Key Concepts
Here's a quick overview of the building blocks you'll work with in Score CRM. Understanding these will make everything else in this guide click.
Organizations — Your Workspace
An organization is your team's workspace in Score CRM. Everything you do — contacts, campaigns, email providers, team members — lives inside your organization. Your data is completely separate from other organizations, so you never have to worry about overlap.
If you manage email marketing for multiple brands or clients, each one can have its own organization.
Contacts (Customers)
Customers are the people in your audience — the subscribers, leads, and buyers you're emailing. Each contact has an email address plus any details you want to track: name, location, purchase history, preferences, or any custom fields you define.
You can store millions of contacts in Score CRM, so your list size is never a limitation.
Lists — Organize Your Audience
A list is a group of contacts, typically created by uploading a CSV file. Think of lists as folders for your audience:
- "Newsletter Subscribers"
- "Webinar Attendees — March 2026"
- "Enterprise Leads"
A single contact can be on multiple lists. Lists are a great starting point for organizing who you want to email.
Segments — Smart, Auto-Updating Audiences
A segment is a smarter way to define an audience. Instead of manually adding contacts to a group, you set up rules and Score CRM automatically finds everyone who matches — and keeps the audience up to date as your data changes.
You can segment by:
- Who they are — location, score, custom fields, or any contact attribute
- What they've done — opened a specific campaign, clicked a link in the last 7 days, etc.
- Combinations — mix and match conditions with AND/OR logic for precise targeting
Example: "Contacts in the US who opened at least one email in the past 30 days" — this segment updates itself automatically, so you always have a fresh audience when you send.
Campaigns — Send Emails to Your Audience
A campaign is a single email you send to a targeted group of contacts. When you create a campaign, you'll:
- Write your email — subject line, content, sender name
- Pick your audience — choose which lists and segments to include (or exclude)
- Choose your email provider — select which connected provider sends the emails
- Schedule or send — send right away, or schedule for the perfect time
- Track results — opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes are tracked automatically
Every campaign moves through a simple lifecycle: Draft → Scheduled → Sending → Completed, so you always know where things stand.
Want to test what works best? Use A/B testing to try different subject lines or content and let the data decide.
Journeys — Automated Email Sequences
A journey is an automated workflow that sends the right emails at the right time, without you having to press "send" each time. You build journeys visually with a drag-and-drop builder.
Common use cases:
- Welcome series — automatically send a sequence of emails when someone joins your list
- Lead nurturing — drip educational content over days or weeks
- Re-engagement — reach out to contacts who haven't opened your emails recently
- Post-purchase — follow up after a purchase with tips, reviews requests, or upsells
Journey steps can include sending emails, waiting a set amount of time, checking conditions (like whether someone opened the previous email), updating contact details, and more. Learn more about journeys →
Email Providers (SMTP Connections)
An email provider (also called an SMTP connection) is the service that actually delivers your emails to inboxes. Score CRM doesn't send emails directly — it works with providers like:
- SendGrid, SparkPost, Mailgun, AWS SES, OCI Mail, SMTP.com, and more
You can connect multiple providers and Score CRM will spread your sends across them — this improves deliverability and gives you a fallback if one provider has issues. Set up your first connection →
Suppression — Protecting Your Sender Reputation
Suppression is how Score CRM protects your sender reputation by automatically stopping emails to contacts who shouldn't receive them. A contact gets suppressed when they:
- Bounce — their email address doesn't exist or their inbox is full
- Complain — they mark your email as spam
- Unsubscribe — they opt out via the unsubscribe link
- Manual removal — you or your team remove them
Once suppressed, a contact is automatically excluded from all future sends. You don't need to manually clean your lists — Score CRM handles it for you. This keeps your bounce rates low and your sender reputation healthy.
Email Tracking — Know What's Working
Score CRM automatically tracks how contacts interact with your emails:
| What happened | What it means |
|---|---|
| Sent | Your email was sent to the provider for delivery |
| Delivered | The email reached the contact's inbox |
| Opened | The contact opened your email |
| Clicked | The contact clicked a link in your email |
| Bounced | The email couldn't be delivered |
| Spam complaint | The contact reported your email as spam |
| Unsubscribed | The contact opted out |
This data powers your campaign reports, feeds into your segments (e.g., "contacts who clicked in the last 7 days"), and drives automatic suppression.
Putting It All Together
Here's how everything connects — from importing your audience to tracking your results:
Ready to get started? Head to Import Your Contacts to bring your audience into Score CRM.