> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.lekalao.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Key ideas

> Lekalao's words, and how they fit together.

## The whole picture

```mermaid theme={null}
flowchart LR
  T[Team] --> L[Lists]
  T --> M[Mailers]
  T --> TP[Templates]
  L --> S[Subscribers]
  S --> TG[Tags]
  L --> SG[Segments]
  L --> C[Campaigns]
  SG --> C
  L --> A[Automations]
  A --> AM[Automation e-mails]
  T --> TT[Transactional templates]
  C --> M
  AM --> M
  TT --> M
```

## Team

Everything you create belongs to a **team**: lists, subscribers, campaigns, mailers, API tokens, domains, settings. One person may belong to several teams and move between them; what one team holds stays invisible to the others. Each member has a **role**: owner, editor or viewer. See [Team](/account/team).

## List

A **list** gathers people who agreed to receive one kind of e-mail. It carries a language, a sender, the double opt-in choice, the confirmation and welcome e-mails, a subscription form, and possibly sending hours. The same address may sit on several lists: they are then separate subscribers, each with their own status.

## Subscriber

A **subscriber** is an address on a list, with a first name, a last name, a time zone, a language, **custom attributes** (any field you find useful: city, date of birth, plan…) and tags. Their **status** is one of three:

| Status       | Means                                                                                            |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Unconfirmed  | Subscribed to a double opt-in list, has not clicked the confirmation link yet. Receives nothing. |
| Subscribed   | Receives campaigns and enters automations.                                                       |
| Unsubscribed | Has left the list. The trace of the departure is kept.                                           |

Every subscriber also has an **engagement score** from 0 to 100, worked out every night from their opens and clicks.

## Tag

A **tag** (the **Tags** tab) is a label put on a subscriber. An **internal** tag is for the team only; a **preference** tag appears on the subscriber's preferences page, where they tick it or untick it themselves ("Promotions", "New products", say).

## Segment

A **segment** is a filter saved on a list: "the subscribers with the *vip* tag who opened an e-mail in the last 60 days". It is worked out again at every use. You send a campaign, or open an automation, to a segment rather than to the whole list.

## Mailer

A **mailer** is the service that actually delivers the e-mails: SMTP, Amazon SES, Postmark, Mailgun, SendGrid, Brevo or Resend. You may configure several and choose which one serves campaigns, automations and transactional e-mails.

## Template

A **template** carries the shared layout (header, footer, styles) and an **editable area** that each campaign fills. Transactional templates are a different thing: see below.

## Campaign

A **campaign** is an e-mail sent once to a list or a segment. It moves through these states:

```mermaid theme={null}
stateDiagram-v2
  [*] --> Draft
  Draft --> Scheduled: Schedule
  Scheduled --> Draft: Cancel the schedule
  Draft --> Sending: Send now
  Scheduled --> Sending: The time comes
  Sending --> Paused: Complaint or bounce threshold
  Paused --> Sending: Resume
  Sending --> Cancelled: Stop sending
  Paused --> Cancelled: Stop sending
  Sending --> Sent
  Sent --> [*]
```

## Automation

An **automation** is a journey: a **trigger** (a subscription, a tag, a date, an API call…) brings a subscriber in, and they move from **action** to action (wait, send an automation e-mail, tag, take a branch…). Each subscriber has their own **journey** with a status: running, finished, stopped, goal reached, or left early.

## Transactional e-mail

A **transactional e-mail** goes to one person at the request of one of your applications: an order confirmation, an invoice, a sign-in link. It comes from a **transactional template** known by a name (`order-confirmation`) and filled with variables. It depends on no list and is not unsubscribed from.

## Suppression list

The **suppression list** holds the addresses the team never writes to again, whatever the list: hard bounces, spam complaints, manual blocks. Nothing is sent to them, and an import does not bring those people back.