Contactbase is where every contact your team has built up lives — journalists, stakeholders, partners, ministry officials, anyone you communicate with. It's a database, not a personal address book, which means contacts a colleague added are available to you, and vice versa.
What It's Good For
- Looking up a specific contact when you need their details.
- Filtering by category — for example, "all environment journalists" or "stakeholders in the energy sector."
- Preparing an audience for outreach by filtering, then sending or saving as a list.
- Keeping shared organizational memory of who you know and what they cover.
What You'll See
The page shows your contacts in a filterable table:
- Filters on one side narrow the list down — by beat, region, role, organization, or whatever attributes your team uses.
- The main table shows the contacts that match.
- Search lets you jump straight to a person if you already know who you want.
You can refine and review without ever leaving the page.
A Typical Flow
Scenario: you need to send a briefing to ministry officials working on agricultural policy.
- Open Contactbase from Outreach.
- Filter for the relevant ministry and topic area.
- Review the resulting list. Adjust filters if it's too broad or too narrow.
- Save the list for reuse — see Distribution Lists.
A Good Habit: Add As You Go
The most common Contactbase mistake is to think "I'll add that contact later." You won't. Add contacts the moment you make them, even if you only have partial details. You can always fill in more later — but a partial record beats no record.