Email suppression and preferences

Email suppression refers to the automatic or manual process of preventing specific contacts from receiving future emails. The HoopAI platform handles suppression automatically for unsubscribes and hard bounces, and gives you tools to manage preferences at a granular level.

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What triggers automatic suppression

The platform automatically suppresses contacts from receiving future email marketing when: Suppressed contacts appear as Skipped in campaign statistics rather than in the delivered count.

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Do Not Disturb (DND)

Every contact record has a Do Not Disturb toggle for each communication channel (email, SMS, voice, etc.). When email DND is on, the platform skips the contact for all email sends — including campaigns, workflow emails, and bulk actions. Viewing and updating DND status:

1. Open the contact record in Contacts
2. Click the DND tab
3. View the current DND status for each channel
4. Toggle or update the status manually with a documented reason

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Viewing suppressed contacts

To see all contacts currently suppressed from email: Method 1 — Smart list filter:

1. Go to Contacts and click More Filters
2. Add a filter for DND: Email = On (or equivalent email suppression status)
3. Save as a smart list named “Email suppressed” for ongoing monitoring

Method 2 — Campaign statistics: After sending a campaign, open the Statistics view and click the Details tab. The Unsubscribed sub-tab lists every contact who opted out via this specific campaign.

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Hard bounce handling

Hard bounces occur when an email address is permanently undeliverable — the address does not exist, the domain is invalid, or the receiving server has permanently rejected delivery. How the platform handles hard bounces:

1. The bounce event is logged against the contact record
2. The contact is flagged to be skipped in future sends
3. The bounce is counted toward your account’s bounce rate

Why bounce management matters: If your cumulative bounce rate exceeds approximately 5%, your account’s email sending may be suspended. The optimal target is below 2%. Cleaning bounced contacts:

1. Create a smart list filtered by bounce status
2. Review the list after each major campaign send
3. For clearly invalid addresses (typos, test addresses), delete or update the contact record
4. For uncertain cases, move the contact to an inactive segment and do not send to them

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Soft bounce handling

Soft bounces are temporary delivery failures caused by:

• Full recipient mailbox
• Recipient mail server temporarily unavailable
• Message too large for the server to accept

Soft bounces are retried automatically. If a contact consistently produces soft bounces over multiple campaigns, treat them like a hard bounce and suppress the address.

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Spam complaint handling

When a recipient marks your email as spam, most major email providers send a feedback loop notification back to your sending service. The platform processes this notification and automatically sets the contact’s email DND to on. Keeping spam complaints low:

• Only send to contacts who have explicitly opted in
• Make the unsubscribe link easy to find — if contacts cannot find it, they click “Spam” instead
• Send relevant, expected content that matches what contacts signed up to receive
• Use the Dynamic unsubscribe flow to reduce complaints from bot-triggered clicks

Spam complaint rates above 0.08% (1 in 1,250 recipients) can trigger deliverability problems with Gmail and other providers.

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Preference management

Preference Management extends suppression to a category level, allowing contacts to opt out of specific types of communication rather than all email. How it works:

1. Create communication categories in Settings > Preferences (e.g., Newsletters, Promotions, Product Updates)
2. Associate a category with each email campaign during the send step
3. Contacts who opt out of “Promotions” are suppressed from all campaigns tagged as Promotions, but continue receiving Newsletters

Contact-level preference management:

1. Open a contact record and go to the DND tab
2. Click Subscription Status to view the Manage Email Subscriptions panel
3. Set each preference category to Subscribed or Unsubscribed
4. If marking a category as Unsubscribed, document the legal basis for any future resubscription

Important considerations:

• Preference Management must be enabled from your account settings before it is available
• Once enabled, Preference Management cannot be disabled — it is a permanent change to how the account handles email opt-outs
• Global unsubscribe (via the standard unsubscribe link) continues to suppress all email regardless of category settings

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Resubscription

Contacts who have unsubscribed can be resubscribed only if they explicitly re-opt in. Process for resubscription:

1. The contact must take an active re-consent action — clicking a link in a transactional email, filling out a new opt-in form, or contacting you directly
2. Document the re-consent event (date, method, source)
3. Manually update the contact’s email DND status to off and record the reason
4. Add a source tag to the contact to identify them as having re-opted in

Do not send a resubscription email to contacts who are already suppressed — sending to DND contacts violates platform policies and applicable laws.

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Mailgun suppression list

If you are using Mailgun as your email service provider, Mailgun maintains its own suppression list of bounced and unsubscribed addresses. When a contact unsubscribes through the HoopAI platform, the platform updates both the contact’s DND status and — when synced correctly — the Mailgun suppression list. If a previously unsubscribed contact re-consents and you need to send to them again, the contact must be removed from the Mailgun suppression list in addition to updating the DND status in the CRM. Check your Mailgun account settings under Suppressions to manage this.

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Preventing high bounce rates

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Frequently asked questions