Understanding Contact Types in SendFox
Managing your audience effectively means knowing exactly what stage each contact is in. SendFox automatically categorizes contacts based on their activity and status so you can segment, clean, and target your emails more confidently. Each type has a specific meaning, and understanding these categories will help you keep a healthy list, improve deliverability, and avoid sending to the wrong people.
New contacts are contacts that have been recently added to your SendFox account but haven't engaged yet. A subscriber is considered new until they've been sent an email and/or taken action on a campaign. If they open/click an email within 60 days of the first send they will become an engaged contact. If they do nothing they do nothing for more than 60 days, they will become inactive.
- Engaged contacts (previously called "Active" contacts) are contacts that have opened a campaign in the last 3 months (90 days).
- Inactive contacts are defined as contacts that haven't opened a campaign in the last 3 months (90 days).
- Invalid contacts are contacts that SendFox has determined are a no-go for sending. This includes contacts that we have a record of bouncing in the past, or the address/server doesn't exist.
- Confirmed contacts are those that either opted into a Form, a Smart Page or were pushed into SendFox via API. They moment they clicked Submit on the optin form, they are sent a Double Opt In Email. When they open the email and click the confirmation link in it - they become Confirmed contacts or subscribers.
- ⚠️ Unconfirmed contacts those that signed up to your list. They would have received the double opt in email but for some reason, they never opened and signed it. Users are unable to send anything to unconfirmed contacts.
- A bounce happens when an email you send cannot be delivered to the recipient’s inbox and is returned (or “bounced back”) by the receiving mail server. Although there are two kinds of bounces, both can trigger Optimization.
🟧 Soft Bounce
Definition: A temporary delivery failure.
Causes:
- Recipient’s mailbox is full.
- Recipient mail server is down or temporarily unavailable.
- Message is too large for the recipient’s inbox.
Effect: The email may succeed if retried later. Most systems will attempt redelivery for a short period before categorizing it as undeliverable.
🟥 Hard Bounce
Definition: A permanent delivery failure.
Causes:
- The email address doesn’t exist (typo, fake or invalid address).
- The domain name doesn’t exist; or there is no contact in that domain name.
- The recipient’s mail server has blocked delivery entirely.
- Effect: An email address that "hard bounced" is automatically unsubscribed
⛔️ Be careful when re-subscribing contacts. You must never, under any circumstance, re-subscribe a bounced contact.
- Unsubscribed contacts are contacts that either clicked the unsubscribe button or the message bounced and they were automatically unsubscribed.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our Support team at support@SendFox.com