Subscribers, unsubscribes and blocked addresses
What the email subscription status of a client means, how people become subscribed or unsubscribed, which emails ignore the status, and why some addresses are skipped as blocked.
Every client has an email subscription status that decides whether your campaigns reach them. This article explains the statuses, how they change, and the two reasons an email can be skipped: an unsubscribe and a blocked address.
Subscription statuses
| Status | Meaning | Gets campaigns |
|---|---|---|
| Not subscribed | Consent was never captured, for example a client who only bought a product. | Only through a segment |
| Pending confirmation | Signed up through a double opt-in form and has not clicked the confirmation email yet. | No |
| Subscribed | Agreed to marketing email. | Yes |
| Unsubscribed | Opted out. The client stays in your base and is never deleted, but every later campaign skips them. | No |
Where you see and change it
- Client profile: the status chip sits next to the client's name. Its menu offers Mark as subscribed and Mark as unsubscribed. The Marketing consent card shows the Status, Set by and Consent basis. Pending confirmation cannot be set by hand; only the confirmation email produces it.
- Customers list (
/customers): the Email subscription filter narrows the list to Subscribed, Unsubscribed, Pending confirmation or Never captured. - Campaign audience: All subscribed means every client with the Subscribed status. A segment used as an audience takes everyone who matches it and leaves out only Unsubscribed and Pending confirmation clients, so a Not subscribed client in the segment does get the campaign. Use a segment only for people who agreed to hear from you.
How a client becomes subscribed
| Set by | How |
|---|---|
| Signup form | A signup form with single opt-in subscribes at once; with double opt-in, after the confirmation click. |
| Purchase | The buyer ticked a marketing consent in the checkout. No confirmation email is sent. |
| Import | The client came from an import or a migration from another mailing tool as an active subscriber. |
| Set manually | You used Mark as subscribed on the profile. |
| Automation | A workflow step Set email subscription changed the status. |
A single opt-in signup or a ticked checkout consent never turns an Unsubscribed client back into a subscriber. Only a confirmation click from a double opt-in email or your manual change does.
How unsubscribing works
Every campaign has an unsubscribe link in its footer, and mail apps such as Gmail also show their own one-click unsubscribe button. The link opens a confirmation page where the recipient can additionally tick Also stop measuring whether I open or click emails and, if they receive text messages from you, Also stop sending me text messages (SMS).
After an unsubscribe from a campaign, the client's status becomes Unsubscribed with Set by: Unsubscribe link, the campaign report counts them under Unsubscribed, and later campaigns list them as Skipped (unsubscribed).
What an unsubscribe covers depends on the email it came from:
| The link unsubscribes from | |
|---|---|
| Email campaign | All your campaigns (the workspace marketing list). |
| Newsletter issue | That newsletter only. Access to the product and other emails are unaffected. |
| Community new-post email or weekly digest | That kind of community email only. |
Emails that ignore the status
System emails are sent to every client the event concerns, whatever their subscription status: purchase confirmations, login codes, access reminders, certificates. They carry no unsubscribe link. Newsletter issues go to everyone with access to the newsletter product, because the issue is the product itself.
Blocked addresses
An address is blocked when a message to it was rejected for good (the mailbox does not exist or refuses mail) or when the recipient marked a message as spam. A blocked address is skipped by every send, which protects the deliverability of your other emails.
| Where | What you see |
|---|---|
| Campaign report | Skipped (suppressed) in the delivery numbers and in the recipients table. |
Customers → History → Emails (/customers/history/emails) | The status Suppressed, Bounced or Spam complaint with an explanation of the problem. |
A temporary problem such as a full mailbox does not block the address: delivery usually recovers on its own. When an address is wrong, correct it on the client's profile with Fix address on profile. There is no unblock button in the dashboard; if a blocked address is correct, write to Zanfia support.
Good to know
A spam complaint also sets the client's status to Unsubscribed with Set by: Spam complaint. Text messages have their own, separate consent: an email opt-in never counts as SMS consent.
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