The short answer
A Contact is someone who has given you permission to email them. A Customer is someone who has bought from you. These are separate things: a person can be one, both or neither.
Contacts can receive marketing, even if they have never bought anything.
Customers have bought, but buying does not give you permission to market to them.
Opted-in customers have bought and agreed to hear from you. They are the only group you can send targeted customer marketing to.
The easiest way to picture it is a shop on a high street: who is walking past outside, who is inside, and what they are carrying in their basket.
What is a Contact?
A Contact is someone who has given you permission to email them. Nothing more.
In the shop picture, Contacts are people walking past outside. One of them hands over their details so you can tell them when something good comes up. They may never have entered an event in their life.
What is a Customer?
A Customer is someone who has bought from you.
In the shop picture, Customers are people who came through the door, filled a basket and paid at the till. They are in your shop because they wanted something, not because they signed up to hear from you.
Important: buying is not permission to market to someone. That is a separate question, answered by whether they have opted in.
What are participants, orders, donations and memberships?
These are the items in the Customer's basket. Each one is a record of something bought, not a separate person.
Participants – event entries
Orders
Donations
Memberships
One Customer can hold many items. The same person can have an entry, a T-shirt, a donation and a membership all at once.
Why the number of participants isn't the number of people
A participant is a real person with a name and a place on a start line. For marketing, though, a participant record is an entry, not an audience member.
One person can hold several entries.
The person who paid is not always the person running. Entries get bought for a partner, a child or a whole team.
So counting participants means counting entries, not people. It double-counts anyone who entered twice, and misses a Customer who only ever donated. This is also why one Customer can appear across four different reports without being four different people.
Can a person be both a Contact and a Customer?
Yes. Being in the shop and being on the mailing list are separate facts about a person, so someone can be either, both or neither. Picture two overlapping circles: Contacts on the left, Customers on the right.
Group | Has bought? | Opted in? | What you can send |
Contact, not a customer | No | Yes | Marketing emails |
Opted-in customer (the overlap) | Yes | Yes | Marketing, including targeted customer campaigns |
Customer, not a contact | Yes | No | Service messages only – no marketing |
Watch out for: Customers who never opted in. They are real, they have spent money with you, and you still cannot put them on a marketing campaign.
Should I send my campaign to Contacts or Customers?
Both are marketing, so both need permission. The difference is how much you know about the person, and so how specific your message can be.
Marketing to Contacts: reach
Use this to reach a wide audience. You may know little more than a name and email address, and most have never bought from you, so the message must make sense to a stranger.
Typical sends:
Turn a Contact into a Customer – encourage their first entry with you.
Promote an event to the whole list – entries open, early bird closing Friday, a new date announced.
Build wider awareness – next season's calendar, a new venue, your brand in general.
Customer communications: relevance
Use this to send narrow, informed messages based on what you already know: what they entered, when, how often, how much they spent and what else they bought.
Typical sends:
Win back a lapsed Customer – they ran in 2024 but not 2025, and entries are open again.
Cross-sell based on what they entered – tell everyone who did the 10k about the half marathon.
Recommend the next thing – a trail race for someone who only does road races, or a membership for someone who has entered four times this year.
Add to an entry they already hold – merchandise, a charity place or photos for people already on the start list.
Remember: customer communications are still marketing. Send them to opted-in customers only, not everyone who has ever bought.
Using customer data in a Contact campaign
You can use customer data to decide who not to send to. For example, when promoting a race to your whole list, exclude everyone already entered. There is no point paying to persuade someone to enter a race they are already in.
A quick test to choose your audience
Ask yourself two questions before you build a send.
Question | Answer | Send to |
Would this make sense to someone who has never bought from us? | Yes | Contacts |
| No | Opted-in customers |
Am I asking them to do something again, or for the first time? | Again | Opted-in customers, segmented on what they did before |
| First time | Contacts, as wide as you like |
How do I reach people who have never entered?
Create a first-timer segment: take your whole Contact list and remove everyone who has ever bought. What's left is people who gave you permission to email them but have never entered.
This group deserves its own campaign, for example what race day actually looks like, the shortest distance they can start with, or a first-timer offer. None of that works for a list that still includes people on their twelfth event.
Note: this segment is matched on email address. It means "no entry we can match to this address", not "has never run". Someone whose partner entered them has no record of their own, so they will look like a first-timer.
FAQs
Can I send marketing to everyone who has bought from me? No. Only Customers who have also opted in can receive marketing. Customers who haven't opted in can only receive service messages.
Why does my participant count differ from my customer count? Participants are entries, not people. One Customer can hold several entries, and some Customers only donate or buy memberships.
Is someone who signed up to my newsletter a Customer? Not unless they have also bought something. Signing up makes them a Contact.
Need more detail?
The shop analogy explains the difference; it doesn't describe exactly how the data is stored. If you need to know which records a particular report or segment pulls, message our support team and we'll help.