Add and remove suppressions from a list

Suppress contacts from a list manually

Laura Russell avatar
Written by Laura Russell
Updated over a week ago

It's possible for your contacts to unsubscribe themselves from specific lists in your account, rather than unsubscribing from all of your communications. To allow this, you can use a preference centre.

Read more about the preference centre.

Sometimes, however, you might want or need to suppress contacts from a specific list yourself. You can do this using a file import.


Before you start

Things you need to know:

  • Suppressing contacts from a list can only be done using a file import, so you need to have a .csv, .txt. .xlsx or .zip format file of the contacts you want to suppress.

  • Suppressing contacts from a list works at a contact level. You can’t suppress only a contact’s email address or mobile number from a list.
    Learn more in Understand contact and channel suppressions.

  • When you suppress contacts from a list, they are suppressed from that list only. The contacts continue to be a part of your master Contacts list, and any other lists they are subscribed to.


Suppress contacts from a list

  1. Go to Audience > Lists.

  2. Select the Properties icon for the list you want to suppress from.

  3. On the Edit list screen, select the Suppressions tab.

  4. Select NEW CONTACT SUPPRESSION.

  5. On the Import suppression list page, select CHOOSE FILE and locate the file of contacts you want to suppress on your computer.

  6. Optionally, you can enter an email address in the Email address to notify field to receive a notification email once the suppression import completes.

  7. To set your Encoding type, expand the dropdown menu and select the type for your file. UTF-8 handles most languages, so is selected by default.

  8. Select UPLOAD. You see a confirmation message. Select YES, REMOVE THESE CONTACTS.

  9. On the Map the data fields for your suppression list page, expand the drop-down menus to choose which data fields to map your file columns to.
    You only need to map the columns that contain contact channel identifiers; email addresses or mobile numbers. Map the column holding email address to the email data field, and the column holding mobile numbers to the mobilenumberid data field.

  10. Select FINISH.

You are taken to the List suppressions in last 24 hours page. This displays the number of contacts suppressed, along with the date of the suppression import. Select the Report icon to view further details about your suppression import.

Remove suppressions from a list

  1. Go to Audience > Lists.

  2. Select the Properties icon for the list you want to remove suppressions from.

  3. On the Edit list screen, select the Suppressions tab.

  4. Select the checkboxes for any contacts you want to remove the suppression for.

  5. Expand the MORE ACTIONS drop-down menu and select Remove suppressions.

  6. You see a confirmation message. Select UNSUPPRESS CONTACTS.

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