have installed the Brevo tracker on your website.

If an Anonymous Push contact later creates an account or logs into your website, Brevo will identify them and automatically sync their customer information from your connected stores (email address, first name, last name, gender, and phone number) with their contact details. They won't be anonymous anymore.

🛠️ Manage anonymous contacts

To manage anonymous contacts, choose if you either want to:

Add anonymous contacts to a list, e.g., you can create a list named Anonymous Web Push contacts and store all anonymous Push contacts there.
Delete anonymous contacts permanently. If you delete an anonymous contact and they interact with you again without being identified, they will be added back to your contact list as an anonymous contact.

❓FAQs - Anonymous contacts

Can I contact anonymous contacts (via email, SMS, etc.)?

Since anonymous contacts are contacts who didn't leave their details, you have no way to contact them. If they later leave their details, Brevo will sync their contact details. As they won't be anonymous anymore, you will be able to contact them.

Are anonymous contacts included in my total count of contacts?

Anonymous contacts are included in your total count of contacts. The Contacts page displays the total number of contacts and anonymous contacts that you have.

What happens if an anonymous contact is identified and has the same email address or phone number as another contact?

An email address or phone number being a unique value, they can't be used for two contacts. That's why there might be a conflict if, for example, an email address is associated with the name Doe in your contact list and the name Smith in the contact form for Conversations or in the account on your website for Web Push.

If an Anonymous Conversations contact is identified and has the same email address or phone number as another contact in your Brevo contacts database, both values will appear in the right panel of the conversation thread:

The main value comes from the Brevo contacts database, which will always be considered the single source of truth.
The secondary value comes from the information input in the Contact form in Conversations.

Agents can replace the main value with the secondary value after confirming it with the customer. This value will then be synchronized with the contact details in Contacts.

➡️ For example

Gina Doe arrives on your website and has a question about one of your products. She opens the chat widget and fills out the contact form. Conversations automatically recognizes her thanks to her email address but she wrote that her last name was Smith. To update her contact details page and ensure that her next invoice will appear with the right last name, you ask her if Smith is her new last name. And indeed, she got married a few weeks ago and changed her last name. You can click the switch 🔁 icon in the right panel to replace Doe with Smith, which is now the main value.

When an Anonymous Push contact is identified, we retrieve their information from your Shopify dashboard. If a contact has the same email address or phone number as another contact in your Brevo contacts database, we will keep the information that was last updated.

🤔 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.