How Does the Blacklist Function Work?
Blacklisting a contact or a domain means that that contact or a whole domain should NEVER receive any emails from you. You will find individual blacklisted contacts mixed in with regular unsubscribes in Inactive Contacts. You will find blacklisted domains under the Blacklist tab.
Why would I want to blacklist a contact?
Because you want to ensure that they never receive another email from you again. This is different from unsubscribing a contact because if a contact unsubscribes, they can subscribe again at a later point, if they choose. If a contact is blacklisted, they can no longer subscribe to your newsletter, even if they try to. Here are some possible reasons for blacklisting:
1. Contacts who have made multiple spam complaints. We automatically unsubscribe any user who lodges a spam complaint, but you might want to also put them on your blacklist, so they can no longer sign up for your newsletter again. (You'll know if someone has lodged a complaint because that's specified in Reports.)
2. Any contacts who have expressly stated that they do not want to receive any emails from you again. By putting them on the Blacklist, you'll make sure they never accidentally receive email from you, including if they sign up for your email list again.
3. For any other contacts you want to ensure you are never emailing again, for whatever reason.
You also have the option of placing contacts on the blacklist as soon as you import them. This can be useful when switching from another email software. Even if you re-import these contacts as "Active Contacts" in an Excel file, the software will recognize them and they will remain on the blacklist.
How do I blacklist a contact?
From active contacts: select a contact or a group of contacts and then click on the gear icon that appears. Choose Blacklist (from contact list) or Blacklist (global), which applies to all contact lists in your account.
Under Inactive Contacts, you can now see that these contacts have been blacklisted.
If you want to blacklist an Inactive Contact, simply add click in the Type column, and add the Blacklist check to the Unsubscribe check.
Why would I want to blacklist a domain?
You also have the option to blacklist whole domains. There are several situations where this makes sense. For example, if you are a B2B, you might want to only collect company email addresses, so you could blacklist private email providers, such as gmail.com, hotmail.com, etc. You might want to blacklist contacts who work for a competitor, too.
How do I blacklist a domain?
To create a new blacklist domain, go to Contacts –> Blacklist, and select New Blacklisted Domain.
Enter the domain, e.g., amazon.com, directly into the domain field. You can also leave comments here for yourself and co-workers. You also have the option to globally blacklist them from all contact lists or just for one.
Find out more about the blacklist function in this video: