Add, edit and remove contacts

Your email contacts are everyone you can email from Distro. Open People in the Outreach menu: if you only use email, it opens straight on your contacts (All contacts); if you also use LinkedIn, they're on the Email contacts tab, next to the People tab that lists everyone (see People and the "Can reach by" tags). You can add people one by one, import a file, edit details, tag people and put them in lists. To take someone out of your outreach you either archive them or unsubscribe them. Distro doesn't permanently delete contacts from this screen.

Contacts belong to your Outreach workspace, which is shared across your account. They don't change when you switch products in the sidebar.

Add a contact

1. Go to People (the Email contacts tab if you also use LinkedIn).
2. Click Add contact.
3. Enter the Email (required), and optionally First name, Last name and Job title.
4. Click Add contact.

You'll see "Contact added." Distro builds the full name from the first and last name. Add other details from the contact's page afterwards.

Two errors you might see:

• "Enter a valid email address." The address is missing an @, has spaces, or has an incomplete domain.
• "A contact with this email already exists." Each address can only be a contact once. See How duplicate detection works.

Only add people you have a genuine reason to contact. For many people at once, use Import CSV.

Edit a contact

1. Click the contact's name in the list to open their page.
2. Click Edit.
3. Change any of: First name, Last name, Job title, Phone, Country, City, LinkedIn URL, Website, Notes, plus any custom fields you've created.
4. Click Save contact.

The email address itself can't be edited. If someone changed address, add the new address as a new contact and archive the old one.

The contact page also has a Status panel and a Tags panel, where you can add or remove tags.

Read a contact's status

The Status column in the list, and the Status panel on the contact page, tell you whether Distro will email this person.

The Email check column is a quick quality check, not a guarantee:

Distro checks the format of an address and flags risky types. It doesn't confirm that a mailbox actually exists. Keeping your data clean is covered in Keeping your prospect list clean.

If you also use LinkedIn, the list shows a Can reach by column: Email + LinkedIn when the contact has a LinkedIn URL, otherwise Email only. Add a LinkedIn URL on the contact's page to change it. The Source column shows where the contact came from, for example Import, Added by hand, API or Copilot.

Find, filter and export

• Search by name or email, then press Enter.
• Filter by how you can reach them (All, Email + LinkedIn, Email only), if you also use LinkedIn.
• Sort by Newest first, Recently updated or Email A–Z.
• Filter by tag with the tag menu (it appears once you have tags).
• Export downloads a CSV of the contacts matching your current search and tag filter.

Act on several contacts at once

Tick the boxes next to contacts (or the box in the header to select the whole page). A bar appears with:

• Add to list… then Add
• Tag as… then Tag
• Unsubscribe: adds them to your Unsubscribed list. Distro confirms how many "will never be emailed."
• Archive: hides them from your contacts list

Archive or unsubscribe: which one?

Use Unsubscribe whenever a person asked not to be contacted. Use Archive to tidy up people you don't plan to email.

Unsubscribed and bounced people stay in your contacts on purpose: that record is what makes sure they're never emailed again.