In addition to the tools for ensuring high delivery rates, it is essential to implement proper management of contacts who no longer wish to or cannot receive your communications.
To this end, magnews offers a Blacklist and Greylist Management.
Blacklist and Greylist are lists of recipients (email and/or mobile) that are blocked either permanently (Blacklist) or temporarily (Greylist) after attempts to send messages have resulted in bounces.
When a recipient is placed in Greylist, it remains there for a certain number of days, after which it is available again for sending further communications.
If a recipient logs an open, click, or conversion, the system resets its bounce history and automatically removes it from the Greylist.
The management of Blacklist and Greylist can be activated based on the type of bounce.
Be aware of the difference between contact and recipient:
- A contact is a database entity to which communication channels (email address and/or mobile number) can be associated.
- A recipient, on the other hand, is a communication channel (email or phone number) associated with the contact.
The types of bounces possible on the platform are:
- Hard Bounce
- Soft User Bounce
- Soft Block Bounce
- Soft Technical Bounce
- Other Soft Bounces
Blacklist management
To access the Blacklist, follow the path:
Profile Studio > Blacklist
Then select the recipients to view, Email or SMS
The table shows:
- Recipient: the list of recipients in Blacklist, converted to hash format;
- Cause: the reason each recipient was added to the Blacklist;
- Blocking Date: the date each recipient was added to the Blacklist.
The hash conversion procedure is applied both to operations performed by the user in magnews and to those executed by the Scripting API.
Updating contacts on Blacklist
Recipients are automatically added to the Blacklist based on the rules defined in the configuration.
It is still possible to add a recipient manually by clicking the Add recipient button.
Enter the recipient by filling in the fields:
- Recipient: email or mobile number to be added
- Note: record the reason for which you added this recipient
Once completed, click on the Add button at the top right to finalize the operation.
Besides adding a single recipient, you can import an entire contacts list into the Blacklist.
To do this, simply click on the Import from file button.
This will take you to the page where you can import the file containing the list of recipients to add:
The file should have a single column containing the recipients to insert/remove from the Blacklist.
- File: select the file containing the contact list to add (or drag it directly into the field). You can also upload it from an FTP space or using the file sharing area.
- Encoding: choose the type of encoding for your file, UTF-8 or Windows 1252;
- Line separator: choose a value between MS Windows and Unix;
- Text qualifier: choose which character marks the textual parts in the file;
- Type of operation: contacts can be imported into the Blacklist, but by selecting the Unlock recipients option, you can perform the opposite operation, namely, removing recipients from the Blacklist;
- If the recipient is already in Blacklist: if a recipient is already present in the Blacklist, you can choose to overwrite it or simply ignore it.
- Data format: select the Uncoded option if the recipients you want to import are in plain text. If the recipients have already been converted to SHA1 hash format, then select the SHA1 Format option.
Once configuration is complete, click the Import button at the top right to complete the import process.
The new recipients will be converted to hash format and added to the list of those already present.
Exporting recipients from the blacklist
Recipients present in the Blacklist can be exported through a simple procedure, however, the recipients (email or phone numbers) will be in hash form and not in plain text.
To proceed, from the list of available bulk actions at the bottom of the recipients list, select the action Export on Text file or Export on Excel file.
Click the OK button and proceed with the configuration of the file layout you wish to export:
Click the Run button at the top right and, upon completion of the export operation, you will be presented with a page where you can download, by clicking the Download file button, the file generated according to your preferences.
Selection of contacts with recipient in Blacklist
It is possible to know if the recipient associated with a contact has been placed on the Blacklist.
Navigate to the contact list of a specific database or the global database and apply a filter of type:
Settings > Preferences > Email > Blocked recipient > Blacklisted
to the list of subscribed, suspended, unconfirmed, or unsubscribed contacts
After clicking Apply, all contacts whose recipient has been added to the Blacklist will be filtered.
Greylist management
Besides the recipients listed in the Blacklist, from the contextual menu you can also view the recipients listed in the Greylist.
To view them, click on the item Email recipients in Greylist
You will be redirected to a page containing the list of recipients in Greylist
The management is completely automated, and it is not possible to add recipients manually.
Viewing all recipients
If from the contextual menu you select the item All email recipients
all recipients that are currently present or have been previously hosted in the Blacklist or Greylist will be displayed
Even if a recipient has been removed from the Blacklist, it will always remain stored on this page to maintain a historical record.
If the recipient is present in Blacklist or Greylist, in the columns Blacklist cause and Greylist cause you can also know the reasons why it was added to one or the other list.
In the column Info, visual information about the current status of the contact is displayed:
- Green: the recipient is currently neither in Blacklist nor in Greylist, but has been in the past; the contact it refers to might have been removed from the source database;
- Yellow: the recipient is in Greylist;
- Red: the recipient is in Blacklist.
Blacklist configuration
The configuration of the parameters by which a recipient is listed in Blacklist is available in the section Configuration for..., which can be accessed from the main menu
The configuration is organized into three sections:
- Contact Management
- Insertion Criteria
- Criteria Customization
Contact management
At the time of preparing a delivery, the system checks if the recipient of the contact is in the Blacklist. If so, the contact will not receive any messages.
Additionally, At the time of delivery, magnews will update its status according to one of the options listed:
- Unsubscribe contacts whose email/contact number is in Blacklist: the status of the contact will be changed from subscribed to unsubscribed and the contact will no longer be part of the target for the delivery;
- Suspend contacts whose email/contact number is in Blacklist: the status of the contact will be changed from subscribed to suspended and the contact will no longer be part of the target for the delivery;
- Do not modify the status of contacts that have their recipient in Blacklist: the messages will not be sent, but there will be no change to the status of the contacts.
Warning: after a certain number of deliveries, you may notice a considerable difference between the messages managed for deliveries and those actually sent.
Insertion criteria
This section manages the rules under which a recipient is added to the Greylist or the Blacklist.
-
Spam Complaints: are recorded when contacts mark messages as spam.
This option is always active because it is necessary to manage reports by blocking the delivery of further unwanted messages to recipients; - Hard Bounces: the recipient is added to the Blacklist if a permanent error occurs. It is recommended to keep this option always active because, should you continue to send to non-existing recipients for a long time, your reputation with providers could be compromised, leading to significant inconveniences in terms of deliverability;
- Soft User Bounces: is a temporary error due to an issue such as a full or abandoned email box. Again, it is advised to keep this option always active;
- Soft Block Bounces: is a temporary error due to an issue concerning the sender's reputation or the message content;
- Soft Technical Bounces: is a temporary error due to a problem with the destination server;
- Other Soft Bounces: refers to all generic errors for which no further details have been recorded.
Customization of criteria
In this section, you can customize the specific criteria based on which a recipient is placed in Blacklist or Greylist.
To apply the custom criteria, enable the option Use custom criteria, which will display the customization options for:
- Hard bounces
- Soft User Bounces
- Soft Block Bounces
- Soft Technical Bounces
- Other Soft Bounces
In this section, configure the following:
- Sequence in days for inclusion in greylisting: the entry in the Greylist follows the sequence indicated in the field; the values must be separated by commas without spaces. With the default configuration 7,28, on the first bounce, the contact is suspended for 7 days, while on the second, it is suspended for 28. The last number is also used for subsequent delivery attempts;
- Insert in Blacklist after the following number of attempts: if the set value is equal to 1, the recipient will be automatically inserted in the Blacklist after the first bounce. If a value equal to 2 is set, the recipient will be inserted in the Blacklist after the second bounce, and so on.
Hashing procedure
To enable proper integration with external systems, below is the hashing procedure that can be performed for both email and cell phone number recipients.
Hashing procedure for email recipients
- Make all the characters in the recipient lowercase;
- Remove any leading or trailing spaces from the recipient;
- Convert the value to UTF-8;
- Encode the value using the SHA-1 hashing algorithm;
- Provide the HEX representation (hexadecimal) for the returned value.
Hashing procedure for mobile number recipients
- Sanitize mobile numbers to ensure all recipients are formatted with an international prefix;
- Remove any spaces;
- Use only numbers and the + (plus) symbol;
- Convert the value to UTF-8;
- Encode the value using the SHA-1 hashing algorithm;
- Provide the HEX representation (hexadecimal) for the returned value.