When viewing the contacts page, you’ll see several tabs and options. Here’s a quick guide to what each one means:
Active and Inactive Contact Status
Active Contacts - An active contact is someone who has a valid email address and will receive both marketing and transaction information.
Inactive Contact - An inactive contact is someone whose status has been manually set to "inactive," effectively halting all content delivery to them. This status functions as a "master on/off switch" for communications, meaning that even if the contact is technically subscribed to receive messages, they will not receive any content, whether it is marketing-related or transactional, as long as they remain inactive.
Active, Unsubscribed and Bounced Email Addressees
Active Contacts - An active contact is someone who not only receives but also engages with your communications through email. This engagement can take several forms, such as opening emails, clicking on links, responding to messages, or interacting with any calls to action (CTAs) embedded within the content.
Unsubscribed - A contact is marked as “unsubscribed” when they have updated their preferences to opt out of receiving marketing communications from your company. This change indicates that the individual no longer wishes to receive marketing-related content. They may have made this preference clear by submitting a form or unsubscribing from an email for example. However, even after unsubscribing from marketing messages, these contacts can still receive transactional communications, such as order confirmations, account updates, or critical service alerts, as long as the “Master on/off” setting is active. (As mentioned above)
Bounce-
Soft Bounce - A soft bounce contact refers to an email address that temporarily cannot receive your content due to a temporary issue. Common causes for a soft bounce include a full mailbox, an out-of-office auto-reply, or temporary server issues on the recipient’s end.
However, if a contact’s email continues to soft bounce repeatedly—typically over a period of six months—it is reclassified as a "hard bounce."
Hard Bounce - A hard bounce occurs when an email address is marked as permanently unreachable, indicating that any further attempts to deliver content to this contact will not succeed. Common reasons for a hard bounce include invalid or non-existent email addresses, domain issues, or accounts that have been closed.
To maintain optimal deliverability rates and list health, it is recommended to stop further attempts to contact hard bounce addresses.
SMS
Active - An active contact is someone who has a valid phone number and will receive both marketing and transaction information.
Unsubscribed - A contact is considered “unsubscribed” when they have updated their preferences to opt out of receiving marketing communications from your brand. For SMS, this means contacts will no longer receive marketing content through the text however, they will still receive transactional content such as order confirmations.
Custom- A “Custom” status can indicate various things, often resulting from an email status that doesn’t align with those recognized by the platform. Most likely, it means the contact is set to not receive emails.