Resubscribe a contact

After a contact unsubscribes, they might change their mind and ask you to resubscribe them, or resubscribe themselves using a signup form.

Gareth Burroughes avatar
Written by Gareth Burroughes
Updated over a week ago

Before you start

Things you need to know:

  • Only resubscribe contacts that explicitly request it.
    When you resubscribe an email address, 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. If they confirm, their email address is resubscribed.

  • The only exception to this is for contacts with the email suppression reason Suppressed by you. These contacts are not sent a resubscribe confirmation email; their email address is immediately resubscribed.


Resubscribe a contact manually

To resubscribe a contact:

  1. Go to Audience > Suppressions.

  2. Select the checkbox of the contacts you want to resubscribe.

  3. Expand the MORE ACTIONS drop-down menu and select Resubscribe.

  4. On the Resubscribe contacts screen, you see details of the possible resubscribe actions you can take.


    Toggle Resubscribe to email and Resubscribe to SMS to YES or NO to confirm the actions you want to take. You can see how many contacts it is possible to resubscribe to each channel, as well as the resubscribe action:

    • Channel can be resubscribed immediately.

    • A resubscribe confirmation must be sent.
      This action applies to the email channel only. Learn how to customise your resubscribe email in Customise the resubscribe confirmation email.

    • The channel cannot be resubscribed by you.

  5. Once you’ve chosen the channels you want to resubscribe, select RESUBSCRIBE.

  6. You see a confirmation message of your chosen actions. Select RESUBSCRIBE CONTACTS.

Resubscribe with a signup form

An unsubscribed contact can manually resubscribe themselves using your signup form.

Learn more in Create a signup form.

After the contact completes the form, if the contact’s email address was unsubscribed, we send them a resubscribe confirmation email. We don't resubscribe the email address until they respond positively to the confirmation email. If the contact’s mobile number was unsubscribed, then they can’t resubscribe to SMS through a signup form. Instead they need to send an inbound resubscribe SMS.

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.

Why some contacts can't be manually resubscribed

Reasons you might not be able to resubscribe a contact or channel:

  • The email address is on the Global Suppression List.

  • You've suppressed the email domain from your account.

  • The email address was removed because of an ISP complaint.
    If you wish to resubscribe an ISP complainant, you must send a saved copy of an email directly from the contact confirming their wish to resubscribe their email address (saved in either .msg or .eml file format as an attachment - please don't forward this email). We can then initiate our compliance process for this. Such requests should be sent to support@dotdigital.com.

  • The mobile number is unsubscribed. To resubscribe to SMS, the contact needs to send an inbound resubscribe message.

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 selected 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 can happen or not is because we must check with the suppressing account whether it is possible to resubscribe each individual channel.

If it is possible to make a resubscribe attempt, then, for email addresses, we send a confirmation email to the contact so they can verify their resubscription. Mobile numbers are resubscribed.

The statuses where a resubscribe attempt is made for email:

  • Soft Bounce

  • Hard Bounce

  • Unsubscribed

  • Suppressed by you

The statuses where a resubscribe attempt is made for mobile numbers:

  • Hard bounced

  • Suppressed by you

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