1. What are secondary contacts (“subcontacts”)?
In Pathway, each client can have:
Primary contact – your main contact (default email recipient).
Secondary contacts (“subcontacts”) – additional people related to the same account (e.g. billing contact, branch contact, marketing contact).
Enabling subcontacts lets you:
Email multiple contacts per client.
Target different roles with tailored content (e.g. billing vs. operations).
Track activity per person, not just per account.
💡 Billing reminder
Pathway charges based on active contacts with valid email addresses (“Total Valid Emails”).
Activating subcontact types will increase your contact count, which may move you into a higher plan tier.
2. How subcontacts sync from Acturis
In Acturis → People & Locations for a client:
The main contact is mapped as Primary in Pathway.
All other contacts under People & Locations that are not Primary are synced as secondary contacts (subcontacts).
Their “Contact person type” (e.g. “Spouse”, “Partner”, “Finance contact”) becomes the subcontact type in Pathway. If the subcontact type is empty in the Acturis, they will all be labelled as Subcontacts in Pathway.
These subcontact types appear on the Settings → Sync Mapping page in Pathway.
3. Enabling subcontacts in Sync Mapping (Acturis)
You control which subcontact types are synced and used in Pathway.
In Pathway, go to Settings → Sync Mapping.
In the Contacts area you will see:
Primary contacts – always enabled (cannot be turned off).
Secondary contact types – taken from Acturis “Contact person type”.
Tick the checkbox next to any secondary contact type you want to:
Sync into Pathway, and
Use in segments, emails and reporting.
What changes once enabled:
Total Contacts = all synced contacts (primary + those subcontact types you enabled).
Total Valid Emails = all active contacts with valid email addresses.
This is the number used for billing.Your Acturis dashboards are not affected – those still report on clients, not on contacts.
4. Sending manual & Journey emails to subcontacts (Acturis)
You can use subcontacts in:
Manual emails, and
Journey emails (emails that use the Email Slider).
4.1 Step-by-step: include subcontacts in an email
Create a segment as usual.
Click Send Email to open the Email Slider.
Open the Contacts tab.
Choose who should receive the email:
Primary only (default), or
Primary + selected subcontact types, or
Only specific subcontact types (e.g. Finance contacts only).
Confirm and send/schedule your email.
⚠️ If you don’t change anything on the Contacts tab, the email will only go to Primary contacts.
If you remove everything from that list, Pathway will warn you and fall back to Primary by default.
5. Using subcontacts in Flows (Acturis)
Subcontacts can now be used in Flows, not just in manual emails.
There are two important requirements:
The Flow must be enabled for subcontacts by Pathway.
The Flow’s filters must explicitly include the subcontact types you want.
5.1 Getting a Flow ready for subcontacts
At the moment, subcontacts in Flows require a one-time setup:
Share the Flow name and ID with your Pathway CSM.
Ask them to enable subcontacts for that Flow.
Once enabled, that Flow can accept sub-contacts going forward.
5.2 Making sure subcontacts can enter the Flow
When you edit the Flow’s Contact filters:
Add a filter:
Contact → Contact Type → Is →Primary, and/or
the subcontact types you want (e.g. “Spouse”, “Finance contact”).
If you don’t include a subcontact type at this stage:
That subcontact type will not enter the Flow at all.
Any later condition like “Contact Type is Secondary” will never be met.
5.3 Policy filters for secondary contacts (Acturis)
Secondary contacts are attached to their primary contact’s policies.
You can target only secondary contacts and still use policy filters, for example:
Policy is Active = Yes
Product = Home, Auto, etc.
The Flow uses policies of the related primary contact when applying those filters.
6. How subcontacts behave in Dispatch, subscriptions & reporting
These behaviours are the same for Acturis and EPIC once subcontacts are enabled, but are included here for completeness.
6.1 Dispatch
In Dispatch, you will see a Contact Type filter when subcontacts are enabled:
Send to:
Primary only,
One or more subcontact types, or
Both.
Key points:
Pathway avoids double-sending within the same client:
If a primary and subcontact share the same email on the same account, we only send once.If that same email is used on another client (e.g. a producer on multiple accounts), it is treated as a separate account, so both will receive the email.
6.2 Subscription settings
Each subcontact:
Has their own subscription settings, just like a primary contact.
Uses their own unsubscribe link.
When you:
Unsubscribe the primary from all lists → their subcontacts are also unsubscribed.
Re-subscribe the primary → their subcontacts are re-subscribed.
Use bulk re-subscribe or reverse bulk unsubscribe → subcontacts follow the same rules.
6.3 Inactive and deleted contacts
If a primary is set to inactive or deleted, all of its subcontacts are treated as inactive/deleted as well.
In Pathway, subcontacts will be clearly marked as inactive when applicable.
Charging is based on unique active email addresses:
If the same email exists multiple times and at least one is active, it still counts as one active contact for billing.
6.4 Reporting & merge tags
Subcontacts appear in:
Email performance reports – with a label showing whether they are Primary or a subcontact type.
Activity Stream exports – include a field for contact type.
eDoc download tracking – downloads per subcontact are logged.
When building messages, we recommend using the recipient merge tags, for example:
{recipient:name}– uses the correct name for whichever contact (primary or subcontact) received the email.{recipient:email}– uses the correct email.{recipient:type}– shows whether the recipient is Primary or a specific subcontact type.
These ensure your emails render correctly regardless of who receives them.