Learn what happens when a contact resubscribes with a signup form, and how to resubscribe a contact manually.
Overview
After a contact unsubscribes, they might change their mind and ask you to resubscribe them, or even resubscribe themselves using a signup form.
When this happens, we remove the contact from your suppression list and add the contact to the All contacts address book. The contact doesn't return to any address books they were in previously unless they resubscribe using a signup form that lets them choose those address books specifically.
Before you start
Things you need to know before you unsubscribe a contact:
- Only resubscribe contacts that explicitly request it
After every resubscription, we send the contact a confirmation email. If the contact reports email abuse from the confirmation email, the report is logged against your account and the resubscription is unsuccessful.
The only exception to this is for contacts with the Suppression reason Suppressed by you. These contacts are not sent a resubscribe confirmation email, but are immediately resubscribed.
Resubscribe with a signup form
An unsubscribed contact can manually resubscribe themselves using your signup form. After the contact completes the form, we send them a resubscribe confirmation email. We don't resubscribe the contact until they respond positively to the confirmation email.
To learn more about signup forms, check out the article Create a signup form.
Here's what happens when a contact resubscribes using a signup form:
- The unsubscribed contact fills in and submits your signup form.
- We send the contact a resubscribe confirmation email, to verify it was them.
- The contact verifies the request from their confirmation email.
- We resubscribe the contact.
Using our API?
If you've created your own signup form using our API, you must use the Resubscribe contact/ResubscribeContact operation/method where appropriate.
Resubscribe a contact manually
If you don't have a signup form, or if a contact asks you to resubscribe them on their behalf, you can do this in your account.
To resubscribe a contact in your account:
- Go to Contacts > Suppressed contacts.
- Find the contact to resubscribe.
- Select the checkbox next to any contacts to resubscribe.
- Expand the More actions drop-down menu, and select Resubscribe.
After you resubscribe a contact, we send the contact a resubscribe confirmation email. We don't resubscribe the contact until they respond positively to the confirmation email.
To learn to customise your resubscribe email, check out the article Customise the resubscribe confirmation email.
Why some contacts can't resubscribe
Reasons a contact might not be able to resubscribe:
- They're on the Global Suppression List.
- You've suppressed their domain from receiving your campaigns.
- They were removed because of a complaint from their ISP. If you wish to resubscribe an ISP complainant, then please send us a copy of an email directly from the contact confirming their wish to resubscribe (saved in either .msg or .eml file format - please don't forward it). We'll then be able to initiate our compliance process for this.
Shared suppressed contacts
A Shared suppressed contact is a contact that is initially suppressed on one of your accounts and that suppression is then shared across all your accounts. To make any changes to the suppression status of a shared suppressed contact, you must do it in the suppressing account (the account where the contact was originally suppressed).
If you're resubscribing contacts, you might see the message:
[2] shared suppressed contacts will be reviewed and might be resubscribed.
The reason we can't give a definite answer as to whether the resubscription will happen or not is because we must check with the suppressing account whether it is possible to resubscribe each individual contact.
If it is possible to make a resubscribe attempt, then we send a confirmation email to the contact so they can verify their resubscription.
The statuses where a resubscribe attempt is made:
- Soft Bounce
- Hard Bounce
- Unsubscribed
- Suppressed