Tagging contacts for distribution lists

Tags are short labels you assign to contacts — "member", "advertiser", "donor", "alumni", whatever fits your org. They're how you build distribution lists in Email Campaigns and how you'll segment in future modules (workflows, reporting).

To tag a contact:
1. Open the contact's edit form (from the Contacts list, click the contact and choose Edit)
2. Find the Tags section, just above Notes
3. Click any existing tag to toggle it on or off
4. Click "+ tag" to type a new tag name — it's added to your org's vocabulary instantly

The first time you create a tag, the system picks a color from a 10-color palette automatically. The tag definition (name + color + description) is stored at the org level, so every teammate sees the same tags in the same colors.

Renaming a tag in the future doesn't retroactively re-tag every contact — the contact still carries the old string. Plan tag names before you start tagging in bulk.

Where tags surface:
• Email Campaigns → Distribution Lists tab — see how many contacts hold each tag, plus any free-form tags that don't have a definition yet
• Email Campaigns composer → Recipients — pick one or more tags; the system resolves matching contacts at send time and excludes anyone on the suppression list
• Future modules will read the same Contact.tags[] field, so a contact tagged "VIP" today will be recognised everywhere later

Tags assigned to a contact before a definition existed (e.g. legacy free-form labels) still work — they just appear with a dashed outline in the picker until you create a matching definition.