🚫 The Suppression List

The suppression list is your do-not-email list. Anyone on it is skipped by every broadcast, automation and import, whatever list, segment or audience they are in. It protects the people who asked to leave and it protects your sender reputation.

Most addresses arrive on it by themselves. The suppression manager lets you search it, add an address by hand, set an address free again, and bring in the unsubscribe file from your old autoresponder.

Where to find it:

Click Delivery, then Deliverability, and scroll to Suppression list. The Suppression tile on the Dashboard and the Open the suppression manager button on Reports both lead here too.

How addresses get on the list:

• Unsubscribed: the person used the unsubscribe link in your email, or chose to unsubscribe from all on their preferences page.
• Bounced: the address does not exist (a hard bounce), or it kept failing (5 soft bounces within 90 days). See Hard And Soft Bounces.
• Complained: the person marked your email as spam and your sending service reported it.
• Manual: you blocked the address yourself.

The four tiles at the top count each type.

What being on the list means:

• The address is skipped at the moment of sending, so no audience rule can reach it.
• Imports skip suppressed addresses instead of bringing them back.
• A sign-up form will not quietly re-add them.

Unsubscribing from one list or from everything:

The unsubscribe link in a broadcast or automation email unsubscribes the person from everything and adds them here, so nothing reaches them again. Unsubscribe from all on the preferences page does the same.

People who only want to leave some of your lists use the Manage your preferences link in the email footer instead. There they can untick single lists. That is recorded on the list, not on this page, and they keep getting email from the lists they kept.

Searching the list:

1. Type part of an address in Search an address.
2. Pick a type, or leave All types.
3. Click Search.

The table shows each address with its Type, the Reason, the Source (for example native for your own unsubscribe link, or the name of the sending service that reported it, or import), and When it was added. Results come 50 to a page.

Blocking an address by hand:

1. Type the address in the Block an address box.
2. Click Never email.
3. Confirm Block it.

The address is added as Manual, with the reason Added manually on Deliverability.

Letting an address receive email again:

1. Find the address with Search.
2. Click Allow again on its row.
3. Confirm Allow it.

Only do this when you know the person wants your email again, for example they wrote to say they unsubscribed by accident. Never set free an address that complained.

Bringing your old unsubscribe file with you:

If you are moving from another autoresponder, export its unsubscribe or suppression file and import it here before your first send.

1. In Import a suppression file, click Choose File and pick the CSV. One column of emails works, or any CSV with an email column.
2. Choose how to record them: as Unsubscribed, as Manual block, as Bounced, or as Complained.
3. Click Import.
4. A message says how many were added and how many rows were skipped because they were blank or not an email.

Do this before you import your subscribers, so everyone who opted out over the years stays opted out from day one.

Exporting the list:

Click Export CSV to download the whole list, for a backup or to load into another system.

A real example:

Before moving to the Mailer, Anna exports the unsubscribe file from Leafwise Gardening's old autoresponder. She imports it as Unsubscribed, and the table fills with rows whose reason reads Imported unsubscribe file and whose source is import. Then she imports her subscribers, and the people who had left are skipped. Later a reader asks never to be emailed again, so Anna types the address in Block an address and clicks Never email.

Tips:

• Import the old unsubscribe file first, then your subscribers.
• Watch the Bounced and Complained tiles. A sudden rise usually means an old or poorly kept list. See List Health: Unsubscribes, Bounces And Complaints.
• Connect your sending service's bounce and complaint webhook so these arrive by themselves. See Hard And Soft Bounces.