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Understanding Suppression Lists

How Vecta guarantees you never email someone who asked you to stop, and why it's workspace-wide.

The suppression list is your workspace's do-not-contact register. If an address is on it, Vecta will not send to it, from any list, any campaign, any template, including test sends.

How addresses get on it

ReasonAdded when
unsubscribedThe recipient clicked their unsubscribe link and confirmed
bouncedA send was permanently rejected: the mailbox doesn't exist
manualSomeone in your workspace added the address deliberately

Why it's workspace-wide

Status lives on the contact, not on a list membership. Someone who unsubscribes from your newsletter is also excluded from your product-update list, because they asked *you* to stop, not one particular list.

Example

ada@example.com is on "Newsletter" and "Beta testers". She unsubscribes from a newsletter email. The next send to "Beta testers" shows her as suppressed without you doing anything.

Checked twice, on purpose

  1. 1When the campaign is queued: already-suppressed contacts are marked skipped immediately.
  2. 2Immediately before each message is sent: catching anyone who unsubscribed while the run was in progress.

No code path skips this

Even the SMTP test send checks suppression. There is deliberately no way to bypass it from the interface.

Reading the numbers

Suppressed contacts appear in run statistics rather than vanishing. A run of 20 people showing "19 sent, 1 suppressed" tells you the full story; it doesn't quietly report 19.

Think hard before un-suppressing

Emailing someone who unsubscribed generates complaints: far more damaging than a lost contact, and in many jurisdictions it's unlawful.

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