Contact statuses explained
Subscribed, unsubscribed, cleaned and pending: what each status means, what sets it, and why only subscribed contacts get email.
Every contact has one of four statuses, and only Subscribed contacts get email. You’ll see the status on the contact’s page and as tabs on the Contacts page.
| Status | What it means | What sets it |
|---|---|---|
| Subscribed | Can receive email | Adding or importing a contact, a signup form, a confirmation click, or the person opting back in on your preference centre |
| Unsubscribed | Opted out | The unsubscribe link, a spam complaint, Unsubscribe on the contact’s page, or suppressing the address yourself |
| Cleaned | The address doesn’t work | A hard bounce, or repeated soft bounces |
| Pending | Hasn’t confirmed yet | A signup to a double opt-in list |
Opt-outs and bounces stick
Unsubscribes, bounces and spam complaints all put the address on your suppression list, and the status matches the reason. Bounces make a contact cleaned. Unsubscribes, complaints and addresses you suppress yourself make them unsubscribed. So adding or importing a suppressed address gives you an unsubscribed or cleaned contact, never a subscribed one.
An import can also set a status, if you map a column to Subscription status.
Changing a status
You can’t edit a status directly.
- Unsubscribed: only the person can opt back in, on your preference centre or by signing up again and confirming by email. You can’t resubscribe them. If you unsubscribed them yourself, they can only opt back in after you remove that suppression. Someone who marked your email as spam can’t be resubscribed.
- Cleaned: permanent. Nothing moves a cleaned contact back, including a re-import or a new signup. A later unsubscribe or complaint doesn’t change it either.
- Pending: becomes subscribed when the person clicks the link in their confirmation email. Pending contacts never receive campaigns and don’t count towards your plan.
Status on each list
Each list a contact is on has its own status too: subscribed, unsubscribed or pending. So someone can be subscribed overall but have left one list on your preference centre. A list’s page shows both, as On this list and Account status.
If a contact’s page shows a Suppressed row, they’re skipped on every send, whatever their status says.