Manage contacts, companies, and marketing consent

Keep contacts and companies clean, merge duplicates, and understand how Verbial records consent so email stays compliant.

Contacts are people, companies are the accounts they belong to, and consent is the permission that makes an address mailable. This article shows where each lives and how to keep them clean.

Steps

Go to CRM, then Contacts. Use the saved views and filters at the top, or search across the brand.
To add a person, click New contact, enter their email, name, and company. Typing a company name searches existing companies and offers to create one.
To merge duplicates, click Duplicates at the top of the Contacts page. It finds contacts sharing an email within the brand and lets you merge in one click. Companies have the same tool on their own page.
To bulk update or assign owners, tick rows and use the action bar.
To export, use Export on the list page. Exports respect your current filters.

Every path that can make an address mailable writes a consent record: a form submission, a lead sent through the write API, a manual creation by a rep, and imports from HubSpot or the migration hub. Each record carries a basis, a source specific enough to defend ("Form: Contact us"), and when the person actually gave it.

Consent lives with the address at a brand, not with the contact id. A contact can be deleted, merged, or re-created and the permission still belongs to the address.

Suppressions and opt-outs

Every CRM email carries an unsubscribe link. A click adds the address to the brand's suppression list.
Postmark complaints and bounces also suppress the address.
Admins manage the list under CRM, then Suppressions. Bookkeepers can view it for compliance audits.
Sequences and campaigns check suppression before every send and skip rather than send.

What to check

Internal addresses (people in your workspace) are never created as contacts by inbound mail.
Gmail sync can auto-create contacts from mail you send, never from mail you receive. See Connect Gmail, Calendar, and booking links.
Lifecycle stages, lead status, and custom properties are managed under CRM settings, then Properties.

Questions

How is consent stored?

As an append-only history keyed on brand and email address, not on the contact record. A withdrawal stamps the live rows rather than deleting them, so the record of who said what survives merges and deletions.

What happens when someone unsubscribes?

The address goes on the brand's suppression list and consent is marked withdrawn. Sequences and campaigns skip suppressed addresses automatically.

Can I erase a contact for a data request?

Yes. Open the contact and use the erase action, or export their data first from the same page. Erasure is logged in the audit log.