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# Contacts

> The contact model, subscription status across channels, and how tags organize contacts.

> **Note**
>
> **Draft**: This page was assembled during the docs reorganization. The tags
> section is complete; the contact model and subscription status sections need
> expansion.

## The basics

A contact is a person in an audience, identified by their email address. In the
API, contacts are addressed by `subscriber_hash` — the MD5 hash of the
lowercase email address — so `GET /3.0/lists/{list_id}/members/{subscriber_hash}`
retrieves one contact from one audience.

The same person in two audiences is two contacts. Audiences don't share contact
records.

## Contact status and channel subscription

Outline — expand:

* Contact-level `status` (`active`, `archived`) describes the contact overall.
* Channel-level subscription status describes whether they can be reached on a
  specific channel (email, SMS), and is computed rather than set directly.
* Inputs to that computation: the audience's opt-in configuration (single or
  double opt-in), the marketing consent you supply, and deliverability.
* Consent values and the full mapping table live in
  [Audiences endpoints (beta)](/marketing/api-concepts/audiences-endpoints-beta)
  while that work is in beta.

## Tags

[Tags](https://mailchimp.com/help/getting-started-tags/) are labels that help
organize your contacts. You define what they mean: bring your own targeting and
organization strategy into Mailchimp rather than adopting one.

You could use tags to:

* Structure campaigns for specific audiences, tagging contacts with terms like "Holiday Send" or "Influencer"
* Directly map tags from your CRM onto tags in your Mailchimp audience
* Translate behaviors—for example, a contact who's spent \$1,000 in your store—into tags that can be used in future campaigns

Tags attach to individual contacts, at
`/3.0/lists/{list_id}/members/{subscriber_hash}/tags`. There is no
audience-level tag resource; to find which contacts carry a tag, search with
`GET /3.0/lists/{list_id}/tag-search` or build a
[segment](/marketing/concepts/audiences/segments) that filters on it.

For a walkthrough of tagging contacts with the API, see
[Organize contacts with tags](/marketing/build/quickstarts/organize-contacts-with-tags).

## Merge field values

Each contact carries values for the merge fields its audience defines. The
field has to exist on the audience before you can set a value on a contact —
see [Merge fields](/marketing/concepts/audiences/merge-fields).