Topics

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.lettr.com/llms.txt

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Topics are subscription categories that contacts can opt in or out of independently. Instead of a single “subscribe / unsubscribe” toggle for everything you send, topics let you offer recipients meaningful choices — for example, they can opt out of weekly digests but keep receiving product updates. Topics are useful for two reasons:

1. Recipient experience — letting people choose what they want to receive instead of forcing an all-or-nothing decision usually improves engagement and reduces unsubscribes.
2. Internal organization — you can use private topics as a way to categorize contacts by interest, even if recipients never see the topic name.

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How Topics Work

A topic has a name, an optional description, a default subscription, and a visibility setting: A contact can be subscribed to any number of topics at once. Topic memberships are tracked separately from list memberships and from the contact’s overall subscribed / unsubscribed status.

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Creating a Topic

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Default Subscription

Setting a topic’s default determines how new contacts interact with it:

• opt_in (default subscribed) — every contact added to your audience after the topic is created is automatically subscribed. This makes the topic a sensible default channel, like a main newsletter that everyone should get unless they explicitly opt out.
• opt_out (default unsubscribed) — new contacts start not subscribed to the topic. They have to actively join. This is appropriate for narrower interests like “Beta Program” or “Product Roadmap”.

The default behavior applies to every contact creation path — manual entry, CSV imports, and the API — so you don’t have to remember to attach default-on topics each time.

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Public vs. Private Topics

A topic’s visibility controls whether the topic is intended to be exposed to recipients (for example in a preference center linked from your emails). Public topics are surfaced; private topics are internal-only. Visibility doesn’t change what the topic does in Lettr — it only signals intent. Use private topics as a lightweight tagging system for internal organization (for example “Beta Tester” or “Enterprise Lead”) that you don’t want recipients to see or control. Use public topics for the choices you genuinely want recipients to make for themselves.

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Adding and Removing Topics on Contacts

You can manage topic membership from several places: Every topic opt-in and opt-out (including the automatic ones at contact creation) is recorded in the contact’s activity log.

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Renaming and Deleting Topics

You can rename a topic at any time from the Topics page. Renaming preserves all existing memberships. Deleting a topic removes the topic and all memberships for it. The contacts themselves are untouched.

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Using Topics in Segments

Topics are first-class fields in the segment builder. You can build conditions like “contacts who are subscribed to Weekly Digest” or “contacts who are not subscribed to Promotions” and use those segments as the target for campaigns. This makes topics a natural way to slice your audience for campaigns — when you have a “Product Updates” topic, sending a product announcement to a “Subscribed to Product Updates” segment automatically respects every contact’s preference.

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Topics vs. Lists vs. Segments

A quick reminder:

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Next Steps