Who we never mail
Every automatic exclusion, and why each one protects you.
Several exclusions run automatically, which is why an audience is usually smaller than the number of contacts you hold. All of them exist to protect your ability to reach the people who do want to hear from you.
Anyone not subscribed
Only subscribed contacts are ever mailed. That covers people who opted out, people who reported spam, addresses that hard-bounced, and people you recorded without an opt-in.
It isn’t a filter applied per campaign — it’s built into how an audience is worked out, so there’s no way to construct a send that reaches them. More on statuses.
People who suppress themselves
- Unsubscribes — the moment someone clicks the link, across every list you have.
- Spam complaints — reported to us by the mailbox provider, applied immediately.
- Permanent bounces — the receiving server saying the mailbox doesn’t exist.
You don’t have to do anything for any of these, and you can’t accidentally undo them by importing a file.
Addresses known to be dead platform-wide
When an address hard-bounces, that’s a fact about the address, not about the sender — the mailbox doesn’t exist for anyone. So those addresses are refused at import for every account here.
The reason is shared reputation: mailbox providers judge bounce rates across the whole platform, so one account rediscovering a dead address spends everyone’s standing, including yours.
It records nothing about who mailed it
The list holds addresses and nothing else — no account, no campaign, no dates. Otherwise importing a file would become a way to probe other customers’ audiences.
One bounce isn’t always enough. A server refusing a message for its content reports something that looks similar but says nothing about the recipient, so ambiguous bounces need to happen twice before an address is treated as dead. A genuinely dead mailbox reaches that quickly.
Temporary bounces — a full mailbox, a server having a bad day — never land here, and neither do spam complaints. A complaint means “not from this sender”, which is specific to you rather than to the address.
Common issues
My campaign shows fewer recipients than my list
The difference is the exclusions above. Open the list and check the status breakdown — on an older list, bounces and opt-outs accumulated over years are usually most of it.
An address was refused at import as previously bounced
It hard-bounced somewhere on the platform. If you’re confident it works now — a rebuilt mailbox, a reclaimed domain — get in touch and it can be cleared.
Someone insists they're subscribed but gets nothing
Open their contact record. Bad email from a temporary problem is the usual cause; set them back to subscribed and send a test.
FAQs
Can I turn any of this off?+
No, and no reputable platform lets you. Continuing to mail people who opted out or addresses that don’t exist is what gets a sender filtered, and the damage is shared here.
Do suppressed contacts still cost me anything?+
No. They’re excluded before a send is priced, so you’re never charged for mail that was never going to go.
What if someone wants to resubscribe?+
Set their status back to subscribed, or point them at one of your signup forms. A form is better — it creates a consent record with a timestamp, which is the thing you’d want if they later forget.