Suppressions

A suppression list is the record of addresses you should not send to again — people who unsubscribed, addresses that do not exist, and anyone who marked your mail as spam.

Keeping it is not bureaucracy. Continuing to mail an address that hard-bounced is one of the fastest ways to damage the reputation that gets the rest of your mail delivered.

Entries arrive one of two ways. Automatic entries are added by Mailyte when something happens — a bounce, a complaint, an unsubscribe. Manual entries are ones you added deliberately.

Each carries a reason, which is the useful part when you are looking at the list months later:

• Bounced — the address was refused. Usually it does not exist.
• Complained — the recipient marked your mail as spam.
• Unsubscribed — they asked to stop hearing from you.
• Manual — you decided, and the note field is where you say why.

A suppression covers either a single address or a whole domain. Domain scope is the blunt instrument: use it for a competitor, a spam trap domain, or a customer who asked you to stop mailing anyone at their company.

Suppression governs your systems mailing people — campaigns and application sending. Replying to somebody by hand from your own mailbox is not blocked, because that is a conversation, not a mailing.

You can import a list you already hold. The import tells you how many entries were added, how many were skipped as invalid, and how many you already had.

1. Go to Suppressions. If you are new, it may already have entries — automatic ones start accumulating as soon as you send.
2. Import the list you brought with you from your previous provider. Doing this before your first campaign is the single most valuable thing on this page.
3. Check the import summary. Skipped-as-invalid usually means malformed addresses in the source file, which is worth fixing at the source.
4. Add anything manually that belongs there — an address a customer asked you to remove by phone, say — and write the reason in the note.
5. Filter by reason or source when reviewing. Complaints are the ones to read.

Somebody says they are not receiving your mail. Search for their address here first. If they are suppressed, the reason tells you why, and you can remove the entry if they have asked to be re-added.

An address bounced once and is now suppressed. Check the reason. If the address is genuinely valid and the bounce was temporary, remove it — but confirm with the person rather than assuming.

Your list looks empty after an import. Check the import summary. A file that is entirely duplicates or malformed addresses imports nothing, and says so.

You suppressed a domain by mistake. Remove the entry. Domain-scope suppressions catch everyone at that company, so this shows up as a lot of people suddenly not hearing from you.

Complaints keep arriving. The list is a symptom, not the problem. See Deliverability.

• Deliverability — why suppressions protect you
• Email logs — the bounce behind an entry
• Go to Suppressions