Introduction
Audience in Mapp Engage is built from contacts, organized through groups, and activated through sendouts. Understanding how these elements relate provides the foundation for all messaging, targeting, and compliance behavior.
Core Concepts
Contacts
A contact represents an individual person or entity you communicate with. Each contact has a centralized profile that stores identifiers, attributes, channel addresses, and activity history. Contacts exist independently from campaigns and sendouts.
Groups
A group defines membership and the operational context for messaging. Groups determine who is eligible to receive messages and under which rules messages are sent, such as unsubscribe handling, delivery behavior, and moderation.
Contacts do not receive messages on their own. Messages are always sent to groups.
Membership
Membership describes the relationship between a contact and a group. A contact can be a member of one group, multiple groups, or no groups.
Membership is created through explicit entry points, such as imports, subscriptions, automations, or API-based processes. Groups do not pull contacts automatically; contacts are assigned to groups as part of these processes.
Activation and Sendouts
Every sendout takes place in the context of a group. Targeting, personalization, and message moderation are applied to the group’s membership. To address multiple groups with a single message, groups can be combined for sendout purposes.
How Audience Is Built
At a high level, audience creation follows a consistent pattern:
Contacts are created or updated in the system.
Contacts are assigned to one or more groups through defined entry points.
Groups provide the context for sendouts, compliance, and delivery handling.
This model applies consistently across channels and use cases.