Contact statuses explained
Five statuses, and why only one of them ever receives email.
Every contact has one status, and it decides everything. Only subscribed contacts are ever mailed — not by a filter we remember to apply, but built into how an audience is worked out, so there’s no path by which the others receive a campaign.
The five statuses
| Status | Means | Set by |
|---|---|---|
| Subscribed | Opted in, mailable | The default on create and import |
| Not subscribed | You hold the address; they never opted in or out | You, by hand or in a file |
| Unsubscribed | They opted out themselves | The unsubscribe link |
| Spam reported | They pressed “report spam” | Their mailbox provider, automatically |
| Bad email | The address doesn’t exist | A permanent bounce, automatically |
“Not subscribed” is not “said no”
It means never asked. A business card from a conference, a row in an old spreadsheet — you have the address, they never agreed to hear from you.
Recording those people as unsubscribed would misstate consent and make a later genuine opt-in look like a reversal. Nothing sets this status automatically; it only arrives by hand or from a file, so an import can never quietly produce an unmailable list.
Why a spam report is kept separate
An unsubscribe and a spam complaint both stop the mail, so it’s tempting to treat them as one. They are not remotely equivalent.
A complaint is reported to us by the mailbox provider and counts against your sending reputation. It is the single most expensive event in email: past roughly one complaint per thousand, providers start filtering everything you send, and sending can be suspended across the whole platform.
So complaints are counted separately rather than buried in your opt-out numbers — a rising complaint rate is the thing you most need to see.
Changing someone's status
You can set a status by hand on a contact, or in bulk from Contacts. Legitimate uses exist — someone emails asking to be put back on, an address starts working again.
Setting someone back to subscribed is the risky one
Especially in bulk, and especially over people who reported spam. Someone who pressed “report spam” and then receives more mail from you will press it again — and that second complaint costs far more than the first.
We allow it, because a genuine re-opt-in happens. The confirmation names the risk rather than giving generic advice.
Common issues
Someone says they never unsubscribed
Check whether they’re bad email rather than unsubscribed — a permanent bounce sets that automatically, and a mailbox that was full or briefly misconfigured can produce it. If the address genuinely works now, set it back to subscribed.
My audience is smaller than my contact count
Expected. The contact count is everyone you hold; the audience is the subscribed ones. The gap is your unsubscribes, bounces and never-opted-in.
An import shows “blocklisted”
An old name for bad email. It’s still accepted on import so that a CSV you exported before the rename still works.
FAQs
Does unsubscribing apply to one list or all of them?+
All of them. Status belongs to the contact, not to a list — so someone who opts out is excluded from every future campaign, and you can’t re-add them by importing a file they appear in.
Can I delete unsubscribed contacts instead?+
You can, but don’t. The record is what stops them being mailed if the address turns up in a future import. Deleting it removes the memory of their choice.
What makes an address “bad”?+
A permanent bounce — the receiving server saying the mailbox doesn’t exist. Temporary problems like a full mailbox don’t count; those are “not right now”, and we keep trying.