A step-by-step guide to using UniLink's Audience tab — the master contact list for everyone who has subscribed, bought, or submitted a form on your page, with search, filtering, bulk actions, and GDPR tools built in.
- Audience is the complete contact list for your UniLink page — subscribers, buyers, form submitters, and manually added contacts all live here in one place.
- Contacts with unconfirmed double opt-in show as "pending" and will not receive email campaigns until they confirm — check this before sending a broadcast.
- You can filter, bulk tag, bulk export (CSV), and bulk email directly from the Audience list without leaving UniLink.
- GDPR deletion is permanent and irreversible — it removes the contact and all associated data, including order history; there is no undo.
Your follower count is a vanity metric. Your Audience list is an asset you own. Social platforms can change algorithms, reduce reach, or disappear — but the email addresses in your Audience list are yours to keep. Every person who submits a form, buys a product, or subscribes to a membership on your UniLink page lands here, and you can reach them directly at any time. Getting familiar with how Audience works — how to find the right contacts, segment them, and act on that information — is one of the highest-leverage things you can do with your UniLink account.
What Audience does
Audience is the master contact database for your UniLink page. It aggregates every person who has interacted with your page in a meaningful way: someone who clicked Subscribe on an email capture block, a buyer who completed a purchase through your Shop or Digital block, anyone who filled out a form, and contacts you've added manually or imported via CSV. Each contact has a unified record that shows where they came from, what they've done, and when they last interacted with you.
The contact record contains everything UniLink knows about that person: name, email, phone (if captured), the source block that brought them in, any tags you've applied, their subscribe date, their last activity timestamp, custom field values, a linked list of their orders, their email engagement history (opens and clicks), and their current CRM stage if you use the pipeline view. This single record is the connective tissue between your page's different blocks — the same person who bought a product and later subscribed to your newsletter appears as one contact, not two.
Audience is also where you take action on your contacts as a group. You can filter down to a specific segment — say, everyone tagged "purchased-course" who subscribed in the last 90 days — and then bulk email that exact slice, bulk apply a new tag, or export them to a CSV for use in an external tool. You're not locked into using UniLink's own email tools; if you prefer to manage campaigns in Mailchimp or ConvertKit, the export gives you a clean list to import there. Audience is the data layer; what you do with it is up to you.
Getting started
- Open Audience: In your UniLink Dashboard, click Audience in the left sidebar. You'll see the full contact list sorted by most recent activity by default.
- Review your contact count and sources: At the top of the list, note how many total contacts you have. Use the Source filter to see how many came from each block — this tells you which blocks are driving the most captures.
- Check for pending contacts: Filter by status Pending. These are contacts who have not confirmed their double opt-in email. They are in your list but will not receive campaigns until they confirm. If you see a large pending count, your opt-in confirmation email may need a subject line refresh or the email is landing in spam.
- Search for a specific contact: Use the search bar to find someone by name or email address. The search is instant and full-text — partial matches work.
How to manage contacts and segments
- Open a contact record: Click any contact row to open their full detail page. You'll see their personal info, source, all tags, order history, form submissions, and email engagement data in one view.
- Add or edit tags: In the contact detail, click Add Tag and type a tag name. Tags are free-form — use whatever naming convention makes sense to you. Consistent tagging (e.g., "buyer-2026", "course-student", "newsletter") makes filtering and segmenting far more useful later.
- Filter the list: Use the filters at the top of the Audience list to narrow by tag, source block, subscribe date range, last activity date, or CRM stage. Combine multiple filters to build precise segments.
- Bulk tag a filtered segment: After filtering, select all visible contacts using the checkbox in the header row, then click Bulk Actions → Add Tag. The tag is applied to every selected contact at once.
- Bulk export: Filter to the segment you want, select all, and click Bulk Actions → Export CSV. UniLink generates a CSV with all visible fields for those contacts — name, email, phone, tags, source, subscribe date, and any custom fields.
- Bulk email: Filter to a segment, select contacts, and click Bulk Actions → Send Email. A simple email composer opens — write your subject and body and send directly to that filtered list. For more complex campaign management, export and use a dedicated email platform.
- Import contacts via CSV: Click Import at the top of the Audience page. Upload a CSV, map the columns to UniLink fields (name, email, phone, custom fields), and confirm. Imported contacts do not have a source block tag automatically — add one manually after import so you know where they came from.
- Process a GDPR deletion request: Search for the contact by email, open their record, scroll to the bottom, and click Delete Contact and All Data. Confirm the action. This permanently deletes the contact record, their order history, form submissions, and all associated data. There is no undo.
Key features and settings
| Feature / Setting | What it does | Best practice |
|---|---|---|
| Contact status (Active / Pending) | Active contacts have confirmed opt-in and will receive campaigns; Pending contacts are waiting for double opt-in confirmation | Monitor Pending contacts regularly — a high pending rate means your confirmation email needs work; a/b test the subject line to improve confirmation rates |
| Source field | Records which block captured the contact — Shop purchase, Form submission, Email capture block, manual add, CSV import | Use source data to identify your highest-converting blocks; if one source is generating far more contacts, invest in optimizing that block first |
| Tags | Free-form labels you apply to contacts for segmentation; a contact can have any number of tags | Establish a tagging convention before your list grows — retroactively tagging hundreds of contacts is tedious; decide on your taxonomy early (e.g., buyer-[product], tier-[membership-name], lead-[source]) |
| Custom fields | Additional data fields you define (e.g., Instagram handle, company name, referral source) that contacts fill in via forms or that you populate manually | Only create custom fields you'll actually use for filtering or personalization — unused fields add noise to the contact record |
| Bulk export (CSV) | Downloads a CSV of all selected contacts with their fields for use in external tools | Export your full list monthly as a backup; don't rely solely on UniLink as the single copy of your contact data |
| Bulk email | Sends a direct email to a filtered segment without leaving UniLink | Use for simple one-off messages to specific segments; for recurring campaigns, drip sequences, or deliverability at scale, use a dedicated email marketing platform and import via CSV |
| GDPR deletion | Permanently deletes the contact and all associated data (orders, form submissions, email history) in compliance with right-to-erasure requests | Confirm the requester's identity before processing; document the deletion request and completion date for your own records; this action cannot be undone under any circumstances |
| Audience vs. CRM Pipeline | Audience is a flat list of all contacts; CRM Pipeline is a Kanban view of the same contacts moving through sales stages — both views share the same underlying data | Use Audience for list management and bulk actions; use CRM Pipeline for actively working deals or tracking high-touch relationships through a defined sales process |
How to get the most from Audience
The contact record's order history and email engagement fields are the two most underused features in Audience. Before sending any kind of re-engagement or upsell message, open a sample of contacts from your target segment and look at what they've bought and whether they've been opening your previous emails. A contact who bought twice and opens every email is a very different prospect from one who bought once 18 months ago and hasn't opened anything since. Sending them the same message at the same time is a waste of one and an underservice of the other. Five minutes of looking at the data before you hit send makes every broadcast more relevant.
Treat your pending contacts as a separate problem worth solving. A contact who opted in but never confirmed is someone who wanted to hear from you — they just never made it through the confirmation step. This is almost always an email deliverability issue: the confirmation email is landing in spam, the subject line is being filtered, or the email client is clipping it. Try resending confirmation emails with a different subject line ("Please confirm — one click and you're in" often works better than a generic "Confirm your subscription"). Some platforms allow sending a re-confirmation sequence; check your block's email settings.
Export your full contact list at least once a month and store the CSV somewhere outside UniLink — a Google Drive folder, a local backup, wherever you keep important files. Your Audience list is one of the most valuable things you've built through your UniLink page, and it should not exist in only one place. A full export takes 30 seconds and could save you months of lost relationship-building if anything ever goes wrong with your account or platform access.
Use the Audience vs. CRM Pipeline distinction deliberately. Audience is your list; the CRM Pipeline is your workflow for high-attention relationships — bigger sales, partnerships, consulting inquiries, anything that needs to move through stages before it converts. Not every contact needs to be in your pipeline. Move someone into the pipeline when they've signaled intent that warrants active follow-up; let everyone else live in Audience as a list you communicate with in bulk. Putting every contact in a Kanban pipeline means the pipeline is useless as a prioritization tool.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| New subscribers showing as Pending, not Active | Double opt-in is enabled for your email capture block — contacts must confirm before becoming Active | Check your opt-in confirmation email under Settings → Email; improve the subject line and check spam placement; if you want to disable double opt-in (not recommended for deliverability), turn it off in block settings |
| Contacts imported via CSV have no source tag | CSV imports don't have a block source — they're logged as "Manual Import" | After import, filter by source "Manual Import" for the import date, select all, and bulk-add a descriptive tag (e.g., "import-may-2026") so you can identify the origin later |
| Bulk email not delivered to some contacts | Those contacts have unsubscribed, are in Pending status, or the email address bounced in a previous send | UniLink suppresses sends to unsubscribed contacts automatically — check the contact record for unsubscribe status or bounce flags; you cannot and should not override suppression |
| Can't find a contact I know should be in the list | Contact may be in Pending status (filtered out of default view), or the email was entered with a typo at sign-up | Clear all filters and search the full list; try searching by name instead of email; check the Pending status filter; if the person bought something, check the Orders tab for their email address |
| Contact record shows orders but no email subscription | The contact purchased a product but did not opt in to email marketing at checkout | This is expected behavior — buying something does not automatically add someone to your marketing list; they need to separately opt in, or you can manually tag them and use the "purchased" tag as your targeting signal |
| Accidentally deleted a contact that had important order history | GDPR deletion was used when a simple tag edit or archiving was the intent | GDPR deletion is permanent — the data cannot be recovered. Go to your payment processor (Stripe) to retrieve the order history for that email address if you need it for billing purposes. For future cases, use tags or CRM stage changes to "archive" contacts rather than deleting them |
Audience is the right tool when
- You want one place to see every person who has interacted with your page — buyers, subscribers, and form submitters — without toggling between different tools
- You need to build and message targeted segments quickly (filter by tag + source + date, then bulk email) without leaving UniLink
- You want to export clean contact lists for use in an external email platform like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign
- You need to process GDPR right-to-erasure requests with a single action that removes all associated data
- You want to understand which blocks on your page are generating the most subscribers and adjust your design accordingly
When you'll need more than Audience
- You need automated drip sequences, behavioral triggers, or complex email workflows — those require a dedicated email marketing platform
- You need deep deliverability tools: reputation monitoring, domain warm-up, inbox placement testing
- You have tens of thousands of contacts and need advanced segmentation logic (multi-condition, AND/OR rules across multiple custom fields)
- You need bi-directional sync with a CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce — Audience is a one-way export, not a sync-capable integration
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Audience and CRM Pipeline?
Audience is a flat, searchable list of all your contacts with filtering and bulk actions. CRM Pipeline is a Kanban-style board where you move the same contacts through defined stages (Lead, Prospect, Negotiating, Closed, etc.). They share the same underlying contact data — moving someone to a CRM stage in the pipeline also updates their record in Audience. Use Audience for list management and bulk communication; use the Pipeline for actively tracking high-value relationships that need hands-on follow-up.
Can contacts be in Audience without having submitted a form or made a purchase?
Yes. You can manually add individual contacts by clicking Add Contact in the Audience tab and entering their details. You can also import contacts in bulk via CSV upload. Both methods add contacts to your list, but those contacts won't have a form submission or order linked in their record. Their source will show as "Manual" or "Import" rather than a specific block name.
Does a contact who unsubscribes get removed from Audience?
No — unsubscribing from email marketing does not delete the contact from Audience. Their record stays in the list but is flagged as unsubscribed, meaning they are automatically excluded from any email sends. This is intentional: the contact record still contains their purchase history and activity data, which remains useful even if they've opted out of marketing emails. GDPR deletion is the only action that removes the record entirely.
How does UniLink handle duplicate contacts?
UniLink identifies contacts by email address. If someone submits a form, buys a product, and subscribes to a membership all using the same email, all three activities are merged into a single contact record. If the same email address is imported via CSV when it already exists in Audience, UniLink updates the existing record rather than creating a duplicate. Different email addresses that belong to the same person will create separate records — there is no manual merge tool, so keeping capture forms consistent (always asking for the same email address) reduces this issue.
Can I see which specific emails a contact has opened or clicked?
Yes. Open the contact's detail page and scroll to the Email Activity section. You'll see a log of every campaign or bulk email sent to that contact, with open and click timestamps where available. Note that email open tracking requires the contact's email client to load tracking pixels — clients like Apple Mail with Mail Privacy Protection will block this, so open rates undercount real engagement. Click data is more reliable.
- Audience is your owned contact database — subscribers, buyers, and form submitters all in one list, separate from any social platform algorithm.
- Pending contacts have not confirmed double opt-in and won't receive campaigns — monitor this count and improve your confirmation email if it's persistently high.
- CSV import contacts have no source tag by default — bulk-tag them immediately after import so you can identify their origin later.
- Export your full contact list monthly as a backup — your Audience list is a critical asset that should not live in only one place.
- GDPR deletion is permanent and removes all associated data including order history — use Hidden or a tag to "archive" contacts you no longer want to contact, rather than deleting them.
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