When you first import a list, we will add the contacts to your account with a status of Active. You now have an active marketing relationship with these contacts. From there, a number of things can happen. Take a look below for a quick overview.

When you import contacts, you also have the option to have them double opt-in. Choosing this option will cause them to be created as Unconfirmed contacts. When unconfirmed, contacts can only be sent messages that contain a confirmation link. Once they click that confirmation link, they will become an active contact.

Active contacts occasionally bounce, it’s just part of what happens out on the internet. That’s ok, we expect it will happen from time to time. However, if a contact starts to bounce too much, or if we get an Invalid Email Address bounce, then we will mark that contact as Bounced. Once a contact is bounced, you cannot email them. We do this to protect your deliverability and list performance.

Contacts not only bounce, but they also unsubscribe from lists. When a contact does this, we will mark them as Unsubscribed. This ensures that they will not receive any marketing messages from you. The unsubscribe relationship is very important, so even if you delete a contact, we will remember that they have been unsubscribed. This helps to ensure that any accidental re-additions of this contact to your account will not violate compliance.

Speaking of deleted contacts, we do maintain a contact’s information when they are deleted as stated above. If a contact is deleted, then the contact has a state of Deleted. These contacts cannot be sent marketing messages, and they do not count towards your contact count.

There is one last state which is quite special, Transactional. Contacts are added to your account as transactional if you have a business relationship, as opposed to a marketing relationship with them. These contacts can be emailed transactional messages such as receipts, confirmations, or other messages that relate to a business transaction.

Bronto will not allow you to send marketing messages to transactional contacts. An important thing to note is that you can send transactional messages to active contacts. They don’t need to be modified to receive transactional messages.

If you want to see what status your contacts have, you can look at the All Contacts page by going to Contacts->All Contacts. Here you will see exactly where each contact stands.

We try to make the contact lifecycle simple and unobtrusive so that you can always know where you stand with your contacts. Have any questions about the contact lifecycle? Feel free to ask them in the comments section below.

Adam Covati
Product Manager at Bronto

Update: There was a question about which contacts count towards your Contact Count, it’s easy, only active contacts are counted up when we tell you how many contacts you have.

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Active vs Inactive Contacts

Viewing a list of Active contacts, Inactive contacts, or both, is accomplished in the Contact Status Column.  The Status column indicates whether or not you are able to send messages to a particular contact. If you are able to send messages to a contact, then they will have a status of Active. Active contacts are “live” contacts that can receive messages from you. If you cannot send messages to a contact, then they are Inactive and given one of three status types described below:

• Bounce – The Bounce status indicates that you cannot send messages to this contact because they have received a hard bounce due to bad email address, or they have exceed the bounce limit for your account.
• Unconfirmed – Contacts with a status of Unconfirmed have not yet agreed to receive your messages. Remember, one of our policies is that contacts must agree to receive your messages in order for you to send to them (i.e. they were sent an opt-in invitation but have not yet agreed to receive your messages).
• Unsubscribed – Contacts with a status of Unsubscribed have either unsubscribed themselves from receiving messages from you, or were unsubscribed by you.  They can also be considered unsubscribed if they click the “This Is Spam” link in certain ISPs (such as Yahoo! or Hotmail).

Woops! Reactivating An Inactive Contact

Sometimes a contact is made Inactive by mistake.  One example of this could be someone testing the unsubscribe link during email test sends.

To reactivate an inactive contact:

1. Locate the contact using the search function on the All Contacts page, or by clicking the Inactive tab on the table on the All Contacts page.
2. Once you have located the contact you wish to reactivate, click on the email address associated with that contact.
3. On the Contact Overview page, click the Activate button to reactivate the contact. This will give the contact a status of Active.
4. An important note! You once again need to get permission to send mail to the contact via a subscription confirmation. There is no way to reactivate a large number of contacts at once. This is largely due to the seriousness of a unsubscribe request and the legality of re-subscribing someone who has unsubscribed.

Rob Slade
Client Support Specialist at Bronto

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