Contacts and segments in Simio: fields, tags, and imports

How Simio stores contacts and custom fields, tags them, groups them into segments, imports up to 100,000 rows from CSV, and enforces per-channel consent.

Simio stores every phone number you can reach as a contact, enriches it with custom fields and tags, and lets you build segments (rule-based groups) to target campaigns and automations. This page covers the contact model, the CSV import flow, tags and segments, and how consent fits into targeting. For the consent model in detail, see Consent and opt-in status.

The contact model

A contact has:

• Phone number in international format (the primary identifier).
• Display name, first name, last name (populated from imports, integrations, or replies).
• Custom fields you define on your company (any extra column you push from a CSV or an integration becomes a field, lowercased and stripped of spaces).
• Tags: free-form labels you attach to contacts, most often applied automatically at import time.
• Consent records per (channel, messaging account). See Consent.
• Timestamps: when the contact was created, when they last messaged you, when their consent last changed.

Contacts are automatically deduplicated by phone number. Re-importing an existing contact updates their fields rather than creating a duplicate row.

Importing contacts from CSV

You can import up to 100,000 contacts per file. Larger sets have to be split.

File format

• The first column must be phoneNumber, in international format without the leading + (for example, 33601020304).
• Column names are case-insensitive and become custom fields with normalized names (lowercase, no spaces).
• Any invalid phone number in the file rejects the entire file; nothing is imported.
• Do not rename the required columns or change their order.

Use the Simio CSV template as a starting point.

Import flow

1. Upload the CSV

   Open the contacts area and upload your CSV file. Simio validates the phone-number column before starting the import.

2. Track progress in real time

   The import runs in the background. A progress indicator shows how many rows have been processed and surfaces any error message from the parser.

3. Automatic tag

   Every import automatically creates a new tag named after the file name and the import timestamp, and applies it to every contact in that file. You can optionally add extra tags at import time.

4. Optional opt-in on a specific account

   You can check a box to mark every imported contact as opted in on a specific connected messaging account. Only do this if you have obtained explicit consent from the contact to be messaged on that account, in a form your legal team can defend.

5. Optionally save as a segment

   Once the import is complete, click the action button on the import row to save the import’s tag as a segment for reuse.

Deduplication and updates

Re-importing contacts that already exist is safe:

• Existing contacts are matched on phone number and updated with any new field values in the file.
• No duplicate row is created.
• You can re-import the same base to enrich existing contacts with a new custom field (for example, adding a birthday column later).

Tags

Tags are simple labels you attach to any contact. They are created:

• Automatically at import, one tag per import (with the file name and timestamp).
• Manually, from the contact detail view or in bulk from the contacts list.
• Through integrations, for example when a Brevo sync assigns a tag to a synced segment.

Tags are used as a building block for segments.

Segments

A segment is a saved query over your contact list, built from one or more filters. Segments update dynamically: a contact meeting the rules is automatically included; a contact that stops meeting them is automatically excluded.

Available filters

Identity and profile

Filter	Operators	Value
Phone	is / is not	One or more phone numbers
Tags	contains / excludes	One tag, picked from the dropdown
Custom field	is / is not	The field name, then the value to compare against
Coupon	has active coupon / has no active coupon	One coupon list, picked from the dropdown

Consent

Filter	Operators	Value	Scope
Opt-in status	is / is not	opt-in, opt-out, or never opt-in	On a specific WhatsApp or RCS account, or on any WhatsApp account

See Consent and opt-in status for what each status means.

Dates

Date filters compare a contact’s date against either a specific date or a number of days relative to today.

Filter	Operators	Value	Scope
Created	more than / less than / after / before / on	Date or number of days	All accounts
Opted-in	more than / less than / after / before / on	Date or number of days	On a specific WhatsApp or RCS account
Opted-out	more than / less than / after / before / on	Date or number of days	On a specific WhatsApp or RCS account
Birthday	more than / less than / after / before / on	Date or number of days	All accounts

Use more than and less than with a number of days for rolling windows (for example, contacts created less than 30 days ago). Use after, before, and on with a fixed date.

Engagement

Engagement filters target contacts based on how they interacted with your messages. Each one is built from four parts:

1. Event: the interaction to look for.
2. Time window: over all time, more than, less than, after, or before. Every option except over all time takes a date or a number of days.
3. Frequency: at least once or zero times.
4. Source: from any flow, from campaign, from automation, or from chatbot.

Event	Matches contacts who…
Received message	Received a message
Opened message	Opened (read) a message
Clicked URL	Clicked a tracked link.
Clicked button	Clicked a message button

For example, Clicked URL, less than 30 days, zero times, from campaign matches contacts who have not clicked any campaign link in the last 30 days. Use zero times to build re-engagement or exclusion segments.

Combining filters with AND and OR

Filters are organized into blocks:

• Inside a block, criteria are combined with OR: a contact matches the block if it meets at least one of its criteria. Click Add criteria next to a block to add an OR condition.
• Blocks are combined with AND: a contact enters the segment only if it matches every block. Click Add criteria under the last AND to start a new block.

In this example, the segment contains contacts who:

1. Clicked a button or a URL from a campaign at least once more than 10 days ago, and
2. Are opted in on any WhatsApp account.

Consent and targeting

When you send a campaign or automation on a specific messaging account, Simio filters the audience against the consent records for that (channel, account) pair. A contact who is opted in on account A but not on account B will not receive a send on account B, even if they belong to the targeted segment.

A contact can show up as “never opt-in” on an account and still have received Utility messages (order confirmations, service updates) from you, because Utility messages don’t require an explicit opt-in on WhatsApp. See Marketing vs Utility. To convert those contacts into opt-ins, add an opt-in step at the end of your Utility flow.

Full model: Consent and opt-in status.

AI-assisted filters

The contacts list supports natural-language filtering: type a sentence like “customers who bought at least twice this year and opted in on WhatsApp France” and Simio proposes a matching set of rules you can save as a segment. The AI never sends messages on its own; it only proposes segment rules for you to review and confirm.

Known limitations

• CSV rejection is all-or-nothing: a single invalid phone number rejects the entire file. Clean the file and reupload.
• Import size cap of 100,000 rows per file. Larger bases must be split into multiple files.
• No cross-account merge: two contacts with different phone numbers cannot be merged into one, even if they represent the same person. You can do that kind of operation in your CRM.
• Free-text search is limited to phone-number and full name today; searching a partial text, by first name for example, is not possible.

Related

Consent

How per-channel, per-account opt-in status is tracked and enforced.

Coupon codes

Assign unique promo codes to contacts inside your messages.