About blacklisted contacts
What is a blacklist?
When a contact indicates he doesn't feel like getting emails from you, it can be a daunting task to extend that information to all other places you store contact information. In Flexmail we use the blacklist - which is represented by the third tab on your contact overview - to collect and store all contacts that you shouldn't be sending emails. They can end up there for several reasons, which you'll find below. A contact that is either blacklisted or blocked does not appear in segments or receives emails through campaigns or workflows.
How does the blacklist work in Flexmail?
Placing a contact on the blacklist means they won't be able to receive emails from you sent through Flexmail. It also means that you won't be able to just import them again. When you import a new file, we'll tell you if that file contains contacts that are blacklisted. By default, we'll protect those people from being imported again. If you've obtained their consent to be resubscribed outside of Flexmail, you can remove them from the blacklist and import them again. But we do advise you to be very thoughtful with that option.
How do contacts end up on the blacklist?
People can end up on your blacklist for several reasons:
- They are blacklisted
- They unsubscribed by clicking on the unsubscribe button in one of your emails, because they don't want to receive your information anymore. Unsubscribing should be as easy as possible. You don't want them to report your email as spam because they cannot find your unsubscribe link. That would negatively impact your sender reputation. By default, they can resubscribe again. On the unsubscribe page they can indicate a reason why they want to leave your database. If they did, you can find that reason in the unsubscribe report.
- They were added to the blacklist by you manually.
- They (soft) bounced X times consecutively. Email addresses that are no longer available that remain in your database impact your sender reputation negatively.
- They are blocked
- A person marked one of your emails as spam in their email client or in your unsubscribe form. If we receive that info, we automatically add them to your blacklist.
- They hard bounces with the bounce code 5.1.1, which tells us that email address doesn't exist anymore.
You can still consult the info of contacts on your blacklist, but you won't be able to edit them anymore. If they are just blacklisted, you can remove them from your blacklist and add them to your database again. If they are blocked however, you won't be able to simply remove them yourself, but you can always contact support. We automatically add blocked contacts to your blacklist for your protection: if you would continue to email to these email addresses, your sender reputation would be badly impacted.
Do contacts know they are on my blacklist?
No, we don't go into detail on how we technically process their data. They care about their wishes being respected. Carefully managing your blacklist and treating their data respectfully will allow you to do just that.
What is the impact of the blacklist on the amount of contacts in my subscription?
Semantically speaking, a contact in Flexmail corresponds to an email address. So you pay for your subscription based on the number of uploaded email addresses in your database. For our pricing policy, we only take into account active contacts. For the sake of clarity, blacklisted, deleted and unconfirmed contacts do not count.
Can people on my blacklist be resubscribed?
A contact can always resubscribe through an opt-in form: this will trigger the opt-in flow.