Blacklisted contacts are contacts that Quanda excluded from sending, temporarily or permanently, because an email could not be delivered to their address at the last attempt. Contacts with a temporary problem return to the recipients after a while, addresses that do not exist stay on the blacklist for good. You find the reason by exporting the blacklisted contacts.

Why a contact ends up on the blacklist

  • A hard bounce is a permanent rejection. Typically the address does not exist, which the mail server reports with status code 5.1.1. Such a contact stays on the blacklist for good.
  • A soft bounce is a temporary rejection, for example when the recipient's server is down. Quanda returns the contact to the recipients after certain intervals and tries to deliver again.
  • A spam complaint. When a contact is blacklisted and no reason is given, the recipient or their email client marked your email as spam.

A more detailed explanation is in the article Reasons for undelivered emails.

How to find out why a contact is blacklisted

  1. In the top menu, open Contacts, Contact list.
  2. In the filter above the list, select Blacklisted Contacts and click Filter.
  3. Click Bulk Contacts Export. A CSV file downloads.
  4. Open the file in Excel as described in How to open a CSV file in Excel.
  5. The reasons are in the Hard Bounce reason and Soft Bounce reason columns.

What to do with blacklisted contacts

  • Fix typos. Correct an address with a mistyped domain, for example smith@gmial.com, to smith@gmail.com in the contact detail.
  • Replace addresses that do not exist. If you know the contact's new email, add it.
  • Delete permanently undeliverable contacts. You can delete blacklisted contacts even in bulk, see Why can't I delete all the selected contacts?
  • Do not email contacts who marked you as spam. Further emails would hurt your reputation.

Correctly set DNS records and link branding improve deliverability too. They make your emails more trustworthy, help them reach the primary inbox and reduce delivery to junk or bulk folders.

Frequently asked questions

It is a contact whose address could not receive an email at the last delivery attempt. Quanda therefore excludes it from sending temporarily or permanently, so that undelivered emails do not hurt your sender reputation.

A hard bounce is a permanent rejection, typically because the address does not exist, and the contact stays on the blacklist for good. A soft bounce is a temporary rejection, for example when the recipient's server is down. Quanda returns such contacts to the recipients after a while and tries to deliver again.

In the contact list, filter Blacklisted Contacts and click Bulk Contacts Export. In the downloaded CSV file, the reason is in the Hard Bounce reason and Soft Bounce reason columns.

The recipient or their email client marked your email as spam. Such a contact does not want your emails any more and you should not send them any.

Yes. You can delete blacklisted contacts even in bulk, unlike contacts with a recorded history or unsubscribed contacts. Before deleting, check whether the address only has a typo you can fix.