Owlat Docs

Topics

Topics are explicit audience groups you manage by hand — ideal for opt-in subscribers, imported cohorts, and organized contact buckets you target with campaigns.

Topics are explicit audience groups — you control exactly who is on each topic. They're ideal for managing opt-in subscribers, imported cohorts, and organized contact groups that you target with campaigns.

When to use topics vs. segments

TopicsSegments
MembershipManual — contacts are explicitly added or removedAutomatic — based on rules that update in real time
Best forImported cohorts, explicit opt-in groups, partner/customer bucketsDynamic rules based on behavior, properties, or engagement
MaintenanceYou manage membership directlySelf-maintaining as data changes

Use topics when you have a defined group of contacts. Use Segments when your targeting depends on changing data.

Creating a topic

  1. Open Audience > Topics.
  2. Click New Topic.
  3. Enter a name and description for your topic.
  4. Choose whether to enable double opt-in (see below).
  5. Save the topic.

Use clear, descriptive names like "Monthly Newsletter" or "Product Updates" rather than generic names like "Topic 1". You'll reference these topics across campaigns, forms, and automations.

Double opt-in

Double opt-in (DOI) adds a confirmation step when someone joins a topic. It's a best practice for public-facing signup forms because it verifies that the person actually owns the email address.

How double opt-in works

  1. A contact joins a topic that requires double opt-in (via form, import, or manually).
  2. Their confirmation status is set to Pending.
  3. A confirmation email is sent automatically (for form signups; some admin/import paths may add a contact as Pending without sending a confirmation email).
  4. The contact clicks the confirmation link.
  5. Their status changes to Confirmed — they're now eligible for campaigns.

Contacts with a Pending status are excluded from campaigns sent to a double-opt-in topic. Only Confirmed contacts (and those whose status is Not Required) are included.

Double opt-in is a per-topic setting (you enable it when creating or editing the topic), but a contact's confirmation status is tracked once at the contact level. Confirming once covers every double-opt-in topic that contact has joined — they don't re-confirm for each one.

When to use double opt-in

  • Public signup forms — strongly recommended to prevent fake signups and verify email ownership
  • Partner imports — helps confirm interest before you start sending
  • Compliance-sensitive contexts — some jurisdictions require confirmed consent

For internal topics or topics populated through your own application, single opt-in (no confirmation step) is usually fine.

Adding members

You can add contacts to a topic in several ways:

  • From the dashboard — use the contact management interface to add individual contacts or bulk-add from your existing audience
  • During CSV import — assign imported contacts to a topic as part of the import process
  • Through forms — link a Form to your topic so new submissions are added automatically
  • Via the API — add contacts to topics programmatically (see API documentation)

Removing members

Remove contacts from a topic through the dashboard. Removing a contact from a topic doesn't delete the contact from your audience — it only removes their membership in that specific topic.

Using topics in campaigns

A campaign targets exactly one audience: either a single topic or a single segment. You pick one or the other in the campaign's audience step — there's no multi-topic selection, no combining a topic with a segment, and no exclusion list.

  1. In the campaign's audience step, choose Specific Topic and select the topic from the dropdown.
  2. The step shows an Estimated recipients count — the number of contacts who will actually receive the email.
  3. If some topic members are excluded, a warning tells you how many and why: a contact is skipped when they have no email address, have unsubscribed or been suppressed, or (for a double-opt-in topic) haven't completed confirmation.

The estimated count is the eligible audience, not raw membership. A topic with 1,000 members might show 920 eligible recipients if 80 contacts are unconfirmed, suppressed, or have no email on file.

If you need rule-based targeting instead — for example "subscribers who opened a campaign in the last 30 days" — build a segment and target that instead of a topic. Note that segment audiences are never double-opt-in gated and don't include a topic-specific unsubscribe link.

Next steps

Next Segments