Question: What is my Act! Marketing Automation Suppression List?
Product: Act!
Product Family: Act! Marketing Automation
Your suppression list is a list of email addresses that will not be sent to even if you add them to a group for your Act! Marketing Automation campaign. This list exists to ensure that Act!, and our customers, comply with the CAN-SPAM Act 2003 and other legislation.
Contacts can be added to suppression lists in various ways. Once an email address is on the suppression list, emails sent to that address through Act! Marketing Automation will not reach the customer.
Import
When you first setup your account, if you moved from Swiftpage E-marketing or Act! E-marketing then your Account Manager will have arranged for your existing suppression list to be imported into your account.
If you have not used another Swiftpage E-marketing product previously then you can import your own suppression list by:
• Acquiring your list of all unsubscribes and bounces from your previous marketing automation platform.
• Selecting ‘Admin’ within AMA and then selecting ‘ Suppression Lists – Email’ from the ‘What would you like?’ drop down.
• Press 'Go' and when the page has loaded click 'Actions' > 'Import'.
• A window to allow you to upload your file will appear. Click on ‘Select’ and browse to the file you wish to upload.
• Press 'Go' and when the page has loaded click 'Actions' > 'Import'.
• A window to allow you to upload your file will appear. Click on ‘Select’ and browse to the file you wish to upload.
• The file to upload should be a csv file with a single column of only email addresses to add to the list.
• You can select the type of suppression you are uploading by selecting ‘Unsubscribe’, ‘Bounce’ or ‘Complained’ from the source drop down. The default is ‘Unsubscribe’.
• You can also add your own ‘source’ of list in the ‘Please enter a source’ box; if you leave this blank the import source will be ‘Uploaded’.
• Once the list has been uploaded you will receive a confirmation email and you can now click the ‘Refresh’ icon to see your full suppression list.
• You can select the type of suppression you are uploading by selecting ‘Unsubscribe’, ‘Bounce’ or ‘Complained’ from the source drop down. The default is ‘Unsubscribe’.
• You can also add your own ‘source’ of list in the ‘Please enter a source’ box; if you leave this blank the import source will be ‘Uploaded’.
• Once the list has been uploaded you will receive a confirmation email and you can now click the ‘Refresh’ icon to see your full suppression list.
Business As Usual
Records will also be added to your suppression list if you send emails that bounce for any reason or the customer clicks the unsubscribe link or reports the email as SPAM.
Soft Bounces and Unsubscribes
‘Soft’ bounces are where an email couldn’t be delivered to an email address for temporary reasons. The email address sent to is valid and the mail server was reached but the email couldn’t be delivered, for example because the recipient’s inbox was full or the email was too large.
Unsubscribes are where the customer has clicked on the unsubscribe link within an email you have sent them.
Hard Bounces and SPAM Complaints
‘Hard’ Bounces are where an email couldn’t be delivered to an email address for permanent reasons. There can be a number of reasons for this but examples of the more common ones are that the email domain doesn’t exist or the email address doesn’t exist.
SPAM complaints occur when a recipient of an email marks it as SPAM via their ISP (Internet Service Provider).
These are fed back to our servers and flagged so that emails are prevented from being sent to these email addresses.
Note: The list view on the Suppression List page only shows up to 5000 records. If you would like to see all records within the list, you can export by clicking 'Actions' > 'Export'. You will be given an Excel file containing all records in your suppression list.
You can also use the search bar to search for a specific email address to determine if they are being suppressed from email sends.
If you wish to remove contacts from your suppression list please refer to the following article: