A Contact is an individual email address that has been added to your account. This can be accomplished via an upload to a group, manually adding an individual Contact, or an API call.
Contact Status
You can have an unlimited number of Contacts, and each Contact is identified uniquely either by their email address or by a custom ID.
To view a Contact’s status:
- Access the Admin interface.
- Navigate to Contacts > List.
- Click to select the Contact. Their row is highlighted and the More menu above the list is now enabled. (If needed, click the magnifying glass at the top right of the page to search for the Contact.)
- Click More > Subscriptions.
A Contact’s status page will reflect:
Subscription records
A Contact can have one of several possible statuses that determines whether they can receive a message. Subscription statuses of Unsubscribed or Subscribed are stored within a specific section of the system, per account. In addition to a Contact record, Contacts also have a subscription record. This is completely different than the ability to send to the Contact.
Let's learn about each of the statuses a Contact can have:
- Available to send to
- Subscribed
- Unsubscribed
- Suppressed (this is an additional status that can be updated for a Contact to exclude them from all message sends)
Contact subscription statuses are managed by:
- Admin users logging in to their account and manually changing the Contact preference
- A Contact clicking an unsubscribe link in a message
Available to send to
Unless previously suppressed during the onboarding process or categorized as Role Addresses, all Contacts uploaded to the system are Available to send to; these Contacts are also individuals who have opted in to receive messages via a previously established relationship with the sender.
Please note that, as a sender, it is your responsibility to make sure that all Contacts you upload have explicitly consented to receive communications from you. The system can manage the “opt-out” portion of the process, but the “explicit opt-in” portion is necessary before you upload any contact list.
A Contact’s status, when they are initially added to the account, will reflect the below.
Message or Group Category
Unsubscribe from all
When an individual is available to send to and Unsubscribe from All is the Unsubscribe Type for the account – the record will simply exist in your account with no flag that represents they have been unsubscribed.
Subscribed
A Contact subscription status of Subscribed can only occur when a Contact explicitly opts to receive a message. This is generally completed via an SMP page. Once a Contact subscribes, the flag is checked in the Subscribe section of the account's database, and their record will reflect the below.
Message or Group Category
NOTE: There is a date of the subscribe activity, and you can view the history of the Contact's unsubscribe and subscribe statuses
If Message Category is the unsubscribe preference, there is an additional tool on the Send Message to Group page. This tool will expose the option to Send to Subscribed. This means in addition to your uploaded list, you can also send to those individuals who have subscribed to the Message Category associated with your message.
Unsubscribe from all
When an individual is subscribed to and Unsubscribe from All is the Unsubscribe Type for the account – the record will simply exist in your account with no flag that represents they have been subscribed.
Unsubscribed
A Contact subscription status of Unsubscribed occurs when a Contact has explicitly chosen not to receive messages. This is generally completed via an unsubscribe link in messages, an SMP, or by a user in the account. Once a Contact unsubscribes, the flag is checked in the Unsubscribe section of the account's database and their record will reflect the below.
Message or Group Category
NOTE: There is a date of the unsubscribe activity, and you can view the history of the Contact's unsubscribe and subscribe statuses
If Message or Group Category is your Unsubscribe Type – Contact may still Unsubscribe from All – this is accomplished via a specific one-click link, or via the SMP page.
If this functionality is also enabled for your account settings, they will have the alert flag:
Unsubscribe from all
The below is a representation of when a Contact has unsubscribed from all, this can be accomplished via an SMP page, or with a one-click link at the bottom of your message. If the unsubscribe setting for your account is Unsubscribe to All this is how a Contact who has unsubscribed will look.
Suppressed
Suppression is an absolute Do Not Send status. Once a Contact is suppressed they will no longer receive any emails from that account. Suppression can occur: in bulk by uploading records to the account, or by an individual Contact. There are a variety of reasons for suppression:
User-Driven Suppression
- Campaign: Automatically suppressed via a user-defined campaign action.
- List Upload: A user uploaded a list of multiple Contacts to be suppressed.
- Suppressed Across Accts: Automatically suppressed via a regularly scheduled task which finds suppressed Contacts in one account and applies them to another linked account.
Automatic Suppression
- Auto Non-Engaged Suppress: An optional functionality that is enabled based on rules set by Higher Logic's deliverability department or by the client. Automatically suppressed via an account rule to suppress Contacts with consecutive “Non Opens”.
- Bad Domain: Automatically suppressed via an account rule to suppress Contacts with two consecutive “bad domain” bounces.
- User Not Found: Automatically suppressed via an account rule to suppress Contacts with two consecutive “user not found” bounces.
Contact Driven Suppression
- Manage Subscription: Contact indicated preference via a subscription page.
- Spam Complaint: Automatically suppressed after the Contact clicked on a “report spam” type button or link while reviewing an email. This can only be reversed when Higher Logic's Support team receives an email from the Contact requesting to be re-subscribed.