A contact in your eduConverse account is a unique individual who has a contact profile record. A contact on your list can have any one of four statuses: Active (Subscribed), Unconfirmed, Unsubscribed, or Bounced.
In this article, you'll learn about the different statuses a contact can have with a list. We will also show you how to filter your contacts by their status.
Active status
Active contacts are contacts who subscribed or opted in to your marketing list(s). Contacts do not need an email address to have an "Active" status for a list. An active contact counts as only one contact regardless of how many lists they are on.
You can only send contacts email campaigns if they:
- Have an "Active" status for your list
- Have an email address on their contact profile record
Note that an active contact is not the same as an engaged contact. Engaged contacts are contacts who open and/or click links in your marketing emails.
To learn how to track contact engagement, visit Track contact engagement with Engagement Tagging automations.
Active contacts count toward your contact limit. A contact is not counted as "Active" if:
- They do not confirm their list subscription ("Unconfirmed" status)
- They unsubscribe from your list ("Unsubscribed" status)
- Their email server rejects your campaign ("Bounced" status)
- They are not on or associated with any list
Unconfirmed status
When a contact is unconfirmed for a list, it means that they have not completed the double opt-in process for a subscription form.
Unconfirmed contacts:
- Cannot be sent email campaigns until they have an "Active" status for your list
- Do not count toward your contact limit
To learn how to resend a confirmation email to a contact, visit How do I resend a confirmation email?
Unsubscribed status
When a contact unsubscribes from your list, it means they no longer want to receive communications from you.
A contact receives an "Unsubscribed" status when they:
- Click an unsubscribe link in your email
- Are unsubscribed from a list by an account admin
- Move through an "Unsubscribe" action in an automation
Contacts unsubscribed from all lists do not count toward your contact limit. Contacts who are unsubscribed from some list and active for other lists will count toward your contact limit.
For more information managing unsubscribes, visit Managing Unsubscribes.
Bounced status
A contact is labeled as bounced when their receiving email server rejects an email campaign. These rejection notices indicate the email address is either invalid or inaccessible.
There are two types of bounces: hard and soft.
Hard bounce
A hard bounce is a permanent failure or rejection of your email campaign. Once we receive a hard bounce, we mark the contact immediately as “Bounced,” and we will no longer send any campaigns or automation emails to them.
Soft Bounce
A soft bounce is a temporary failure or rejection. Some reasons may include:
- Their server is unavailable or down
- Their server is overloaded
- The recipient’s mailbox is full
- The message size is too big
When a contact soft bounces, we don't mark the contact as bounced until this happens three times in a row (3 separate campaigns). If we receive three soft bounces for your contact, they are marked as “Bounced,” and we will no longer send them any campaigns or automation emails.
Contacts with a bounced status are not included in campaign sends and do not count toward your contact limit.
To learn more about bounces, visit:
- Bounce Codes
- What is a bounce and how can I prevent them?
- Why are contacts bouncing with a 9.1.5 code?
Filter contacts by status
You can filter contacts by status on the Contacts Overview page. To do so:
1. Click "Contacts" to navigate to the Contacts Overview page.
2. Click the "Status" dropdown.
3. Click the status you want to filter contacts by.
Note that you can combine filters to narrow your contact list further. For instance, you could filter first by the list and then by the contact status.