Contacts on your list(s) can have one of four statuses: Active, Unconfirmed, Unsubscribed, or Bounced. In this article, we will define each contact status and show you how to filter contacts by their status.
Active
An Active contact is a contact who has confirmed their subscription to your list (if you are using opt-in confirmation) and has not unsubscribed or bounced.
Unconfirmed
A contact is labeled as unconfirmed if they subscribed to your list but have not yet clicked the confirmation link that was sent to them via email.
Unconfirmed contacts will not be sent campaign emails until they have been moved to “Active” either by clicking the confirmation link or being manually added to a list by an admin user. Please note that you should not set unconfirmed contacts to active. You should have them refer to their email for confirmation when they used the signup form on your website to register.
Unsubscribed
A contact is labeled as unsubscribed when they have either manually unsubscribed by clicking an unsubscribe link in an email campaign you've sent, or if they have been manually removed from a list by you or an “Unsubscribe."
Please note, if you are going to resubscribe an individual you must have their verbal permission to do so. Failure to gain permission from the individual who unsubscribed from your newsletters goes against the CanSpam act and will give you unwanted complaints about providing spam email.
Bounced
A contact is labeled as bounced when an email campaign that is sent to them is rejected by their receiving email server. These rejection notices indicate the email address is either invalid or inaccessible.
There are hard bounces and soft bounces:
Hard bounce
This happens when a message is returned with the error that it was permanently rejected. If we receive a hard bounce, the contact is immediately given the status of “Bounced” and we will no longer send to them.
Soft Bounce
This means that the email address may be only temporarily unavailable. If a contact experiences a soft bounce, we will not attempt to resend them the same email unless it's a type of soft bounce that says "Try again later." In order for a contact to be given a "Bounced" status, they must receive three soft bounces in a row, for three different campaigns.
Contacts with a bounced status are not included in campaign sends and do not count toward your contact limit.
Filter contacts by status
You can filter contacts by status on the Contacts Overview page.
Here, you'll see a row of filters above your list of contacts. Click "Any" next to "Status" to display a menu of contact statuses.
