Hi
Is there a way to override the unengaged contact suppression for a single contact? I have just had an telephone conversation with a customer who wants to receive our monthly enewsletter. They are already on this recipient list but don’t get the emails as they are flagged as unengaged. I’ve tried re-sending the opt-in email but their opt-in and consent are still live.
Hi @NChapman,
If this is indeed about the contact considered unengaged, it would simply be a checkbox in the “Send or schedule” tab of the email editor:
You would either either have to uncheck the “Don’t send to unengaged contacts” checkbox or the contact would have to open and click the last email they received. A contact will be categorized as unengaged if they meet one of the following criteria:
There is also the chance that the contact was suppressed because of another reason. When you navigate to your marketing email, in the “Recipients” tab, you should see a menu point “Not sent”. In here, search for the contact and you should see an explanation as to why the contact was excluded.
Here are some of the common causes at one glance:
Are you using the marketing contacts functionality? If yes, are all recipients marked as marketing contacts? (HubSpot will not send emails to non-marketing contacts.)
Are you using an exclusion / suppression list in the Recipients tab of the email? (Do not send to dropdown)
Do you have the GDPR settings enabled? If yes, you might have restricted email sends to contacts who have a legal basis for communication only. In that case, you would have to update your contact’s subscriptions.
Have some of the contacts previously bounced? You can check by filtering your recipient list by “Email hard bounce reason is known”.
Did you already hit your monthly email send limit? (5X marketing contact tier)
Have some of the contacts previously unsubscribed? You can check by filtering your recipient list by “Unsubscribed from all email is equal to True”
Hope this helps!
I have a similar issue. Your solution would mean all “unengaged contacts” on my list would then be sent the email. I am just wanting to make the exception for a single contact. Is there a way to do this on a contact by contact basis?
Thank you
Please help! Has this feature been implemented?
Depending on your organization, this might fly, or it might not.
If a contact literally contacts your company saying they’re subscribed to your emails / lists and not getting them, and the reason is they’re on HubSpot’s unegaged contacts list, the only way to resolve this quickly is the contact record has to record a marketing email open.
Of course, you should have a strategy for creating your own suppression list and a workflow, giving you more control over exactly what “unengaged” means and what an “engagement” is that gets them back in the game… but lets say for arguments sake you do not yet.
You can either:
1. Explain the situation to the contact, and have resend a marketing email to them, with that contact as the only recipietnt, uncheck the “don’t send to unengaged contacts” box, and expalin that by opening that email they’ll get off the unengaged list. This is bulky and a little too inside baseball to be attempting to expalin to a contact--and you’re saying “we can’t send you emails” while sending them an email and telling them to open it. It’s a bad user experience, if they’re already a customer, maybe no harm no foul (in which case this request probably comes to you through the relationship manager or sales team). But if it’s a lead, partner, former customer, etc., it’s just enough of a confusing exchange that could derail their journey. so there’s option two..
2. Use a proxy email address, maybe one of your test inboxes, but unique. Best example would be with gmail - where JohnSmith@Gmail.com can have unlimited iterations using a “+” symbol… Test+JohnSmith@Gmail.com would go to the same inbox… BUT Hubspot considers it a new email address. You go into the contact’s record, add an email address, like the example above, make it the primary email address, and then send a marketing email to that contact. HubSpot will still consider that contact unengaged, adding a placeholder email won’t change that, but just uncheck the dont send to unenaged contacts box, and simply open the email. Then go back into the contact reccord, and reverse the steps above --delete your proxy email, and make the email address that was originally the primary the primary once again.
Your contact is now off of the unengaged list. The unenaged list only recognizes the contact record as a whole as unenaged, the fact that an email address that wasn’t and no longer is in the contact record is responsible for the open does not matter.
If you’re on a small email team, and virtually the lead, your call. If it’s a large email team, at a big company, run this by your boss first and be sure to emphasize it’s a one-off work around, not a prcoess. A paradox probably exists now, because if you’re on a large email team and no one’s recognized the issues the unenaged contacts list creates, and started using suppression and customized list hygeine instead, they probably shouldn’t be your boss, and their boss shouldn’t be that person’s boss, and so on. Anyway, they’ll either respect your resourcefulness or start taking some tasks off your plate immediately out of concern.
I have the same issue. I don’t want to include all unengaged contacts - literally just the one.
Hello @BMett,
Welcome to the community!
I found a great community post where @karstenkoehler highlights alternatives to using the default unengaged contacts list. Ultimately, if you’re using the ‘Don’t send to unengaged contacts’ toggle, then your only option would be to have the contact would have to no longer meet the criteria of the active segment by opening an email, which isn’t always feasible. With this in mind, I might suggest looking into creating your own exclusion list like seen in the post I’ve linked above.
Hope this helps!
Sam, Community Manager
