Contact Model

Contacts are your site visitors who interact with Drift. Contacts may provide you with their email address, or their information may have been updated in the past 90 days. Contacts belong to an account, and may have conversations, composed of messages, with your users.

Schema

{
  "attributes": {
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "events": {},
    "name": "Stephen Webel",
    "socialProfiles": {},
    "externalId": 12341243, //sometimes set by external integrations
    ...
  },
  "createdAt": 1506971031434,
  "id": 349999553
}

Top Level Field Explanation

The top-level contact object is intentionally simple, allowing for deep customization via attributes.

Field NameDescriptionDescription
idlong (int64)The Drift identifier for the contact. This will always be numeric. Should be treated as long or integer 64 bit data type.
createdAtlongA unix timestamp for when the contact was first captured.
attributesJSONA map of all attributes associated with this contact. Attributes will contain both Drift controlled data and custom attributes generated by an organization or a third-party app.

Contact Attributes Explanation

Attributes will contain a mix of Drift-generated data as well as custom attributes. Custom Attributes are easily added by simply adding a key and a non-null value to the attribute map when either creating or updating a contact.

*Please note - we have replaced contact tags with attributes. Although you can still add a contact tag within your settings, you will no longer be able to apply those tags to a contact’s profile. If you would like to apply tags using a Playbook, we recommend using attributes.

FieldTypeDescription
nameStringThe name of the contact
emailStringThe email of the contact
phoneStringThe phone number associated with the contact
eventsJSONA map of Drift events associates with the contact.
socialProfilesJSONA map of social profile information enriched for the contact.

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Note on Account/Contact Relationship

Because Drift works to deanonymize visitors through IP address, Contacts are related to Accounts through email and website domain. All Accounts have a unique ID composed of the Drift OrgId and the Account Domain. For example, if the OrgId is 5002142 and the Account has a domain of https://www.drift.com, the Account Id will be 5002142_drift.com. This makes Account Id guessable for Contacts in Drift on the basis of their email.

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Want to customize your data?

You aren't just limited to text and number fields. Find out about other data types here