Organize contacts with tags, notes, tasks, and communication preferences

A contact list of ten people doesn't need organizing. A contact list of ten thousand does. The four tools covered here — tags, notes, tasks, and communication preferences — are what keep a growing list usable instead of turning into a pile you're afraid to touch.

#Tags: build your segmentation vocabulary early

A tag is a short label — no dates, no long text, just a word or short phrase attached to a contact. The trick to using tags well is deciding on a vocabulary before you start applying them everywhere.

• Source tags — source: referral, source: facebook-ad, source: webinar-2026 — tell you where someone came from.
• Status tags — hot-lead, nurture, customer, churned — tell you where someone is right now.
• List tags — newsletter, vip, beta-tester — mark membership in a group you'll message as a unit.

Apply tags from the contact record itself, or in bulk across many contacts using bulk actions. Because tags can trigger workflows the moment they're added or removed, a well-chosen tag can replace a manual step entirely — tag someone hot-lead and let an automation handle the first follow-up.

Tip: Resist creating a new tag for something a custom field would represent better. A tag answers "does this apply, yes or no" — anything with a value (a date, a number, one of several categories) belongs in a custom field, not a growing pile of near-duplicate tags.

#Notes: write for the next person, not just yourself

A note is free text attached to a contact, visible to your whole team, and shown in the contact's activity timeline in the order it was added. Good notes answer a question someone else on your team will have the next time they open this contact:

• What was discussed on the last call.
• What was promised, and by when.
• Anything sensitive about how this person prefers to be handled.

Notes also attach to opportunities and company records, so you can log context at the level it actually belongs — a note about a specific deal on the opportunity, a note about the individual on the contact.

Note: Notes are internal. They're never sent to the contact and never appear on anything customer-facing, which makes them the right place for candid context you wouldn't put in an email.

#Tasks: turn "someone should do this" into an assigned, dated action

A task is a to-do tied to a record — a contact, an opportunity, a company, or more than one of those at once. Use tasks instead of a note whenever something actually needs to happen:

1. Open the contact (or opportunity) and go to the Tasks tab.
2. Create the task, write a clear title ("Call to confirm install date," not just "follow up"), set a due date, and assign it to whoever owns it.
3. Mark it complete once it's done — completed tasks stay visible in history, so there's a record of what followup actually happened and when.

Because a single task can link to multiple records — the contact, their company, and the specific opportunity — you don't have to duplicate the same task three times to make sure everyone sees it wherever they're looking.

Screenshot coming soon

A task creation panel with a due date, assignee, and linked contact and opportunity

#Do Not Disturb: respect what a contact has already told you

DND is a per-channel setting on the contact record — email, SMS, calls, and other channels can each be independently blocked from receiving outbound messages. Set it manually when a contact asks to stop hearing from you on a channel, and know that certain triggers (a hard email bounce, a text reply of STOP) can turn it on automatically without anyone doing it by hand.

DND only blocks messages to the contact — it doesn't hide them from your contact list, and it doesn't stop them from reaching out to you. Every smart list and bulk send respects DND automatically, so a contact who's opted out of SMS will never be swept into a bulk text send even if they match every other filter.

Warning: Don't try to work around DND by messaging a contact on a different channel than the one they opted out of, unless you have a genuine reason to believe they're fine with that channel. The intent behind DND — "stop contacting me this way" — usually extends further than the literal setting.

#Putting it together: a simple weekly habit

A light routine keeps all four tools useful instead of neglected:

• Tag new contacts the moment they're added or imported, using your established vocabulary.
• Note anything from a call or meeting that the next person touching this contact would want to know.
• Task anything with a concrete next step and a date — don't leave it as a mental note.
• Check DND before running any bulk send, especially on a list you haven't touched in a while — preferences change, and the system will already be filtering for you, but it's worth knowing the numbers.

#What "done" looks like

Pick five random contacts from your list. For each, you should be able to tell — without opening a second tool — what stage they're in (tags), what's known about them (notes), what's next (tasks), and whether you're allowed to message them (DND). If any of those are blank on contacts that have been in the system a while, that's where to focus cleanup effort first.

#Related articles

• The contact record: what's stored and how it's organized
• Add and import contacts
• Bulk add to workflow, add/remove tags, and export

#Frequently asked questions

#Can I search or filter contacts by tag?

Yes — tags are one of the most common smart list filters. See What smart lists are and how filters work.

#If I remove a tag, does it undo whatever automation it triggered?

No. A workflow triggered by a tag being added runs once it starts; removing the tag afterward doesn't reverse actions already taken. Some workflows do use "tag removed" as its own separate trigger, but that's a different automation, not an undo.

#Does turning off DND for a contact immediately make them eligible for bulk sends?

Yes, as soon as it's turned off, that channel is open again and the contact will be included in future sends that match your filters — nothing else needs to change.