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View a group of contacts based on their email or SMS status

Article: 000033125
Updated: March 13, 2025

Filter your email and SMS contacts to see which are subscribed, have a temporary hold, have no permission set, are unsubscribed, or haven't yet opted in and are awaiting confirmation

Light Bulb IconDid you know? We're in the process of making improvements to the All contacts table and rolling it out to our customers. If your All contacts table looks different, view this article for filtering contacts by email or SMS status instead.

 

Don't get overwhelmed when looking at a large list of contacts! You can filter your list by the different contact status types to see which contacts you can or can't send emails or SMS messages to, and which contacts need your attention.

 


Contact status types and how to handle them

Permission to Send IconPermission to send: When a contact has opted into/subscribed to both email and SMS, they can opt out/unsubscribe from email and SMS independently of each other.

 

Depending on your contact's status, there are different actions you can take to either engage them or clean up your contact list:

  • All Statuses - This includes every single contact in your account no matter what status they have, or what list they're on. It's a good option to choose if you're searching for a specific contact so you don't accidentally exclude them.

Email Status

  • Awaiting Confirmation - If you've enabled Confirmed Opt-in, or have sent the Confirm Contacts Email to your existing contacts, the contacts who don't respond are marked as "Awaiting Confirmation". You're prevented from sending email to these contacts, and they're not counted toward your billing until they click the link in the opt-in email. If it's been a little while since you sent your confirmed opt-in request and you're not seeing responses from these contacts, they're good candidates to remove from your list. They can always sign-up again, and if they submit the opt-in, they'll be added to your list at that time.
    Note: This does not prevent you from sending SMS text messages to these contacts if they are in the "SMS subscribed" status as well (see below).
  • All Subscribed - These contacts have an email address, have given you permission to email them, and are counted towards your list size to determine your billing. You can actively email these contacts.
  • Subscribed - Implied - Part of Canada's anti-spam laws (CASL) and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These are contacts that you have a relationship with, but don't have express permission to mail to. Under CASL, you have up to six months or two years (depending on the relationship) to obtain express permission from these contacts or they need to be removed from your list. Under GDPR, you may be able to rely on a "soft opt-in" for sending emails to these contacts. To see these contacts, you must have the Advanced Email Permissions enabled for your account.
  • Subscribed - Express -  Part of Canada's anti-spam laws (CASL) and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These are the contacts that have given you express permission to email them. Any contacts that sign-up for your contact list through any of our list-growth tools are counted as having given express permission. To see these contacts, you must have the Advanced Email Permissions enabled for your account.
  • Subscribed - Confirmed - These contacts have all given you express permission to email them through Confirmed Opt-in. Confirmed Opt-in can be enabled so that anytime a contact signs-up for your contact list through one of our sign-up tools, the receive an email to confirm that they really do want to join your list. You can also send a Confirm Contacts Email to your existing contacts to verify that they still want to be part of your list and receive email from you. Confirmed addresses can't be edited, and if a contact changes their email address, you have to add them as a new contact.
  • Temporary Hold - There are two ways a contact is labeled as "Temporary Hold." The first is if you put a temporary hold on them to prevent yourself from sending to them—you can remove the hold at any time. The second is if you're using a sign-up form that doesn't have any way to verify the sign-up is indeed a human, like CAPTCHA, and you experience a fraudulent sign-up attack. These contacts should be left alone so that if another fraudulent attack is made with the same group of email addresses, they aren't added to your account again. Contacts marked as "Temporary Hold" aren't counted towards your billing.
  • Unsubscribed - When a contact opts out of receiving emails from you either through the "Unsubscribe" link in your email footer, or because they reached out to you in some way and asked to be removed from your list are in this category, they're moved into the "unsubscribed" status. If the contact re-joins your list through one of our list growth tools, the status is removed and you can start sending to them again. Unsubscribed contacts aren't counted towards your billing.
    Note: This does not prevent you from sending SMS text messages to these contacts if they are in the "SMS subscribed" status as well (see below).
  • No Permissions Set - These contacts have given you their email addresses but haven't given permission to send email to them yet. You can't email these contacts because they didn't give you permission, which also prevents you from sending them a Confirmed Contacts Email, so they make good candidates for removal. You can grow your list with more engaged contacts using our list growth tools.
  • Event registrants who were not already in your contacts and did not give you permission to email them when registering fall into this category.
  • Contacts added through Website Builder that submit their information through your "Contact Us" form, and not your sign-up form, are added to this category.
  • Contacts added through third-party APIs can also fall into this category depending on how the developer designed the import tool.

SMS Status

  • SMS Awaiting confirmation - When a contact fills out your SMS-enabled Sign-up Landing Page, and they opt-into receiving SMS messages, they're sent a text message asking them to confirm their subscription. The contacts who don't respond are marked as "Awaiting confirmation," and must either reply "Yes" before you're able to send messages to them, or "Stop" to cancel their opt-in.
    Note: This does not prevent you from sending emails to these contacts if they are also in the "Subscribed - Implied," "Subscribed - Express," or "Subscribed - Confirmed" status for email (see above).
  • SMS Subscribed - These contacts have an SMS phone number, and have given you permission to send text messages to them. You can actively send SMS text messages to these contacts, and they factor into the total number of text messages that you send each month.
    Note: These contacts can unsubscribe from your email list at any time and it doesn't impact their "SMS subscribed" status.
  • SMS Unsubscribed - When a contact opts out of receiving text messages from you by texting "Stop" to your dedicated SMS phone number, they're moved into the "SMS unsubscribed" status. If the contact later opts back into your SMS list by texting "Start" or "Unstop" to your dedicated SMS phone number, or by filling out your SMS-enabled Sign-up Landing Page, you can start sending to them again.
    Note: This does not prevent you from sending emails to these contacts if they are also in the "Subscribed - Implied," "Subscribed - Express," or "Subscribed - Confirmed" status for email (see above).
  • SMS Unsubscribed by system - These contacts were unsubscribed in bulk by request from a wireless carrier (like AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, etc.). When a mobile subscriber deactivates their mobile number or switches mobile carriers, the deactivated numbers are generally reassigned to new subscribers by the mobile carrier after a waiting period. Any messages sent to the new subscriber are considered unsolicited, since the opt-in was tied to the original owner of the number. Unsubscribing the number ensures that the new user doesn't receive unsolicited messages that the last user signed up for with that phone number.
  • SMS No permission set - These contacts were uploaded through a spreadsheet that had SMS phone numbers for them, but no SMS consent date was provided. To provide SMS permission, the contact can submit your SMS-enabled Sign-up Landing Page, or you can re-upload your file with the consent date included (import feature is coming soon).

 

Filter contacts by their status type

Filter your contacts by their Email or SMS status so you can see which contacts have granted permission to email or text them, the contacts that unsubscribed, the contacts that were interested but haven't granted you permission yet, and the contacts that need some extra attention from you. Your contacts are updated every minute to show you the most current list of contacts for each status.

  1. Open the contacts dashboard, and from the Contacts tab, click the All statuses drop-down menu to expand it.

    Contacts dashboard with Contacts tab selected and All statuses drop-down menu
     
  2. Select the EMAIL STATUS or SMS STATUS you want to filter by.

    Contacts tab, All statuses drop-down menu expanded with Email status and SMS status sections
     

Once you have your results, you can add your contacts to a list or export them to a spreadsheet by selecting them and clicking Actions.


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