Manage blacklisted contacts

The blacklist contains a list of all the contacts who cannot or do not want to receive any of your campaigns. There are several reasons possible why contacts end up on the blacklist: they unsubscribed, they reported a spam complaint or they were added manually, by import or due to a hard bounce. 

Correct use of the blacklist keeps your database clean and helps you being fully GDPR-proof. Email addresses on the blacklist cannot be imported or added manually to the database anymore, making sure they won't receive any unwanted communication and keeping your reputation up to standard. 

This article will show you all the possible reasons to be added to the blacklist, how to remove contacts from it and how to search for your blacklisted contacts. 

1. To manage your blacklisted contacts, go to Contacts > All contacts section in your account.

   

2. On your contact overview, you'll find three tabs: 
   • Active or confirmed contacts
   • Unconfirmed contacts
   • And finally your blacklisted contacts

3. Next, click on the Blacklisted tab. Here you will be able to see a list of all the contacts on your blacklist. You'll find the date on which they were blacklisted and the reason why. 

   

   Contacts who cannot or do not want to receive any of your campaigns end up here when you have set this up in the general settings of your account. More information about these settings can be found in the article Configure bounces. 

4. To get a closer look at a contact on your blacklist, click on its name to open the detail page. You'll find the following information: 
   • Their email address 
   • The reason why they ended up on the blacklist  
   • The status that they got, depending on the reason why
   • The date on which they were added to the blacklist 

   • The option to remove them from the blacklist, depending on the reason why and their status

     

Add a contact to the blacklist

Blacklisted contacts will receive a reason, depending on the way they were added, manually or automatically. Let's have a look at those reasons: 

Unsubscribed

If a contact is no longer interested in receiving your campaigns, they will have the option to unsubscribe. Contacts who unsubscribe from all communication will be added to your blacklist.

Spam

When a contact receives an email that they consider to be spam, a lot of email clients offer them a button the mark that email as spam. This would send that email to their spam folder and lets the email client know they no longer wish to receive emails from this sender. Most of those email clients return that information to the sending servers. When we receive such a notification, we place that email address on your blacklist with this specific status.

Bounced (soft or hard)

A contact will be considered as bounced out when we received multiple consecutive soft and/or hard bounces for this address. How many bounces this will be, can be set in the general settings of your account under the section Bounces. By default, it's set to 3. 

Unsubscribed (manually) 

Email addresses can be added manually by blacklisting using their detail page or by importing them into the blacklist. 

To add one single contact to the blacklist, open the detail page of that particular contact and click on Blacklist this contact. Then confirm that you are sure that you want to move this contact to the blacklist.

If you have a list of email addresses that need to be added to your blacklist, you can import this file directly into the blacklist. Go to your contact overview >  Blacklisted tab. Click on the Actions gear icon and select Import contacts on the blacklist.

Click on Browse to select your CSV, Excel or TXT file with blacklisted contacts. Then click on Start import. First, choose the separator you used in your file to separate data in the same field. Next you select the column of your file containing the email address. Your file only needs to contain email addresses to add them to the blacklist.

Export blacklisted contacts

In case you need an export of your blacklisted contacts, go to Contacts > Blacklisted tab. Click on the Actions gear icon and select Export all contacts. A file will be downloaded after you click on Download CSV. 

The export file will contain the email address, the reason and the time a contact was added to the blacklist. 

Delete a contact from the blacklist

Contacts end up in the blacklist for a reason. But sometimes it may be necessary to remove one or multiple email addresses from the blacklist. There are however, two types of contacts that can't be removed from the blacklist because they considered blocked: contacts that have marked your emails as spam and contacts that hard bounces (non-existing email address).

Contacts can be removed one by one or in bulk. 

To remove one single email address from the blacklist, open the detail page of that particular blacklist contact and click on Delete this contact from the blacklist. Then confirm that you are sure that you want to remove this contact from the blacklist.

If you want to remove multiple email addresses at once, go to your Contacts > Blacklisted tab. Thick the checkboxes in front of the addresses that you want to remove, click on the Actions gear icon and select Delete (number) non-permanently blacklisted contacts. Then confirm that you are sure that you want to remove the selected email addresses from the blacklist.

Search for a contact in the blacklist

If you want to check if a certain contact has been added to the blacklist, you can use the search bar at the top of your blacklisted contact overview. Enter the email address you are looking for and, if found, you will see when the contact has been added and why it's added. 

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